TV GUIDE/YAHOO SENTINEL ONLINE CHATS TO CO-INCIDE WITH SEASON FINALE - May 15

TV Guide and Yahoo will be hosting three chat sessions to mark the season finale episode of The Sentinel - The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg.

On Friday May 24 Leigh Taylor Young (Naomi Sandburg) and Udo Kier (the Ice Man) will be online, followed on Monday May 24 by Richard Burgi and Garett Maggart in the hour preceding the season finale episode on the east coast.

For more information on the chats and how to participate visit the chat sections of Yahoo and TV Guide. The TV Guide site also has a link that allows you to start submitting questions now.

FALL '99: MORE THAN A 'WASTELAND' - May 14

From Broadcasting & Cable
By Joe Schlosser

ABC, CBS, Fox, WB, and UPN tweak new schedules for advertiser showcases

After NBC makes its fall prime-time lineup presentation to advertisers Monday, the other five major broadcast networks will start unveiling their schedules. The WB will lead the way on Tuesday morning, followed by ABC, CBS, UPN, and finally Fox will wrap it up on Thursday afternoon.

Between today and Thursday, a number of old shows will be given their walking papers, while a handful of newcomers will be given the green light to start production over the summer. Executives were still working feverishly at each of the networks last week, trying to come up with the right mix of old and new, but most of the major decisions appeared to have been made by late Friday.

Here's a look at which shows will likely appear on the major networks in the fall and which shows won't.

At Fox, where new entertainment President Doug Herzog will unveil his first prime time lineup, the push into reality programming will probably come to a resounding halt as the network heads back to more dramas and sitcoms. Melrose Place is going away for sure, while Millennium, Guinness World Records, The World's Funniest, and World's Wildest Police Videos also appear to be finished.

There are a few new shows that appear to be set to crack the Fox lineup. Three shows Fox executives are high on: Columbia TriStar-produced comedy, Action; the 20th Century Fox drama Get Real; and the Regency TV sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. The Party of Five spin-off with Jennifer Love Hewitt entitled Time of Your Life and X-Files producer Chris Carter's drama, Harsh Realm, should also have little trouble making it this fall on the strength of that lineage. The drama Roswell High, from 20th Century Fox and Fox-owned studio Regency TV, should also get a pickup.

At UPN, executives are trying to regroup and focus their attention on attracting more male viewers after a tough year of development. On the way in at UPN is a weekly series with the World Wrestling Federation, which will probably be a two-hour block during the week. The wrestling block was supposedly a natural Tuesday night fit because it would be a next-day extension of the sports' popular Monday night play on cable.

Sitcom favorites likely to make the UPN lineup are the John Favreau comedy Smog, a Moesha spin-off called Mo'Nique from Big Ticket Television and the Columbia TriStar comedy The Grownups. Columbia TriStar sitcom Shasta McNasty also seems steady at UPN.

On the drama side, the Barry Josephson-Barry Sonnenfeld action series Secret Agent Man, the Warner Bros. Las Vegas series The Strip and the Spelling hour Forbidden Island all appear headed for UPN's schedule.

At The WB, new entertainment President Susanne Daniels is looking to keep the young network rolling. With Dawson's Creek, 7th Heaven and other dramas having taken off with younger viewers, WB executives are looking to develop more such shows, with Rescue 77, The Parent'Hood, and Smart Guy apparently on their way out.

WB executives are bullish on Angel, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off from Columbia TriStar, and the Touchstone TV drama Popular, about the most- and least-popular students in high school. They also like the Warner Bros. series Jack and Jill and the Spelling drama Safe Harbor. The Dick Wolf-produced drama DC, which follows the lives of young Washington interns, appears to be a safe bet as a backup series at The WB. On the comedy front, The Downtowners from Castle Rock, Eli's Theory from Imagine/Touchstone TV and in-house effort Minor Threat from Michigan J. Productions will likely find homes in the lineup.

At ABC, Jamie Tarses and company appear to be hot on a number of dramas. The Touchstone TV dramas Once and Again and Brookfield, along with the Miramax-produced series Wasteland appear on their way to making the ABC lineup. Sources say all three have a chance at making a new three-drama Thursday night schedule at the network. On the comedy side, ABC executives are keen on the DreamWorks sitcom Sugar Hill, the Warner Bros. comedy Odd Man Out and comedy Oh, Grow Up from Bob Greenblatt and David Janollari. David E. Kelley's drama, Snoops, looks like a potential Sunday night entry for the net as well.

CBS executives were keeping a tight grip on plans for the Tiffany network's fall schedule. But sources say a pair of comedies and dramas appear set to join CBS' lineup in September, three out of four of which will be in-house: Columbia TriStar sitcom Ladies Man, likely on Monday night; CBS Productions' comedy Grapevine, in Wednesday's lineup; CBS Productions' drama St. Michael's Crossing, which appears headed for Saturday nights, and the 20th Century Fox/CBS Productions series Shades of Gray.

(Thanks Liz)

WITH SEASON OVER, IT'S WAIT-AND-SEE TIME - May 12

From The Houston Chronicle
By Mike McDaniel

Somewhere in Hollywood, budding network TV programmers are playing poster-board games while nail-biting producers wait by the phone for a call that may never come.

Will ABC give Norm Macdonald the Don Ohlmeyer one-two and cancel his semi-popular The Norm Show?

Will CBS make room in its schedule for as many as three medical series?

Will NBC surprise us all and throw away the key to Veronica's Closet?

Welcome to final exams, tube style. Next week, the grades come out as the networks announce their new schedules. NBC goes first on Monday. ABC and the WB posts Tuesday. CBS unveils May 19. Fox and UPN reveal all May 20.

On the line are hopes and talents, not to mention dollar$ and - for some of us, anyway - our favorite television shows.

For everyday people Judith Eby, Meredith Giberson and Judy Echezuria, May 20 is white-knuckle day. That's when they officially learn the fate of their favorite series, The Sentinel .

The three are rabid fans who are not above sending TV writers letters and e-mails requesting stories on their favorite show, hoping they'll attract viewer interest. Before you laugh, consider what they did last year - their letter-writing campaign convinced UPN to extend The Sentinel another season.

Now that season is over. Unfortunately, The Sentinel 's fate is no clearer than it was last year at this time.

"That particular game amongst those fellows up there (programmers) is so intimate among them," says Leigh Taylor-Young, who has a recurring role on The Sentinel . "So will the show be back? Who knows? I've seen far too many excellent shows leave the air for utterly mysterious reasons, Picket Fences (in which she starred) being one of them."

"It's frustrating," says Lee Goldberg, executive producer of Diagnosis Murder. In an unusual move, Goldberg personally called a host of TV writers, including this one, to drum up support for his show. Although he's a Hollywood veteran, he still must play the wait-and-see game.

Unless you're privy to the money angles - and most of us, including the press, are not - no one can say for sure whether any borderline series will return.

But it's fun to guess at it. So here we present our take on the fates of several fence-sitters.

Brother's Keeper, ABC. The network apparently is abandoning its "TGIF" tradition, making this show, which has piddling ratings, expendable.

Caroline in the City, NBC. The network is abandoning its "Must-She" Mondays and sent some kind of message when it aired Caroline's "finale" (not "season finale" or "series finale," just "finale") before sweeps.

Diagnosis Murder, CBS. Despite its modest Thursday night success, CBS wants to grow younger, and this show caters to older audiences. How to do that without alienating Dick Van Dyke fans? One way is to fade the show out with Diagnosis movies.

Early Edition, CBS. The newspaper gag (the hero knows the news in advance) wears thinner each season. The question is, does CBS have anything better?

Homicide: Life on the Street, NBC. Come on, do you think for a minute that NBC would abandon one of its best dramas? And yet: 1) the series lost a step this year with the departure of Andre Braugher; 2) the series is one of the network's lowest-rated; 3 ) the series' biggest defender, Warren Littlefield, has been replaced as NBC Entertainment chief.

L.A. Doctors, CBS. Steven Bochco is readying a medical series for CBS. David Kelley has promised to be more involved with Chicago Hope next season. Can the network handle three medical dramas a week? Probably not. Look for Bochco's series to launch in January and the other two to duke it out until then for survival.

Millennium, Fox. The series improved this season, but not many viewers cared. Chris (X-Files) Carter has a new Fox sci-fi series in the works, making this one expendable.

NewsRadio, NBC. The season finale had almost everyone at the radio station relocating from New York to New Hampshire, but that may not be enough to save this perennially ratings-challenged show.

Promised Land, CBS. Like Diagnosis Murder, the series fares OK on Thursdays, capturing older people especially. Not hurting its chances: Its executive producer is Martha Williamson, overseer of the network's popular Touched by an Angel.

The Sentinel , UPN . UPN needs series recognition, and this one's been around for two years (sic). The question is, with its poor ratings and expensive cost, is name recognition enough.

Turks, CBS. Hard to find a spot for it - although Fridays at 8, where CBS has had no success, appear open.

Two of a Kind, ABC. See Brother's Keeper.

Vengeance Unlimited, ABC. Far-fetched series had marginal success on Thursdays opposite Friends and Diagnosis Murder. Renewal would surprise many.

Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane, the WB. The network's attempt at a teen comedy with Caucasian stars has not generated much buzz because it needs to be funnier. On the other hand, you have to start somewhere. 

(Thanks Jamie and the Texas Tribe)

SAVING OUR SENTINEL, PART II - May 10

From The Daily Buzz

As UPN changes its Monday night lineup for the summer, substituting the new hockey series Power Play for The Sentinel after June 14, Sci Fi has announced that it will rerun existing Sentinel episodes weeknights at 6 p.m. Eastern time beginning Sept. 27.

Because the cable Sci Fi network produces some original series - including new episodes of Sliders which was dropped from traditional network broadcast - fans of the supernaturally sensitive policeman are hopeful that Sci Fi might consider doing the same with The Sentinel if UPN does not pick up the series again for the fall.

The Sentinel was dropped from UPN's schedule last season, but a massive fan initiative inspired the network to order new episodes for the spring.

The "Save Our Sentinel" web page (http://world.std.com/~sentinel/), which was instrumental in engineering the write-in campaign last fall, is recommending that fans write to USA Networks (which owns Sci Fi) supporting the series' presence in the lineup. Series stars Garett Maggart and Richard Burgi are scheduled for an online chat May 24, the day of the season finale broadcast, from 8 - 9 p.m. Eastern time on Yahoo. 

LIKELY VICTIMS OF A CRAZY TV WEEK - May 10

From The San Francisco Examiner
By Tim Goodman
Examiner Television Critic

THIS IS a bad time to be mediocre in Hollywood.

One week from now, the industry will hold what it calls the "upfronts" for the advertising industry. As in, "Show us what you've got upfront, and we'll tell you if we're going to give you money."

The upfronts are, essentially, where the fall TV season gets nailed down. What you'll see in September will be decided in Manhattan on little more than whim. From this moment on, programmers and entertainment presidents are frantically trying to juggle what they have on their current roster with what they developed in the pilot season.

Basically, every network has a weakness, a show - or eight - that never caught on with a mass audience or at least those odd people who get picked by the Nielsen folks to determine what everybody else watches.

It's time for mistakes to be fixed. The question is, does NBC take one of its new dramas, float it by advertisers who will tell them whether anyone will buy commercials for it, and then retreat to a war room and call Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana to say, "We just killed Homicide.'"

Such is the nature of the beast. All six broadcast networks tend to quickly renew anything that's an obvious hit. When they wait, that's a sign of indecision. New episodes are ordered - a good sign - or the network suits are suddenly mum about things in the trade press - bad sign.

There are no definites. Shows that look golden this week could be doomed by May 17. It's one of the craziest, most indecisive weeks in the industry. Publicists are routinely kept in the dark about final decisions - many of them don't find out what got renewed or canceled until a half-hour before the entertainment presidents make the announcement.

Nobody wants a leak. Everybody is elbowing for position. And there's a massive domino effect that takes place behind the scenes. NBC goes first, on Monday. That could influence ABC's decisions on Tuesday, which in turn could affect decisions made by The WB and CBS on Wednesday, or UPN and Fox on Thursday.

All we know right now is that there are a multitude of shows on the bubble. In the flexible world of TV, these could change overnight, but here's a guesstimate about those shows whose fates are undecided.

NBC: Caroline in the City, Homicide: Life on the Street, Jesse, NewsRadio, Profiler, Veronica's Closet and Everything's Relative. Caroline could stay (why it has survived this long is a damned mystery). The critically acclaimed Homicide will most likely get axed (this has less to do with ratings than cost and, more importantly, a little publicized "first-look" snub of NBC by the producers, who pitched a show to UPN first). By all rights, Jesse should die, but may get a reprieve (same sentiment and result for Veronica's Closet too). NewsRadio and Profiler are almost certainly dead. Midseason replacement Everything's Relative was good, but needs patience, and NBC is sinking fast. There's your answer.

ABC: The Norm Show, It's Like, You Know . . . , Vengeance Unlimited, America's Funniest Home Videos, The Big Moment, Brother's Keeper and Dick Clark's Bloopers.

The first two should stay - but this is ABC, the slasher network, and anything can happen. Look for the rest to be cashiered, or brought back as limited midseason fillers.

CBS: Diagnosis Murder, Early Edition, L.A. Doctors, Payne, Promised Land, Sons of Thunder, Turks.

The Tiffany Network is No. 1 again but remains one of the most unpredictable at crunch time. So, even bigger guesses than usual: Into the boneyard goes Diagnosis Murder. In fact, the only survivors may be L.A. Doctors which rallied late in the season, and possibly Turks. If CBS spins off a comedy from Monday night, Payne may get a reprieve.

The WB: Rescue 77, Smart Guy, Wayans Bros. One word: Gone.

Fox: Guinness Book of World Records, Millennium, World's Funniest, World's Wildest Police Chases. There's only one non-reality show here and Millennium will be replaced by Chris Carter's new offering. The rest are likely to be killed or used as midseason filler.

UPN: Home Movies, Clueless, Love Boat: The Next Wave, Between Brothers, Redhanded, The Sentinel and America's Greatest Pets.

This network made a midcourse switch toward young males. Nothing here really fits that bill. And UPN has been seeking new shows like mad. Home Movies may squeak by, hitched to Meg Ryan's new animated show, Quints.

Part of what makes guessing difficult is judging whether the networks feel confident with what they developed in the off season. But they are almost always filled with fear - never sure, worried about their competition, about cable, about their jobs.

And that indecision is going to make a lot of people jump when the bubble finally bursts for these shows. 

SWITCHING CHANNELS - May 10

From Cinescape May/June 1999
By Christopher Grove

Sci-fi Continues to Struggle on Network Television ... And Thrive in Syndication

There have been sadder, more brutal TV executions than the one performed on Strange World this spring. The detective show South of Sunset, a series vehicle for former Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey, was yanked by CBS after just one week back in the fall of 1993. By comparison, Strange World's three weeks on the air seems almost respectable.

But Strange World's grisly end had to be depressing for television viewers with a taste for sci-fi. Not that the show itself was some kind of instant classic. But it was the latest in long string of disheartening defeats and disappointments for science fiction and fantasy on the broadcast TV networks.

Fox banished Brimstone to limbo after unlucky episode 13. Storm of the Century wasn't so much a ratings monsoon as a minor squall. Millennium might not reach the Millennium. The Sentinel could be headed for early retirement. UPN showed Mercy Point no mercy. Voyager continues to wander the spaceways in search of strong ratings. And even The X-Files is probably going to throw in the paranormal towel after one more season.

"Every genre goes through an up-cycle and a down-cycle," says Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming of the Katz Television Group, a media rep company that acts as an agent for more than 200 TV stations in their negotiations with national advertisers. "A lot of the new shows aren't scoring with viewers because these types of TV programs are getting played out."

Part of the problem, according to TV Guide television/movie critic Matt Roush, is that many of the shows debuting today simply aren't strong enough to survive in the increasingly savage, eat-or-be-eaten TV ratings jungle. "Originality is definitely lacking right now," Roush says. "What we're seeing are a lot of producers putting out pale imitations of The X-Files, hoping that lightning will strike twice."

Case in point, according to some industry watchers: the quickly canceled Strange World. The ABC series not only had storylines that were extraordinarily similar to those featured in The X-Files (involving government conspiracies, genetic manipulation and shadowy operatives whose motives are unclear), it was shot in rainsoaked Vancouver, British Columbia, where Chris Carter launched the saga of Agents Mulder and Scully back in 1993.

Strange World co-creator Howard Gordon spent four years as a writer/producer on The X-Files, so it's perhaps no coincidence that the two shows shared similar themes. Gordon was unavailable for a cancellation postmortem, but in an earlier interview with CINESCAPE, he did not deny his debt to Chris Carter's creation.

"I was very well aware of the hazard I was stepping into," said Gordon on the eve of Strange Worlds network debut. "I owe a great deal to The X-Files, and [Strange World] owes a great deal to The X-Files. I'd be lying if I said it didn't."

But Gordon also pointed out that Chris Carter doesn't own the copyright on conspiracies. Paranoia is common currency throughout popular culture, as witnessed by Blade Runner, Dark Skies, Millennium or the wacked-out, 'Big Brother's out to get me' theories heard every night on Art Bell's nationally syndicated radio program.

Gordon's argument might sound convincing, but TV viewers didn't buy it. the premiere of Strange World on March 8 was a ratings disaster, drawing a pitiful 5.7 Nielsen rating. When it temporarily moved into the coveted Tuesday night NYPD Blue slot, things got even worse. In what proved to be its final showing, Strange World logged a 4.3 Nielsen rating, the worst showing ever for a first-run program on ABC. By way of comparison, in mid-February, a new episode of NYPD Blue in the same timeslot scored a 10.8, making it the 16th most-watched program in the country.

Though the magnitude of Strange Worlds failure surely took Gordon and ABC by surprise, Daily Variety TV critic Ray Richmond was far from shocked. These types of shows are almost becoming parodies of themselves. A character known only as "the Asian Woman" asks an incredulous Richmond, referring to a mysterious Strange World character whose name evoked memories of The X-Files Cigarette-Smoking Man, Deep Throat and X. "What's next at ABC? Renaming Detective Andy Sipowicz 'The Fat Man?'"

The Strange World debacle could make it harder for science-fiction series to get the thumbs-up from the major TV networks. And according to many Hollywood insiders, it was already pretty tough for any hour long shows to make it through the torturous pitch/pilot/tryout process, let alone shows that have to overcome the stigma of being sci-fi.

"Its getting harder and harder to develop hour-long shows for the networks," says Art Monterastelli, creator of Showtimes's new sci-fi series Total Recall 2070, which premiered on the cable channel in early March.

The cards are stacked against sci-fi shows by a hard-to-beat combo of time and money. ABC, NBC and CBS are currently filling their nighttime schedules with cheaper-to-produce newsmagazines such as NBCs multi-night Dateline, so there's little room for a new (and expensive) 60-minute show. Add to that the long development process, which tends to wear the edge off cutting-edge programs - science fiction or not - and sci-fi programs have little chance of seeing the light of day.

"It's almost a fluke when an X-Files makes it through the meat-grinder," says TV Guide's Roush, who points out that the series probably wouldn't have survived on any of the Big Three networks. "The show didn't really hit its first stride until a few weeks in. If Fox hadn't be in the doldrums as badly as it was at the time, it could easily have been canceled."

Fortunately, there is some good news for genre fans. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer phenomenon seems to be going strong: The series continues to be one of the WB's bright spots both critically and in the ratings.

"It really offers hope for the genre," says Roush. "It's clever, smart, scary, a little sexy and it's fantastically cast."

As the TV audience in general continues to fragment in the new, 100-plus channel cable universe, the best way to make an impression is to take some risks. That's exactly what the WB network did with Buffy, allowing creator Joss Whedon to resurrect a character from a forgotten film and give her a second chance in an off-beat genre series.

"It's the only way to break through the clutter," Roush concludes.

Buffy executive producer Gail Berman promises that the series will continue to "break through the clutter" with its unique blend of teen angst, bloody horror and quirky humor.

"You can't rest on your laurels," she says. "Young adult drama may be in vogue right now, but you have to have a distinct point of view. You can't just create another science-fiction adventure and expect to automatically succeed."

Too true. In fact, for every Buffy or X-Files, there are seven or eight Mercy Points. And with network execs more spooked than ever by the high failure rate of new shows of all categories, taking risks and being original is, unfortunately, something producers are rarely given a chance to do.

Monterastelli says another show he worked on, UPN's conspiracy-fueled Nowhere Man, was killed by the demographic obsessions of the corporate suits even weblets like UPN have to suffer under. They kept telling us we had to make the show more accessible. And we kept explaining to them. "We can't. It's an existential thriller," Monterastelli recalls.

The lead character didn't know what was going on and neither should the audience, the show's producers maintained. But the suits prevailed, and the once-promising show with its respectable ratings (for UPN, at least) went more mainstream ... and promptly died.

"They made a huge mistake," says Monterastelli. "They should've stuck with it the way it was."

Now that he has a show on pay-cable, Monterastelli says he has more leeway in the kinds of stories he can tell and the way in which he can tell them. Which mostly means, to judge by Total Recalls 90-minute pilot, that he can stick in a lot more sex and violence. Many initial reviews were less than kind (including Richmond's Variety critique, which called the premiere "soul-sapping" and "banal"). Even Monterastelli admits that the second half of the 90-minute pilot was "a little murky." But while the pilot almost defiantly featured a heavy sex scene at the top of the show, Monterastelli stresses that Total Recall is focussed on what happens to mankind when it tries to coexist with machines that are conscious and a 1,000 times smarter than humans.

"I wanted to move away from the world of the movie as much as I could without losing the audience that dug it in the fix-first place," Monterastelli says.

More and more sci-fi/adventure series are following Monterastelli's route away from the broadcast networks. Their new destination: cable or the syndication market. In addition to Stargate SG1 and Total Recall 2070 on Showtime, the Sci-Fi Channel recently unveiled both First Wave (executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola) and Farscape from the Jim Henson Company. The Farscape pilot begins with an accidental journey down a wormhole, but from there any similarity to anything Star Trek ceases. Created by executive producer Rockne S. O'Bannon (who had previously written the screenplay for the film Alien Nation and produced SeaQuest DSV for NBC), the series mixes action, visual effects and plenty of Henson-style puppetry and humor.

"It's a hugely entertaining show," says Roush. "My only worry for it is that true sci-fi fans will turn it off before they've given it a chance."

Though First Wave sticks closer to familiar territory, reworking the aliens-among-us plotlines of The Invader and The X-Files, Richmond thinks the show deserves to do well. "It doesn't rely on too many visual effects and it has some very good scripts," he says.

Perhaps even more importantly than the possibility of greater creative freedom, genre shows developed for cable or the syndication market (such as Babylon 5 or Xena: Warrior Princess) offer producers a lot more potential for big profits.

"The one advantage that science fiction TV has is that it tends not to he culturally specific," says Carroll.

That means sci-fi can travel better overseas than the average U.S. sitcom: German audiences might be baffled by the adventures of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer, but everybody understands a spaceship blowing up.

"The economics are better than network TV if you're successful," Carroll continues. "But they're also worse if you fail. "

Typically, when a network buys a show, it will place an initial order for six episodes. The network also usually covers 75 to 80 percent of all production costs. To sell a syndicated show, on the other hand, often requires producing 22 episodes upfront at between $1.2 million and $1.5 million per episode. If you can then sell the show into 90-plus territories (as Baywatch, The X-Files and Star Trek have done in the past), the pay-off is immediate and and large, Carroll says.

And you don't need huge domestic ratings to sell your show door-to-door overseas. A network series has to draw big ratings to survive the five years it takes to produce the 100-episode minimum usually needed to sell a show into second-run syndication. And even if the show does survive long enough, recent license fees paid for the rights to repeat old episodes of hour-long shows have proven to be modest at best Twentieth TV, for example, recently sold cable rights for 88 episodes of The Pretender to TNT for $250,000 per episode. By comparison, TNT is paying Warner Bros. $800,000 per episode of ER, USA is paying $750,000 for each hour of Walker, Texas Ranger and F/X is forking over $600,000 for each X-Files show. None of which bodes well for licensing fees for the soon-to-be-available Millennium, Profiler and Early Edition.

That means network show producers can wait years to see a profit on their products even when they have a hit like NYPD Blue. For this reason alone, Carroll predicts more and more sci-fi shows will start up on cable or in the domestic and international syndication markets. And that could mean that, perhaps to their liking, the Big Three are history as a venue for sci-fi/fantasy shows.

"We pitched our show to them and they all passed," recalls Buffy's Berman. "I'm pretty sure that the big networks wouldn't have stayed with the show even if they had picked it up."

Though Buffy got great early reviews and has steadily built an audience, it still only averages a 4.0 Nielsen rating, ranking in the upper 80s in terms of viewership - precisely the kind of ratings that will get a show the pink slip from CBS, NBC or ABC.

Fox still remains in the genre game, however. Next season, Chris Carter will debut his new virtual-reality thriller Harsh Realm on the network. And Roswell High, another Fox series likely to bow this fall, will combine alien intrigue with teenage melodrama and cheeky humor. And there's a chance that the much-maligned Millennium might live to see another season, thanks largely to the sway of creator Chris Carter. And then, of course, there's always The X-Files, which the smart money predicts will be back for another season, in spite of the burgeoning film careers of its leads.

Despite the less-than-rosy prognosis for genre television on the major networks, Richmond maintains that sci-fi fans needn't worry that their favorite genre will disappear forever from the airwaves. According to him, there will always be producers and executives eager to tap such a die-hard market. "You should never underestimate the voraciousness, obsessiveness and insanity of the sci-fi crowd," Richmond says with a laugh. 

(Thanks Lee Ann and Steve)

THE SENTINEL'S NEW NET - May 7

From CopTV

UPN hasn't officially canceled The Sentinel (again) but unfortunately, it seems like a done deal. But fans of the show might considering writing the Sci-Fi Channel. The net rescued Sliders from oblivion, and has produced two seasons so far of the show. Sci-Fi has also announced that it'll start airing The Sentinel Monday-Friday from 6-7 p.m. (ET), so they may be willing to start producing new episodes.

The net will also add two other series beginning Sept. 27. The Showtime anthology series Outer Limits will air in primetime Mondays from 7-11 p.m.. The show recently produced its 100th episode for Showtime. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is also joining the net, airing Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. (ET).

"The Sci-Fi Channel is committed to expanding our library for acquired series," said Bonnie Hammer, Senior Vice President, Sci-Fi Channel Programming in a statement. "We're looking for strong creative series that have a broad appeal."

POWER PLAY FOR SENTINEL'S MONDAY NIGHT TIMESLOT FOR SUMMER - May 7

From The Hollywood Reporter
By Etan Vlessing

'Power' shoots, scores on UPN

TORONTO -- TV producer Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. announced Thursday that the UPN network acquired Power Play, a drama series about a professional hockey team, for airing beginning June 14.

UPN will drop the puck at 9 p.m. Monday nights on up to 13 one-hour episodes of the series about a team in Hamilton, Ontario, led by a former New York sports agent.

"It's critical to both our affiliates and our viewers that we keep the lights on during the summer months with first-run, alternative fare," UPN Entertainment president Tom Nunan said.

The series stars Michael Riley (Amistad) as former sports agent Brett Parker, Kari Matchett and Al Waxman (Cagney and Lacey).

Power Play was originally developed by Robert Lantos as a Canadian-content series for airing on the CTV network in Canada before he stepped down as chairman and CEO of Alliance Communications Corp.

Alliance late last year completed a merger with Atlantis Communications Inc. to form Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., based in Toronto.

"It's great that a Hamilton hockey team will be playing on a U.S. network in primetime and that Don Cherry will be introduced to U.S. audiences, albeit as a Philly coach," Lantos said.

Cherry, a former Boston Bruins coach turned loud-mouthed hockey commentator on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., also makes guest appearances in Power Play.

The showrunning team of William Laurin and Glenn Davis (Once a Thief) last year executive produced the first 22 episodes of Power Play along with Lantos.

All three will continue to executive produce another 13 episodes of the drama series set to begin shooting in June in and around Toronto.

WEEK ONE OF SWEEPS - May 5

From The Washington Post
By Lisa de Moraes

NBC's High-Water Mark

The first part of a four-hour biblical special put NBC ahead for the 32nd week of the TV season--and by the biggest margin since the week that Seinfeld signed off in May '98. And they say Hollywood is a godless place.

Here's a look at the week's divine and doomed:

WINNERS:

Noah's Ark. Part 1 of this two-part miniseries was watched by 35.1 million people--the biggest movie audience this season and the second-largest audience for an entertainment program on any network this season--behind the George Clooney bow-out episode of ER (35.7 million viewers).

Sports Night. For the first time this season, ABC's unconventional comedy series built on its Spin City lead-in.

NBC's Wednesday. Since putting reality special World's Most Amazing Videos in the 9 p.m. slot, NBC has won three consecutive Wednesdays for the first time since 1992.

WWF Smackdown. The wrestling special nearly doubled UPN's Thursday performance; already network executives are talking about making it a series next season. But it averaged just 5.6 million viewers on a network available in 82 percent of the country.

Robbie Knievel. The guy didn't even jump and he snared 11.7 million viewers--about 2 million more than Fox averages in the Thursday 8 p.m. hour. Of course the audience wasn't as big as the 13.2 million who watched his February sweeps special on Fox, but then he had to actually jump 160 feet from one 20-story building to another. All he did last week was give an interview about the lousy weather.

20/20 Wednesday. ABC's newsmagazine, featuring Connie Chung's "weighty" discussion with Calista Flockhart, was the most watched newsmagazine of the week among young adults. Flockhart has canceled all scheduled appearances since.

A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women, With Barbara Walters. ABC's Friday news special was No. 1 in its 90-minute time slot with an average of 12.1 million viewers.

LOSERS:

Mr. Murder. The ABC two-parter, on Monday and Thursday, is the season's least watched miniseries.

Caroline in the City. The cliffhanger season finale of the NBC sitcom limped out with a third-place finish. Not great news for a sitcom that's sitting on the fence with regard to renewal.

The Patty Duke Show. CBS's least watched Tuesday movie of the season. At least CBS had the good sense to take it out of the May sweeps.

NBC's Thursday. The first night of the May sweeps race, NBC scored its least watched Thursday with original programming since May 1994, thanks to guy-attracting shows on UPN and Fox. Still, the peacock network maintained a 73 percent advantage over its closest competitor on the night.

The X-Files. Sunday's show was its least watched original episode in five years. Maybe Chris Carter wasn't kidding when he said he'd hang it up after next season. The night before, HBO's debut of the X-Files movie averaged 4.2 million viewers.

The week's 10 most watched shows, in order: Part 1 of NBC's Noah's Ark, ER, Frasier and Friends; CBS's Touched by an Angel and 60 Minutes; NBC's Will & Grace and Veronica's Closet; CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond and Fox's Ally McBeal.

UPN WRESTLING NEXT SEASON - May 3

From Variety
By Jenny Hontz

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - After strong overnight ratings for its WWF wrestling special last Thursday, UPN is expected to exercise its option and turn the special into a regular series franchise next season.

National ratings for the special won't be available until Tuesday because of sports preemptions, but UPN defeated both ABC and the WB in overnight markets from 8-10 p.m. Thursday.

Insiders say the regular wrestling series will likely air Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. next season, followed by one of several new male action dramas under consideration: The Strip, The Disciples or Secret Agent Man. The Tuesday comedy block will likely shift to Friday night.

SCI-FI CHANNEL ADDS THREE SERIES - May 2

From Ultimate TV

The Sci-Fi Channel is beefing up its weeknight schedule for the 4th quarter of 1999 with three series that have proven themselves as fan favs. Beginning Monday, September 27, the cable net will present the sci-fi series Outer Limits, which will air back-to-back on Mondays from 7-11 p.m.; Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, starring Kevin Sorbo, joins the schedule Monday-Friday, 4-4:30 p.m., and episodes of Sentinel, the paranormal crime series starring Richard Burgi, will air Monday-Friday, 6-7 p.m.

"The Sci-Fi Channel is committed to expanding our library for acquired series," said Bonnie Hammer, Senior Vice President, Sci-Fi Channel Programming. "We're looking for strong creative series that have a broad appeal."

SCI-FI CHANNEL TO SCREEN SENTINEL FIVE NIGHTS A WEEK FROM SEPTEMBER - Apr 30

From The Hollywood Reporter
By Scott Hettrick

While some cable networks run the same show for an entire evening as a promotional stunt, USA Networks maverick programming president Stephen Chao plans to adopt such vertical scheduling as a regular strategy.

Starting Sept. 27, Chao will run four consecutive episodes of The Outer Limits from 7-11 p.m. every Monday night on the Sci-Fi Channel. He plans a similar move Tuesday nights with Sliders, he said Thursday as he prepared for a presentation to advertisers at Spago Beverly Hills.

Chao, who dismisses conformist programming views such as branding and targeted demographics, announced a new slate of original series and movies for Sci-Fi and USA Network. It runs the gamut from a single-camera comedy half-hour about two friends devising inventive ways to kill each other to Attila the Hun, another epic miniseries from Hallmark Entertainment.

Noting that USA is a general entertainment network, Chao said, "We don't go after a demographic in creating a show. We want to build a reputation for creating interesting shows and generate a sensibility and attitude that people respond to."

Sci-Fi has also picked up cable exclusive rights to syndicated series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which will be shown at 4 p.m. weekdays, and The Sentinel, which will be shown at 6 p.m.

USA announced that it has picked up reruns of Rysher Entertainment's CBS series Nash Bridges, as expected.

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