Anemic 'Fire' puts ABC behind NBC Tuesday
  ABC’s shuffle-off of “NYPD Blue” looks more and more like a bad idea. The network finished second to NBC Tuesday night, its 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. winning margins getting canceled out by the limp performance of “Blue” replacement “Line of Fire” at 10 p.m. coupled with a the highest rating of the night for NBC’s competing “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
   NBC finished first for the night with a 4.4 adults 18-49 average, far ahead of ABC’s 3.8/10. Fox was a close third with a 3.7/9 while CBS was fourth at 3.0/8. The WB and UPN tied for fifth at 1.1/3.
   “Fire” averaged a 2.7 at 10 p.m., behind “SVU’s” 6.0. ABC bested NBC in the two hours before that, with leadoff “8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter” and “I’m With Her” averaging a 4.0 and 9 p.m.’s “According to Jim” and “Less Than Perfect” averaging a 4.6. NBC averaged a 3.3 and 3.8 in those hours. Fox’s slowly reviving “24” averaged a 4.1 at 9 p.m. The WB’s “One Tree Hill” lost more than a third of lead-in “Gilmore Girls’” audience at 9, averaging a .9 rating.
   Among households CBS finished first with an 8.7/14. NBC was second at 7.3/11, ABC third at 6.1/9, Fox fourth at 5.1/8, the WB fifth at 2.2/3 and UPN sixth at 1.6/3.

'Joe' bows low as NBC and CBS share Monday
  A twins edition of “Fear Factor,” and not the premiere of the second season of “Average Joe,” boosted NBC to a tie with CBS Monday night, both networks averaging a 5.8 18-49 rating and 14 share. ABC’s showing of the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway” averaged a third-place 4.5/11, putting it way ahead of fourth-place Fox and “Billy Madison” at 2.3/6. The WB finished fifth with a 1.4/4 while UPN placed sixth with a 1.4/3.
   “Average Joe: Hawaii” premiered at 10 p.m., but it finished third in the time slot with a 4.9 average rating. Both CBS’s “CSI: Miami,” with a 6.9 average, and the final hour of “Castaway,” with a 5.3 average, were ahead of “Joe.”
   “Fear Factor,” which featured several sets of twins squaring off in the usual disgusting contests, averaged a 6.6 rating at 8 p.m., far ahead of CBS’s 4.4 for the combination of “Yes, Dear” and “Still Standing.” CBS inched ahead at 9 p.m. with “Everybody Loves Raymond,” which averaged a 6.3 to the first half of “Las Vegas’” 5.9. At 9:30 “Raymond” leadout “Two and a Half Men” fell into a tie with NBC with a 5.6.

Rumor: Observer editor eying New York job
Bruce Wasserstein doesn't officially own New York magazine just yet, but speculation over who he'll choose to run it is already boiling. The question of the moment is whether he'll fire editor in chief Caroline Miller and replace her with Peter Kaplan, longtime editor of the New York Observer. The New York Daily News says Kaplan has been lobbying for the job, although New York columnist Michael Wolff declares him lacking in "the skills or the temperament to run a weekly magazine the size of New York." (The two clashed recently after the Observer slammed Wolff's book "Autumn of the Moguls.") The Post, however, says rumors of a Kaplan-for-Miller trade are unfounded, while noting that New York's art director, David Matt, has left to join Men's Journal. In an interview with the Times, Miller challenges the theory that Wasserstein will replace her with someone more in tune with his own vision. "Bruce Wasserstein didn't buy the magazine so he could make it more about what he's interested in," she says. "That's a mistake many people make, but I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that's not a mistake he's going to make."

'S*e*x's' appeal falters in season premiere 
"Sex and the City" is nearing the end of its run, and just in time, apparently. Sunday's season premiere drew almost a million fewer viewers - 6.4 million versus 7.3 million - than last summer's sixth-season opener (which itself was down 8 percent from the previous year's). And it fell even shorter of the finale's audience mark of 7.7 million. After last year's kickoff, Media Life critic Ed Robertson observed that the saucy comedy's appeal was wearing thin, writing, "What HBO ought to do, rather than pushing forward, is to yank the show from the air [and] give it a seriously needed facelift." Incidentally, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" attracted 3.3 million viewers in the slot after "Sex" on Sunday. 

Ogilvy & Mather suits may have bilked gov't
Usually it's the government that's seen as ripping people off. Two Ogilvy & Mather executives were charged Tuesday with participating in a scheme to defraud the government. The indictment against Thomas Early, a senior partner and director of finance, and Shona Seifert, a former senior partner and executive group director, was made in relation to a two-year investigation about the agency overbilling the federal government for an anti-drug media campaign. According to federal prosecutors, Early and Seifert directed some employees to revise their timesheets to indicate that they had worked longer on the Office of National Drug Control Policy contract than originally recorded. The edits were made after the duo discovered that labor billings, and thus the agency fee, was less than originally anticipated. If convicted, Early and Seifert could each face five years in prison and fines of $250,000 or more. A spokesman for Ogilvy says the agency first disclosed the discrepancies to the Justice Department in 2000, after which it reached a civil settlement with the government and later implemented a more stringent set of accounting practices.

Report: Radio ad $s down 4% in November
Radio ad revenue dipped in November compared to 2002, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. Overall, revenue was down four percent, with local ad sales off four percent and national sales down six percent. Some analysts say the decline is skewed by comparisons to political advertising in 2002 and competition from local cable. Meanwhile, 2003 is expected to finish flat or slightly up for the year after an estimated two percent gain in December.

TNT rolling out hi-def channel for NBA finals
Want to see Shaq in all his glory? TNT is expected to debut a high-definition channel in time for the broadcast of the NBA Western Conference Finals in May. That’s the word from Turner Broadcasting, which unveiled its plans at the Television Critics Association press tour Tuesday. Work is already underway to digitize the network’s programming offerings, including upcoming specials and sports broadcasts like the NBA coverage and new mini-series “The Grid.” Network officials expect consumers to be fairly interested and have arranged contracts with unnamed major cable operators to distribute the new network. Turner Entertainment president Mark Lazarus says other HD networks are likely to follow based on the success of the TNT offering.

Correction: Gatorade's a no-go for Super Bowl
A story in the Dec. 9 edition of Media Life ("Almost a dot.com Super Bowl again") quoted a source as saying Gatorade would advertise in next month's Super Bowl. We fumbled on that one. Fleishman-Hillard, Gatorade's agency, tells us that the sports drink maker won't advertise in the game. Media Life regrets the error.