Network Executives

The controversial season finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- yanked from the schedule in May in the wake of the Colorado shooting tragedy -- has been given a July 13 airdate by the WB network.The episode was to have ended the hit series' season on May 25, but network executives were concerned that its wild and somewhat violent ending would have seemed insensitive coming just days after the high-school killings.In the episode, the conclusion of a two-part installment, the kids of the fictional Sunnydale kill the town's evil mayor, who by the end of the show had morphed into a 60-foot creature.

Television without colorTELEVISION networks play a strong role in shaping the way we see ourselves as a nation. But they are failing miserably to present an accurate portrait.Some might say that looking for reality on the tube is like seeking wisdom from a fool. But the networks' offerings for the next television season are worse than what anyone could expect in 1999.Times have changed since the medium treated minority groups as if they did not exist. Judging by the lineup, however, next season's schedule looks an awful lot like 1955, when television was in its infancy.

PROGRAMMING won't become more diverse until we show the networks it's in their economic interests to make it more diverse.A furor occurred last week over the major networks' fall season line-up. It seems that no minority lead characters are in any of the new shows. In fact, we'll see very few blacks, Hispanics or Asians this fall in any type of role -- except maybe as criminals on the local news and those reality cop shows.Welcome to the land of television apartheid.This new reality so incensed NAACP President Kweisi Mfume that he suggested the organization might explore litigation against the networks and boycotts of sponsors.

NEW YORK -- After years of resisting as censorship any attempt to regulate the content of television programs, the four broadcast networks are seeking to establish their own ratings system, similar to the Motion Picture Association of America's code for movies.In meetings this week in New York and Los Angeles, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox have been discussing a system that would allow them to assuage growing public objections to the violence and sexual content of some television programs and hold onto advertisers without jeopardizing the networks' long-standing argument that ratings constitute censorship.

WASHINGTON -- The most powerful executives in the television industry promised President Clinton yesterday to start rating programs by January 1997, so parents can use new technology to block out shows they don't want their children to see.But while the president hailed the pledge as a "historic turning point," industry analysts said that the ratings system described yesterday would accomplish little more than getting politicians off the networks' backs...

However brief it turns out to be, any U.S. invasion of Haiti is likely to be the most minutely documented military action in history.Several hundred reporters and photographers from television networks, newspapers and magazines are already in Haiti, with the most advanced equipment ever brought to a potential combat zone.In addition, representatives of news organizations say the Pentagon has promised far more access to the U.S. side of the operation than in any recent military activity, with pool reporters augmented by representatives from individual news organizations aboard U.S. ships and aircraft taking part in the invasion.

The networks' fall television season doesn't officially start for two more weeks. But for viewers, it starts tonight, with Fox launching its lineup of new shows and bringing back such hits as "The Simpsons" and "Married . . . With Children."Next week, ABC and CBS will roll out so many of their new shows that more than half of the 27 new series will have premiered on Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC by the official start date. The best new series of the season -- ABC's "My So-Called Life" -- is going into its third week.

Los Angeles -- "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," starring Jane Seymour, has suddenly become one of the most talked-about shows in the TV industry.Last September, CBS pulled the drama about a female doctor and her 19th-century frontier practice from the schedule on the eve of its debut. That's how little confidence the network had in the show.Now it's being called everything from "the one, genuine, new hit of the season," by CBS President Jeff Sagansky to "the show that saved Saturday night" for the networks in trade publications.

It's called the "Advance Parental Advisory Plan." But the networks' plan to clean up their act on TV violence through the use of warning labels doesn't even cover children's programming.Such holes led to skepticism and disappointment among TV reformers at yesterday's announcement of a deal between the TV industry and congressional critics of TV violence, Sen. Paul Simon, an Illinois Democrat, and U.S. Rep Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. The networks, not consumers, are the big winners, say reformers.

NEW YORK -- For the first time since the cable industry began its rapid growth more than a decade ago, the broadcast networks have been able to regain a piece of the audience they lost.While it is too soon to declare that broadcasting has finally bottomed out, many network executives hope the latest ratings are a sign that the networks may not irresistibly lose viewers to cable channels.The networks had help luring viewers back in February. CBS posted a big victory in the ratings because of its Winter Olympics coverage.

After decades of cutting back on prime-time political coverage, the networks plan to reverse the trend starting tonight in Denver when the new order of anchors on ABC, NBC and CBS takes to the airwaves for their first national convention. Trying to rebound from an all-time low in 2004, when each of the networks was roundly criticized for skipping entire nights of convention coverage in favor of rerun entertainment and preseason sports programming, the broadcasters will offer more coverage than at any time since 1996 in an effort to compete with cable TV and the Internet - most notably CNN and MSNBC, and their dot-coms.

What was being bemoaned (seemingly endlessly) by television industry analysts and critics as the end of the anchorman era, last week may have morphed into the dawning of the age of anchorwomen. Last Monday, Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff were named replacements for the late Peter Jennings at the anchor desk of ABC World News Tonight. A few days later, NBC held a news conference in part to squelch rumors that its leading newswoman, Katie Couric, was considering jumping networks -- to be anchorwoman at CBS. NBC's efforts convinced few. As has been widely reported, CBS determinedly is pursuing NBC's Today show co-host Couric to be solo anchor of its flagship nightly newscast, the CBS Evening News.

Jerry Bruckheimer grew rich churning out fast-paced, thumping action films aimed at the teenage boys who rule the multiplex: Top Gun, The Rock, Con Air, Bad Boys. But the 59-year-old producer has spent much of the past five years wooing a much different crowd - the older and far more female-skewing audience that stays home. And now the results are shaking up prime-time TV. In an astonishing blitz, network executives this month picked up four of Bruckheimer's five pilots as new fall series, including NBC's Pentagon thriller E-Ring and CBS' legal drama Close to Home.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - In the eyes of the television industry, Charlie Flint is the enemy. His Beverly Hills apartment has not one but two TiVo digital video recorders. Flint records television shows - even when he and his wife are at home - so that when they watch them later, they can skip commercials. He persuaded his parents to buy their own digital video recorder, or DVR, so his sports-fan father could instantly review any play he wanted. "Once you've used one, you can't imagine life without TiVo," said Flint, 36, a project manager for a company that builds Web sites.

At a time when the major broadcast networks continue to draw criticism for an overall lack of diversity on both sides of the camera, CBS has unveiled a program to identify and develop diversity within the writing and directing community. The CBS Diversity Institute, announced Wednesday, combines mentoring programs for new writers and directors with existing talent showcases for minority performers. "[The institute] will offer participants the kind of access, experience and mentoring [they]

In TV, a smart, bawdy new novel about the highly charged world of network sports, Caesar Fortunato proves impossible to work with, as he's an unfaithful, lying, gambling, drug-addicted hothead. And Fortunato is the good guy. Author Brian Brown based the character not-so-loosely on the late ABC Sports producer Chet Forte. Through his innovations, Forte was a force in shaping how sports were rendered on television - whether an amateur track meet or a Super Bowl. But his type - deeply flawed, passionate and headstrong about holding off ratings-obsessed corporate executives - has all but disappeared, Brown argued.

LOS ANGELES - Thanks to the phenomenal success of "Survivor," ratings are going up, up, up for CBS this summer. But network executives spent much of the weekend here defending themselves against accusations that "Survivor" and their other omnipresent reality series, "Big Brother," are driving broadcast standards down, down, down while contributing to a meanness in American culture. "OK, `Big Brother' is a very controversial show. We knew it was a controversial show before we put it on the air this summer," Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive officer of CBS Television, said in meeting with reporters gathered in Pasadena for the summer press tour.

Television without colorTELEVISION networks play a strong role in shaping the way we see ourselves as a nation. But they are failing miserably to present an accurate portrait.Some might say that looking for reality on the tube is like seeking wisdom from a fool. But the networks' offerings for the next television season are worse than what anyone could expect in 1999.Times have changed since the medium treated minority groups as if they did not exist. Judging by the lineup, however, next season's schedule looks an awful lot like 1955, when television was in its infancy.

PROGRAMMING won't become more diverse until we show the networks it's in their economic interests to make it more diverse.A furor occurred last week over the major networks' fall season line-up. It seems that no minority lead characters are in any of the new shows. In fact, we'll see very few blacks, Hispanics or Asians this fall in any type of role -- except maybe as criminals on the local news and those reality cop shows.Welcome to the land of television apartheid.This new reality so incensed NAACP President Kweisi Mfume that he suggested the organization might explore litigation against the networks and boycotts of sponsors.

The controversial season finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- yanked from the schedule in May in the wake of the Colorado shooting tragedy -- has been given a July 13 airdate by the WB network.The episode was to have ended the hit series' season on May 25, but network executives were concerned that its wild and somewhat violent ending would have seemed insensitive coming just days after the high-school killings.In the episode, the conclusion of a two-part installment, the kids of the fictional Sunnydale kill the town's evil mayor, who by the end of the show had morphed into a 60-foot creature.