'Millionaire' still pulling for ABC
Despite its age and passé status, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” continues to win nights for ABC. Last night the program gave ABC its only two timeslot wins, at 8 and 8:30 p.m., but that was enough for ABC to edge CBS in the nightly averages. CBS’s “AFI’s 100 Years . . .100 Thrills” won every half-hour from 9-11 p.m., but failed to overcome the lead that “Millionaire” gave to ABC. NBC placed third for the evening, as its summer sitcom “Kristin” dropped only 2 percent in the household ratings. On the netlets, the WB’s showing of the 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” beat UPN’s repeats of “Seven Days” by two household shares. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share for Tuesday night were: ABC 7.2/12, CBS 7.1/11, NBC 5.6/9, Fox 4.4/7, WB 3.1/5 and UPN 2.0/3. 

Gumby and Pokey will hawk ABC's reruns
Emerging out of what might be called claybernation, Gumby and Pokey have a new TV gig for the summer. Seeking a sense of feel-good baby-boom nostalgia, ABC plans to use the two pioneering claymation characters to entice people into watching its summer reruns. Gumby and Pokey will be brought back to life by Art Clokey, the man who created them for an appearance on the "Howdy Doody" show in 1957. Their voices will be supplied by the original actors as well. Gumby and Pokey first had their own TV show in 1966, and were last seen in a brief run on syndication in 1988. For some, Gumby may bring to mind Eddie Murphy as much as the little green lump of clay; Murphy repeatedly appeared on "Saturday Night Live" as Gumby in the 1980s, playing him as a grumpy old showbiz hack, uttering the catch phrase, "I'm Gumby, dammit!" The new ABC promotions will be presented as a series called "Gumby and Pokey's Summer Adventure." In it, the two characters will awaken after a long winter's nap to realize they've missed ABC's entire season. Their solution? Watch the reruns, of course.

WB cues up another Family Friendly show
The Family Friendly Programming Forum is ready to follow up "Gilmore Girls" with another series on the WB. "Raising Dad" will start Bob Saget as a widower left to raise two wisecracking daughters. It won't be much of a dramatic stretch for Saget, who on the long-running ABC sitcom "Full House" played a widower left to raise three wisecracking daughters. "Gilmore Girls" debuted on the WB last fall and has been picked up for another season. The Family Friendly Programming Forum is a consortium of 45 advertisers, including Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, who banded together to push for the development of primetime shows without sex, violence or other mature content. The group says it has nine other shows in development, and it has been shopping them to ABC, NBC and CBS.

Canadian DJ to Bush twins: Come drink up here!
After their much-talked-about arrests for underage drinking, where can the Bush daughters go to find the solace only alcohol can give? Over the border, it seems. Canadian radio station 100.3 FM "The Bear," based in Edmonton, Alberta, has offered to pay for plane transportation and the bar tab for 19-year-olds Jenna and Barbara Bush if the two should want to head north for a weekend of carousing. Though the drinking age in Texas is 21, it is 18 in Alberta and most of Canada. "We have a pub-crawl route all mapped out. We have a presidential suite at an unnamed hotel, which is ready to go. The mini bars will be unlocked," said DJ Matt Mauler. The twins' latest brush with Johnny Law came on May 31 in Austin, Tex., when Jenna Bush was caught trying to use someone else's identification to buy a drink. Her twin sister Barbara, margarita in hand, was charged with underage drinking. Jenna also got nailed in April for underage drinking. The White House has not responded to the invitation.

S.F. Chronicle editor recovering from lizard bite
San Francisco Chronicle executive editor Phil Bronstein could be out of the hospital as early as Friday after being chewed on by a Komodo dragon over the weekend. Doctors reattached several tendons in Bronstein’s left big toe after the 10-foot-long, carnivorous Indonesian lizard mauled Bronstein’s foot during a special tour of the Los Angeles Zoo arranged by his wife, actress Sharon Stone. Bronstein had been advised to enter the lizard’s cage in stocking feet, as his white sneakers might have been mistaken for white rats, the captive dragon's usual food. All the same the lizard, whose highly-toxic saliva can carry up to 50 different strains of bacteria, clamped its jaws around the editor’s foot, shattering the casing of his big toe. Bronstein, who has engaged in at least one well-known physical brawl in his newsroom, pried the animal’s jaws open and liberated his foot, but not without sustaining an injury that will require up to four months of rehabilitation before he can walk again.

Salman Rushdie blasts reality TV phenomenon
There's hardly a hack alive who hasn't had his say on the reality TV craze. The latest writer to weigh in, though, is someone who knows what it feels like to have his every move watched: Salman Rushdie, political columnist and author of novels including "Satanic Verses." In an article attributed to him in the Sydney Morning Herald, Rushdie, basing his observation on the British "Big Brother 2," argues that the reality shows have attracted viewers by bringing out the very worst traits in their contestants. "Famous and rich are now the two most important concepts in Western society, and ethical questions are simply obliterated by the potency of their appeal. To be famous and rich, it's OK--it's actually 'good' --to be devious. It's good to be exhibitionistic. It's good to be bad," he writes. This ante of misbehavior, he says, will constantly have to be raised to attract viewer attention, until we are watching murder on television. "If we are willing to watch people stab one another in the back, might we not also be willing actually to watch them die?"

June 13, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

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