Magna: Commercial clutter is down during Olympics Though the Summer Olympics have more commercial pods than the typical network drama, they’re shorter and less cluttered. That’s the finding from Magna, the New York-based media buying giant, which analyzed the first seven days of the Games and found that roughly 23 percent of telecasts have been devoted to commercials. That’s compared to an average 28 to 30 percent for typical primetime fare. Though NBC has been airing more commercial pods per hour, between six and seven to five for the average network drama, they are shorter. The average pod length is two minutes and 15 seconds, a minute shorter than average in primetime. National commercial pods are slightly longer, at two minutes and 30 seconds. About 16 percent of primetime telecasts have been devoted to national ads and 7 percent to local.   Great cone controversy: McCainites call NBC biased Years ago, on "Get Smart," the Cone of Silence was a joke, and it seemed like something of a gag when it was first referred to at a forum Saturday at which Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, the presumptive presidential nominees, answered questions before a fundamentalist group. But the McCain camp is not laughing about how the forum has been covered by NBC, sending a complaint to network executives regarding remarks by Andrea Mitchell on "Meet the Press" suggesting that McCain violated the forum's ground rules forbidding candidates to listen in on the other's responses. Campaign manager Rick Davis says McCain in fact did not listen in and is charging anti-McCain bias on the part of NBC. Writing to NBC News president Steve Capus, Davis says, "We are concerned that your news division is following MSNBC's lead in abandoning nonpartisan coverage of the presidential race." The irony, of course, is that McCain is credited with giving a much better performance that day, sounding quite sure of himself, while Obama came off as nervous and indecisive.   Alphabet swoop: ABC as TV Guide's sole sponsor ABC is introducing only two new shows this fall, and it apparently doesn’t want to get lost amid the other networks’ bigger slates. The network will be the first-ever single sponsor in TV Guide’s history, buying 21 pages of ads in the Aug. 25 edition of the magazine. The ads will be accompanied by a DVD on newsstands and for New York and Los Angeles subscribers. They will promote the network’s primetime lineup as well as ABC’s news, daytime, late-night, web and Buena Vista Home Entertainment divisions. ABC will launch two new shows this fall, the drama “Life on Mars” and the reality show “Opportunity Knocks,” neither of which has received strong buzz. But the network is also giving a lot of promotion effort to its trio of second-year shows on Wednesday night, “Pushing Daisies,” “Private Practice” and “Dirty Sexy Money,” whose runs were interrupted by last winter’s writers’ strike.   Programming notes: Fox gives Williams a full order After a short tryout, radio personality Wendy Williams has earned a syndicated talk show on TV. The hour-long daytime talker “The Wendy Williams Show,” which on Friday ends a six-week preview on Fox-owned stations in four markets, has been picked up by Fox Television Stations group for a national run starting in the middle of next year. The company previewed the show in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Detroit. Meanwhile, in other programming, CMT will launch the series “Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling” on Oct. 18 at 8 p.m. It includes 10 low-level celebrities, including Danny Bonaduce, Todd Bridges and Dennis Rodman. CMT is also returning three of its series: “My Big Redneck Wedding” and “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team” bow on Oct. 4, and “CMT Crossroads” on Nov. 7. Golf Channel on Sept. 12 will premiere “School of Golf: Hilton Head Island,” which follows young men and women in a boarding-school-like golf academy. And Spanish-language network V-me will cover both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions each night for an hour beginning at 9.   '9021-uh-oh:' CW nixes spinoff advance screeners Is the CW playing a shrewd strategy game, or does the network have a real turkey on its hands? That was the question yesterday after the CW said it will not be sending out advance screeners of its much-buzzed-about “Beverly Hills, 90210” spinoff to critics. That’s the type of move that’s generally reserved for truly awful shows, when networks don’t want the word to get out early that they’re bad. But the CW claims that it simply doesn’t want to ruin the surprise, wagering that buzz will build even higher if no one has seen the first show. “We're not hiding anything -- simply keeping a lid on '90210' until 9.02, riding the curiosity and anticipation into premiere night and letting all our constituents see it at the same time,” said a statement released by the network yesterday. The show premieres Sept. 2 at 8 p.m.