News Shorts

Americans choose NBC for Bush address
NBC held onto its viewers through President Bush’s address last night, earning the highest household rating for every half-hour in primetime, and the highest rating among adults 18-49 in every half-hour except one. Without adjusting for time zone differences, viewers chose NBC to watch the address, giving the network a 20 household share for the 9 p.m. hour. The finale of CBS’s “Big Brother 2,” pushed back an hour to accommodate the speech, won its first half-hour among adults 18-49 at 10 p.m., and tied a repeat of NBC’s “ER” for the second half-hour at 10:30 p.m. “ER” won the hour in households. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share and adult 18-49 rating for Thursday night, excluding the numbers for the president’s speech, were: NBC 10.3/16 and 7.0, CBS 7.3/12 and 4.6, ABC 6.7/11 and 4.0, and Fox 3.6/6 and 1.9. On Wednesday, younger viewers preferred news programs, choosing CBS’s “60 Minutes II” at 8 p.m. and ABC’s “20/20” at 10 p.m. over sitcom repeats and the debut of CBS’s new drama “Wolf Lake.” The supernatural drama finished last in its time slot with a 10 household share and 3.3 demographic rating. Adults 18-49 also chose CBS’s reality show “The Amazing Race” over a repeat of NBC’s “The West Wing” at 9 p.m., hinting at a potential showdown next week when “The West Wing’s” season begins. “The West Wing” and its lead-out “Law and Order” still won their hours in households. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share and adult 18-49 rating for Wednesday night were: CBS 7.8/13 and 3.9, NBC 7.2/12 and 3.5, ABC 5.8/9 and 3.5 and Fox 3.6/6 and 2.6.

Another Premiere editor gets the boot
Just ten months after he was brought onboard with a mandate to turn around Premiere's fortunes, Michael Solomon has been dropped. Replacing him as editor in chief is Peter Herbst, associate editorial director of Hachette Filipacchi, which publishes the movie magazine, and former editor of Family Life. During his short tenure, Solomon, a former deputy editor of the now-defunct Mirabella, revamped Premiere rather extensively, but his efforts appear to have gone largely unappreciated. Newsstand sales for the 600,000-circulation title were off by 13.6 percent in the first half of the year, and ad pages fell 30.12 percent year-to-date through August versus the same period in 2000.

Celebs will take calls at tonight's telethon
In a clever bid to get people to open their hearts and wallets, celebrities won't just be hamming it up on stage at tonight's telethon benefiting the victims of last week's terrorist attacks. They'll also be manning the phones. Some of America's biggest marquee names, including Brad Pitt, Meg Ryan, Chris Rock, Al Pacino and Adam Sandler, will be taking pledges from nobodies like you and me during "America: A Tribute to Heroes," the two-hour telethon that will be broadcast across 27 television networks. Meanwhile, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Jim Carrey, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Will Smith and Paul Simon will be among those providing the entertainment. Donations will be channeled into a new fund created by the United Way.

IOC head given power to cancel Winter Games
After three days of intense meetings, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee has voted to give IOC President Jacques Rogge a host of new emergency powers to provide for contingencies created by America's new war on terrorism. Among them is the authority to cancel the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the event of war or a significant security risk. But even if war breaks out between the U.S. and Afghanistan or another nation, Rogge says he doesn't believe it will be necessary to call off the Games, which hasn't been done since the Second World War. The Winter Olympics are set to take place Feb. 8-24 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

CBS pulls 'Agency' pilot with bin Laden references
Some fictional, scripted shows became a little too real last week, prompting networks to shelve episodes, delay premieres and scuttle plans involving potentially sensitive subject matter. CBS has put on hold indefinitely the pilot episode of its new CIA drama "The Agency," because the episode contained references to Osama bin Laden and a building being bombed in London. Another episode will serve as the premiere when the show debuts next Thursday. NBC pushed back the premiere date of its returning series, "Third Watch," which is about New York police, fire and EMT squads, until Oct. 15, canceled plans for a "Law and Order" mini-series about terrorism during May sweeps, and reworked an episode of "Friends" that had a subplot about the hassles of airport security.

NYT to re-reissue morning-after paper
The New York Times can't seem to print enough issues of its now-historic Sept. 12 edition. The original issue sold 1.65 million copies, 450,000 more copies than the usual weekday run, and a day-after run quickly sold out all 100,000 issues. The paper is considering another reissue that would sell at retailers across the country at the regular 75 cent price. The paper would not say what financial benefit the paper would gain from another reissue, but it probably won't offset the costs of running ad-free editions last week. Many Times readers reported trekking all over the city on Wednesday in a fruitless search for a paper, and several hundred people lined up outside the paper's Times Square building for the release of the late edition. The only other issue to go through the presses twice for general circulation was the "Men Walk On Moon'' issue from all the way back on July 21, 1969.

Cheating investigation for Brit 'Millionaire'
Scotland Yard has been brought in to look into an allegation of cheating in the British version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The suspected cheater is Army Major Charles Ingram, who won a million pounds, or nearly $1.5 million, with what may have been outside help. London paper The Sun reports that a certain audience member's timely coughing might have been employed as some sort of signal. Even more mysteriously, the subject's wife, Diana, and her brother, Adrian, both won 32,000 pounds on the show. They even penned a book on how to win on the show. The episodes with Ingram won't air until the investigation has concluded. "Millionaire" first came on in the U.K. in 1998 and has since circled the globe in more than 75 international versions, though few actually offer a million dollar grand prize.

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