CYNTHIA TURNER’S
CYNOPSIS

03/24/04

Good morning.  It’s Wednesday, March 24, 2004, and this is your first early morning briefing. 

Lifetime has picked up the cable television syndication rights to Frasier (Paramount Domestic Television).  The sitcom is set to begin on Lifetime in March 2006, joining Lifetime’s lineup of off-net sitcoms Will & Grace (Sept 2005), Golden Girls, The Nanny, Laverne & Shirley and Designing Women.  The ask for Frasier was in the $850,000 neighborhood, and per episode estimates for Frasier are in the $600k range, plus 1-1/2 minutes in barter time for the five year deal. (Note:  Barter time is not a standard item for cable networks as it is for local bcst stations).  Frasier has 264 episodes.

On the heels of the relaxing of Beijing’s previous ban on foreign companies investing in local production companies, Viacom has entered into a TV production partnership with the Shanghai Media Group, a state owned entity, the first deal of its kind in China.  The new partners will concentrate on creating and producing Chinese language shows for kids and young adults to air in China, and distributed to SMG channels inside and outside of Shanghai.  According to Sumner Redstone, Chairman/Viacom, this deal is just the first, a second announcement will follow. MTV gained permission to be carried in a portion of China a year ago and is currently available in 7 million homes in Guangdong and in blocks via syndication to another 150 million homes.  The joint venture will also help to expand coverage of both MTV and Nickelodeon throughout the country.

The final 30m of tonight’s Survivor: All Stars will get some new competition – 30m ep of American Idol 830-9p.  The question is, who is outwit, outlast, out-deliver who?

The Discovery Networks held their annual Upfront presentation last evening at the American Museum of Natural History and made several announcement as to new series for next season, returning series, and the celebration of the network’s 20th Anniversary.  Here is a quick look at some of the Discovery channel plans:

• Discovery Channel:  Returning series include American Chopper, Mythbusters, Monster Garage, Unsolved History, and my personal favorite Monster House.  New series include N.O.W. (No Opportunity Wasted) with host Paul Keoghan who helps the unsuspecting turn their deepest wishes into reality. Top 20 All-Americans will use viewers a well as historians, experts and influential observers to help determine who are the Top 20 Americans according to contribution, humanity, heroism, and influence.   And you can expect all the specials and OTO you are accustom to seeing on Discovery including the likes of Submarine: The Silent Service, Shark Week 2005, Walking with Spacemen, Body Spectacular and Khubla Khan: Fall of the Mongol Hordes, among numerous others.
• TLC will introduce new designers to its Trading Spaces stable, What Not To Wear returns as does For Better of For Worse;, and new series including: Plastic Surgery – the everyday happenings at a plastic surgery office; and The Designers and a bevy of specials and OTOs including several special Trading Spaces episodes, and What No To Wear specials.
• Animal Planet is getting a new tag:  Living Breathing Entertainment (April 1), as well as many new series for next season.  Coming to Animal Planet is Animal House where the animal truly do take over, Growing Up features new fellas before they become big fellas; Animal Cops: San Francisco continuing on the theme of the show already in Detroit, Houston and Miami; Ultimate Zoo gets up close and personal with some of the most amazing zoos in the world.  Numerous specials including Nutts for Mutts – a dog show with challenges such as Best Kisser, Longest Tail, etc.; Nature’s Vampires, and Dragon’s World.  Returning series include Jeff Corwin, Pet Star, Croc Hunter, and Animal X.
• Discovery Health welcomes several new series including Plastic Surgery-Head to Toe, and The Story of Us, among several specials such as Architecture and Design of Man and Woman and Birth Day Live! 3.
• Travel Channel returns with more Poker tournaments, and two new series: Road Trip (just what it sounds like), and Travel Gear examines all the cool gear and gizmos you can get to take with you on your trip.

News in Development/Casting/Production:

• WB‘s sitcom pilot Shaking Up (fka Robbing the Cradle) (from Wannabe/Regency) has cast Fran Drescher to star.
• ABC‘s Thank God It’s Monday (Touchstone) has added Ever Carradine and Tamara Taylor, and starring Ed Kerr and Louis Lombardi.
• UPN‘s comedy project Me Me Me (20th) has cast Julie Gonzalo and Ayda Field as two of the three leading women in the project.
• CBS is adding to the cast of CSI: New York (Bruckheimer Films/Alliance Atlantis/CBS Prods) with the addition of Melanie Kanakaredes.
• Fox‘s as yet untitled Michael Jacobs comedy project (Jersey Films/Sony) has added Stephen Root as the father.  And in the network’s comedy project Lucky Us (Original/20th), John Ross Bowie will play the brother’s role opposite Ethan Embry.

Court TV has renewed two of its newest series, as part of its Investigation genre expansion.  The network ordered 15 additional episodes of Psychic Detectives and 23 episodes of Masterminds.  Psychic Detectives reveals stories of collaborative efforts between detectives and psychics to solve the toughest cases.  The 1/2 hour Masterminds series investigates the most daring, complicated cons and the police work it took to capture them.

MTV announced a 4th season of the weekly series Made.  The season will premiere on April 7th at 10 pm.

Bunim-Murray Productions and the City of Philadelphia brokered an agreement to keep the 15th season production of The Real World in Philadelphia.  Young Involved Philadelphia (YIP), a local activist group, played an important role in bringing the show back to the city. YIP organized a rally last week to voice their concerns to politicians about the show moving elsewhere. YIP’s “We Want Our MTV” rally received national media attention.

ESPN‘s Dream Job finale is set for a 2-hour shindig on March 28 beginning at 9pm.  Now here’s the thing – audience participation is required to chose the eventual winner.  Viewers will be asked to vote on the final two via ESPN.com or text messaging.  Immediately after a winner is announced near the end of the 9-11p block, that winner then quickly moves to the SportsCenter set where he/she will be tested on their sports trivia knowledge with each correct answer leading to a higher salary.  Starting the next day, the winner gets right to work appearing on the 6p and 11p SportsCenter.

Coming to Oxygen next month is Neighbors, a serial series from Australia which Oxygen has acquired from FremantleMedia/DLT. Oh! the network has picked up 65 episodes which it will double pump weekdays 1-2pm beginning April 19.      

Coming to E! this summer is 13 episodes of a new series called Dr. 90210, that is a plastic surgeon in the Beverly Hills area. The show chronicles the day in and day out life of a plastic surgeon, from his practice with the elite to his home life. According to Variety, Dr. 90210 is scheduled to premiere in June.  Additionally, E! has ordered up 13 episodes of new series called Scream where players re-enact classic stunts from the movies.  Signed on to exec produce are Joel Klein/David Hurwitz and Ben Silverman and Mark Koops. Scream is slated for a June launch.

Top Ten Basic Cable Ad Supported Network Rankings among Total Viewers for the week of March 15-21, 2004:
Primetime        (000)     Total Day            (000)
TNT             2519    NICK/NAN        1876
NICK/NAN        2091    TNT             1309
USA             2016    CARTOON 1187
TBS             2014    TBS             1032
LIFETIME        1700    LIFETIME        998
CARTOON 1653    FOXNEWS 963
FOXNEWS 1625    USA             913
SCIFI           1550    A&E             662
COMEDY  1296    SCIFI           656
DISCOVERY       1274    TLC             630
Source  Turner Research from Nielsen Media Research Data.
All ratings based on Total U.S. Television Universe of 108,400,000 homes

Top Ten Basic Cable Ad Supported Network Rankings among A18-49 for the week of March 15-21, 2004:
Primetime        (000)     Total Day           (000)
TNT             1275    TNT             707
TBS             1148    TBS             629
COMEDY  787     NICK/NAN        543
USA             773     LIFETIME        468
SCIFI           722     USA             396
DISCOVERY       718     TLC             371
TLC             687     COMEDY  368
MTV             668     FX              352
LIFETIME        646     ESPN            341
FX              570     DISCOVERY       322
Source  Turner Research from Nielsen Media Research Data.
All ratings based on Total U.S. Television Universe of 108,400,000 homes.

News Viewer Index for the week of March 15-21, 2004 in Total Viewers
Total Day Total Fox News/CNN/MSNBC/Headline Cable News Viewers  1.880 (000) Total Viewers. (+7% vs. previous week). Of the cable news viewership, Fox News had 51% of the viewing, CNN 26%, MSNBC 13%; and Headline News 10%.
Primetime Total Fox News/CNN/MSNBC/Headline Cable News Viewers  2.947 (0000) Total Viewers (+6% vs. previous week). Of the primetime cable news viewership, Fox News had 55%, CNN 29%, MSNBC 10% and Headline News 6%.
Source Nielsen Media Research

Intermedia Advertising Group’s Top Ten Most Effective New Ads for new campaigns airing the weeks of
March 1-14, 2004. The list is ranked by viewer’s ability to recall the new ads and their associated products and brands.  The Recall Score is the percentage of TV viewers who within 24 hours are able to remember the brand of the ad they saw during normal TV viewing.  The scores are then indexed against the mean score for all ads during the time period to create the Recall Index; 100 is Average. For example, with a Recall Index of 266, the top-ranked DirecTV spot was recalled over 2 1/2 times more than the average new ad during the period.   Source Intermedia Advertising Group Inc.’s 2004 Ad Performance Data Series (www.iagr.net)
– 266   DIRECT TV: Robert Duvall dramatically reads fan letter by Jason Steeg
– 225   DIRECT TV: Joan Cusack dramatically reads letter from Chris Kopencey
– 215   JC PENNEY: Apparel–man in elevator becomes surrounded by women
– 215   CITIBANK: Identity Theft Solutions–montage of Sandra T., Ruth F., and Jake B.
– 185   CITIBANK: Rewards–woman hangs reward sign for lost hamster
– 179   CIALIS: Lazy moment into right moment, couples lay in hammock, embrace
– 178   RIESEN: One good Riesen, office worker eats chocolate & relaxes
– 167   DORITOS: Rollitos–Mia Hamm kicks soccer ball on field
– 164   PIER 1 IMPORTS: Couple on leather couch talk to Thom Filicia of Queer Eye
– 164   AT&T: All Services–ampersand, people repeat parts of conversations

Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment and Nickelodeon Movies are moving forward with a sci fi project called The Mark starring Smith, according to Variety.  The Mark is about a man (Smith) who finds that he has special powers when a mark appears on his skin that had previously been on a now deceased Confederate Soldier.  The Mark will hit theatres first, and then appear as an animated series on Spike TV.

CBS takes Monday night by a nose, or a tenth, with a 5.8/15 A18-49 according to Nielsen Media Research.  NBC was hot on CBS’ tail with a 5.7/15, and dipping off from there was FOX 2.6/7, ABC 2.3/6, UPN 1.4/4, WB 0.9/2.  At 8pm NBC’s Fear Factor stole the show with a 6.8/18, well ahead of #2 CBS’ sitcoms which averaged a 3.9/11 for the hour.  Bernie Mac’s inaugural airing at 8pm on Monday night drew a 2.8/8, third in the time period behind NBC and CBS.  Newby Cracking Up drifted off bit from the leadin with a 2.1/6.  At 9pm CBS and NBC tied with a 15 share, though CBS’ was in front in rating with a 6.2 for Raymond/Two & A Half Men vs. 5.9 for Las Vegas. At 10p CBS was clearly in front with CSI Miami’s 7.3/19, well ahead of NBC’s 4.5/12 for Average Joe, and 2.5/7 for 20/20.

Casting:  Showtime’s American Candidate, RJ Cutler’s new reality show, is running a Job Posting in Yahoo’s HotJobs section, looking to fill the position of President of the United States.  Showtime will air spots on-air directing interested parties to visit the HotJobs site, where they will be redirected to the American Candidate official site (www.americancandidate.com).  If you’re interested in the POTUS job, you have until April 9 to fill out an application. American Candidate will have 10 episodes and in the final ep in September, viewers will vote on which candidate they’s like to see in the White House. After the show finishes up, any of these candidates could actually run for president as a write-in candidate.

James Miller, senior exec prod at CNN, has resigned, effective immediately.  Taking over his duties on Anderson 360 and Paula Zahn Now will be Princell Hair, EVP/GM of CNN US and Sue Bunda, SVP/News at CNN US.

Bob Edwards, the 30-year NPR veteran broadcaster and host of Morning Edition, will leave as the Morning Edition‘s effective April 30, 2004, to take on a new assignment as Sr. Correspondent for NPR News.  Edwards, 56,  joined NPR in 1974. He was a newscaster and later co-host of All Things Considered before moving to Morning Edition as its original host in November 1979. Today Morning Edition is the 2nd most listened-to national radio program in the country.

Sharon Byrens has been named to the newly created position of VP/Sponsored Films for Turner Network Television (TNT).  Sharon will oversee development and production of the network’s sponsored films.  She will report to Michael Wright, SVP/Original Programming and will be based in LA.

Univision Communications Inc. named Sandi Stretch as VP/Marketing & Business Development, Western Region and Matt Chandler as VP/Marketing & Business Development, Eastern Region. Both Sandi and Matt will be responsible for marketing and business development for all of the Univision/TeleFutura owned-and-operated, affiliate and Puerto Rico stations and will report to Charlie Stuart, SVP/National Sales, Univision Television Group. Sandi will be based in San Francisco and Matt will be based in Miami.

Reporter Martin Savidge has joined NBC News as a correspondent.  Martin will report for all NBC networks.  He will be based in Atlanta.

Michael Lewis has been named VP/GSM for WHBQ/Memphis.  Michael makes the move to Memphis from WTTG/Washington where he had been LSM an NSM, and prior to that he was the GSM in Tulsa at KOKI.

Monday, March 22, 2004. Fast Affiliate Household Ratings for all Networks. Fast affiliate numbers which reflect time period data, not program data, and can change slightly once the finals come in, particularly for LIVE programming (i.e. Football). Source Nielsen Media Research. Time Period Averages Only. [p] = Premiere; [o] = Original; [r] = Repeat

CBS     10.8/17 Yes, Dear 7.4/12, Still Standing 8.1/12, Everybody Loves Raymond 11.9/18, Two and a Half Men 11.1/17, CSI: Miami 13.3/22

NBC     8.0/13  Fear Factor 8.9/14, Las Vegas 8.8/13, Average Joe: Adam Returns 6.3/10

ABC     5.7/9   ABC Premiere Event: NTSB: The Crash of Flight 323 5.6/9, 20/20 5.8/10

FOX     3.8/6   Bernie Mac Show 4.3/7, Cracking Up 3.3/5, That 70’s Show 3.6/5 [r], That 70’s Show 3.8/6 [r]

UPN     2.3/4   The Parkers 2.2/4 [r], Eve 2.6/4 [r], Girlfriends 2.4/4 [r], Half & Half 2.2/3 [r]

WB      1.9/3   7th Heaven 2.4/4 [r], Everwood 1.4/2 [r]

A18-49  CBS 5.8/15, NBC 5.7/15, FOX 2.6/7, ABC 2.3/6, UPN 1.4/4, WB 0.9/2

A MESSAGE FROM WARNER BROS. DOMESTIC CABLE DISTRIBUTION

Source: NTI Explorer, 3/21/04 or as noted.  Sunday 8-9p.  US Rating.  Ranks based on HH.  

The History Channel presents This Day in History: 
1989 – The Exxon oil-tanker Valdez runs aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Within a few days it spills 11 million gallons of oil into the sound. In January 2004, a federal judge orders Exxon to pay $6.75 billion in punitive damages and interest to the 32,000 fishermen, landowners, municipalities, and small businessmen affected by the spill. Exxon Mobil vows to appeal.

Answer to yesterday’s Trivia Question:  On what early 1980’s show would you find a sea plane called Cutter’s Goose? TALES OF THE GOLDEN MONKEY starring our own Stephen Collins.  Kudos to: Rose Miller-CABLEready/Norwalk; Lisa Antonucci-Mindshare/NY; Andrea Acevedo-Adelphia Media Services/Riviera Beach; Geoffrey Sprague-Bloomberg TV/NY; Steve McDonald-KDAF/Dallas; Adam Leston-Petry/Chicago; Jerry Wise-KTVT/Dallas; Joseph Sall-Rick Johnson & Co/Albuquerque; Tom Schaeffer-Comcast Spotlight/LA; Emre Celik-Bravo/NBC Digital/Burbank; Wenny Tung-Disneyland Resort/Anaheim; Eric Wilson-Wild West Media/Irvin; Karen Markham-KYES/Anchorage; Jacquie Hood-OMNI TV/Toronto; Susie Grondin-Nelvana/Toronto; Mike O’Sullivan-MikeO Prods/Darwin Australia.

Today’s Trivia Question:  When Hoss thought he was dealing with Leprechauns and everyone laughed at him, what did they actually turn out to be?   (
to respond to the trivia question and please be sure to include with your answer your name, company, city and time zone. Only the second four correct responses from each time zone will be listed in tomorrow’s kudo list.)

Later — Cyn

Cynthia Turner’s Cynopsis
03/24/04   5:23am
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WHAT’S ON TONIGHT:  Wednesday, March 24, 2004

COURT TV:       I, Detective, Forensic Files, Psychic Detectives, Dominick Dunne
ABC             My Wife and Kids [r], My Wife and Kids [r], Secrets of Extreme Makeover, Kingdom Hospital
CBS             Survivor: All Stars (OTO), The King of Queens, The Stones, CSI [r]
FOX             That 70s Show, American Idol, The O.C.
NBC             The Apprentice [r], West Wing, Law & Order
PAX             AFV, AFV, Early Edition, Diagnosis Murder
UPN             Enterprise [r], Enterprise [r]
WB              Smallville [r], Smallville [r]
TELE            Prisonera, El Alma Herida, Mujeres Apasionadas
UNIV            Mariana de la Noche, Bajo la Misma Piel, Don Francisco Presenta