Network

If you were looking to see more of Bo Derek - the actress and sex symbol who was ubiquitous in the 1970s but nowhere to be found by the mid-1980s - take heart. Starting tonight, you'll be able to see her every night of the workweek and Saturdays, too. Derek will star in a drama series that launches tonight on MyNetworkTV, a network that emerged when struggling networks WB and UPN combinedinto CW. The series, Fashion House (a sneak peek of the show was to air last night at 8:30), is a first for American television.

Like many people these days, I have a Facebook account, which I mostly use to stay connected with high school chums and other friends. In the last six months, though, I've also established a professional online presence through LinkedIn.com, a popular career-oriented network. (The site has 13 million members, who can establish a personal account free. LinkedIn charges fees for extended services.) While it's nice to reconnect with old co-workers and see what they're up to career-wise, the idea behind LinkedIn is to help professionals advance their careers.

Erin Moriarty believes women should lean on one another more. When she left her consumer reporting job at CBS News for her current position as correspondent for the network's "48 Hours," she clued in her successor on everything about her old job, turning over her files, names of her contacts and other helpful information.Not only did she want consumerism to continue to be well covered, but she wanted the woman following in her footsteps to be successful, too.That's what networking is all about, she said.

Fox News officials are conducting an internal review to determine whether John Ellis, the head of its "Decision Desk" that helps project winners on Election Night, improperly gave confidential election polling data to his first cousin - Texas Gov. George W. Bush. In an article in this week's New Yorker, Ellis boasted of having been on the phone constantly last Tuesday night with the presidential candidate and with the Texan's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. At 2 a.m., the article by writer Jane Mayer recounted, "Ellis called his cousins and told them, `Our projection shows that it is statistically impossible for (Vice President)

The TV Repairman:What does it all mean and where is sports on television heading with Disney buying ABC and Westinghouse scooping up CBS? Days of speculation will turn to months of same and still no one will really know, because sports is a very minor player when it comes to running billion-dollar enterprises.A dynamite cartoon appearing in the New York Post covered the Disney/ABC caper expertly. It shows Goofy and Donald Duck on split screen behind Ted Koppel in the studio and he's saying, "Joining 'Nightline' to discuss the murder of Bambi's mother is our panel of experts.

After working with drug abusers and the homeless for nearly two decades, Tammy D. Brayboy needed a change. I was burned out, she said. Then I started to follow my heart, I started to follow what made me happy. Cheesecake makes her happy. Her cheesecake makes her friends and family happy. She wants it to make you happy. Brayboy attended yesterdays first Baltimore African-American Business Forum in hopes of finding out how she can get her 3-year-old home-based business, Sweetie Pie, off the ground and her cakes and pastries onto Baltimoreans tables.

If you think you have budget troubles, you ought to try balancing the books for the network news departments in the wake of the war.If NBC's war costs -- almost $45 million in expenses and lost ad revenues, the network says -- are similar to those of ABC and CBS, it means the trio has spent about $135 million covering the war.We don't know for sure, because only NBC is saying how much the coverage cost it, but it's unlikely that the numbers are very different...

Shane Walker has some counterintuitive plans for the new network he's trying to launch on college campuses. "One thing we're not allowing on our programming is cursing, gratuitous sex or violence," says Walker, a 38-year-old indie film producer whose U Network is set to launch Sept. 8. What the network will have, though, is The W Show -- a weekly program devoted to the president's re-election campaign. The small, Muncie, Ind.-based network is banking on the theory that at least some college students want their own conservative television news.

A venture announced yesterday between Lanham-based Radio One Inc. and Comcast Corp. to launch a cable network targeting black viewers will benefit both companies, industry experts said. Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, will be able to tap into Radio One's expertise in marketing to African-Americans. Radio One, the nation's largest radio company directed to black listeners, gains a partner that has proved it can run successful cable stations, such as E! Entertainment Television and the Golf Channel, along with potential access to 21.4 million Comcast subscribers.

Baltimore has drafted a skeleton proposal to bring wireless Internet to neighborhoods across the city and will ask communication companies and other experts this week to weigh in with their own ideas, the first step in creating a citywide network similar to the one proposed for Philadelphia, officials said yesterday. Mayor Martin O'Malley's administration expects to release a 16-page request for information to at least 20 companies to seek a broad range of proposals for bringing wireless Internet to Baltimore, said the city's technology advocate, Mario Armstrong.