Television Networks

In moves that could lead to a change of ownership for one and perhaps even two of the three major television networks, Time Warner Inc. is negotiating to buy NBC Network and Walt Disney Co. has apparently contacted CBS Inc. about buying that company.Time Warner, which already has extensive holdings in cable television, has held talks in recent weeks with General Electric Co. about buying its NBC Network subsidiary and some of NBC's cable services for about $2.5 billion in stock and cash, according to several people familiar with the negotiations.

With no new leads and few tips in the 10-day-old search for a missing teenager, Baltimore police are frantically trying to attract the attention of the national media, fearing the girl has been abducted and taken far from Maryland. But until a day ago, only a few television networks had aired segments — a brief mention on CNN Headline News earlier this week and a short segment using previously recorded film on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday. To Baltimore police, the unexplained disappearance of Phylicia Simone Barnes from her older sister's Northwest Baltimore apartment on Dec. 28 stands out among the more than 350 missing-persons cases investigated each year, and they have assigned more than 100 detectives and officers to it. A frustrated city police spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said he has been e-mailing and faxing fliers, as well as offering interviews, to virtually every national media outlet.

NEW YORK -- Like mainframe computers and gas guzzlers, television networks were supposed to be extinct by now. Dogged by aggressive cable companies for most of the 1980s, (( networks were said to be spiraling toward broadcast oblivion.But an afternoon stroll past the renovated Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway offers another view of the networks' prospects. The area, once a decrepit strip of shops north of Times Square, has been transformed -- thanks largely to the theater's new tenant, late-night television celebrity David Letterman, and the hundreds fans he attracts.

Summertime TV has been dabbling in game shows and contestant humiliation since 2001, when NBC debuted Fear Factor with an episode featuring players lowered into a pit filled with rats. But this year, the networks have taken their game to a whole new level with programs that show competitors getting punched in the face and falling into a pit of mud as they try to climb an obstacle-course wall - or players dressed like bugs getting slammed against car windshields. One entire series is built on the premise of contestants being forced to eat rich foods like clam chowder or cream pie until they are stuffed - and then put through physical paces intended to make them sick.

Need a break from television? How about logging onto the Internet for some new diversion?Oh, no.There's that darn NBC peacock staring back from the computer screen. And what's that? Hey, the CBS Cyclops.There are ABC and Fox and MTV, HBO, Nickelodeon and Court TV, and on and on. Television is invading the Internet in a big way.It's no wonder. With an estimated 30 million users dishing out $1 billion last year for on-line access, the growing global web of interconnected computers represents an irresistible new venue and another platform for blatant promotion.

In a further deregulatory action aimed at helping the shrinking fortunes of the three major television networks, the Federal Communications Commission yesterday unanimously overturned a 22-year prohibition against networks' owning cable TV systems.The 5-0 decision, which followed the FCC's promise last year to conduct a thorough review of decades-old regulations governing television networks and local stations, is designed to give the networks new areas in which to expand in the face of growing competition from cable.

In a further deregulatory action aimed at helping the shrinking fortunes of the three major television networks, the Federal Communications Commission yesterday unanimously overturned a 22-year prohibition against networks' owning cable TV systems.The 5-0 decision, which followed the FCC's promise last year to conduct a thorough review of decades-old regulations governing televisionnetworks and local stations, is designed to give the networks new areas in which to expand in the face of growing competition from cable.

The rapid evolution of television requires alteration of federal rules governing the production and ownership of programs. Twenty years ago, the networks' domination of the national TV picture was total. The arguments of movie producers to bar the networks from owning shows and production studios made sense. No longer.Diversity in programming has vanished as the number of production studios has diminished. In 1970, eight Hollywood studios provided 39 percent of the networks' program supply.

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.

PHOENIX -- Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is now going to try to convince the NFL owners that less is really more.Tagliabue closed the annual March meetings yesterday by putting the immediate focus on a special meeting he has called for March 30 in Dallas to discuss giving the television networks a rebate for 1993 in return for a two-year extension of their contract in 1994-95."

When her children were young, Jenny Lauck flipped on Today or Good Morning America as she brewed her morning coffee and tended her babies. But several years ago, the 34-year-old mother of three stopped watching the morning shows. After getting TiVo, she had no patience to sit through multiple commercial breaks during a live newscast. On top of that, the segments seemed frivolous. "Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the dentist's office," said Lauck, who writes for Web sites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif.

The shift in the bedrock of primetime television is evident in the fortunes of NBC's no-frills game show 1 vs 100 and its lavish drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Last month, NBC added 1 vs 100, a quiz program featuring stunningly easy questions, a roster of talent that begins and ends with B-list comic Bob Saget, and contestants who compete in a stadium-like setting with 100 opponents at a time. Instantly, it became the most-watched Friday-night show on network TV with 12.3 million viewers.

Weeks before the fall TV season officially begins, television networks are abandoning five decades of tradition in hopes of attracting younger audiences. Beginning today, two of NBC's most eagerly anticipated new dramas, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Kidnapped, will begin arriving in the mailboxes of Net-flix subscribers who have signed up for an advance glimpse of the series. Early next month, NBC's action drama Heroes will be available for downloading on iTunes - weeks before the show's on-air debut.

Concerned about the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to fine television networks for material deemed indecent, the WB network will broadcast a new drama next week that it has censored over the objections of the program's creator. But first, the network will offer the uncut version of the pilot episode on its Web site, starting today - a further example of the new strategies network television may be pursuing, both to escape government-imposed restrictions and to find alternative ways of reaching viewers.

BAGHDAD -- Two German engineers held captive in Iraq appeared with their captors in a video aired yesterday by Al-Jazeera television, the first sign of the pair since gunmen seized them three days earlier. Elsewhere in Iraq, bombings and shootings claimed at least nine lives, including that of a 13-year-old girl in Basra. The German captives, seated on a floor with at least four armed men standing behind them, could be seen speaking on the televised 35-second tape but not heard. The Arab satellite channel said the video "shows the two men urging their government to help secure their release."

Robert L. Johnson, the Black Entertainment Television co-founder whose leading role in building a Baltimore convention hotel has become uncertain, is buying the new Marriott Residence Inn downtown, Baltimore Development Corp. officials said yesterday. The 188-unit hotel, at Light and Redwood streets, is owned by Bethesda developer Urgo Hotels and opened its doors in July. It is about four blocks northeast of the Baltimore Convention Center. "It's a good thing," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the BDC. "It's more investment in the city."

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to allow broadcast television networks to buy local cable television systems, a move that could hasten a basic realignment of the television industry.Rather than having one local over-the-air affiliate station in a city, for example, a network could operate a local cable system offering dozens of channels of programming. That probably would alter, and perhaps terminate, the traditional relationship between the networks and local affiliates.

WASHINGTON -- The ultimate irony of the Richard Nixon story is the kind of posthumous revenge he achieved on the Eastern news media giants he always considered so implacably hostile.In the days since his death the major Eastern newspapers and the television networks have given the story of his passing an intensity of coverage that was exceeded only by that shown -- hTC for obviously different reasons -- after the assassination of John F. Kennedy 31 years ago. For those who knew Nixon and his feelings about the Eastern press and particularly the television networks, it is mind-boggling.

Every epic struggle has its chronicler, whether in verse or image. The Trojan War had Homer; the American Civil War, Mathew Brady. And the World Series of Poker has Bob Chesterman, who, as coordinating producer, has helped record ESPN's coverage of the Las Vegas poker championship the past three years. While TV poker is ubiquitous across the dial, it's the poker World Series telecasts that have become the most recognizable and familiar showcase for the game. Over the course of ESPN's poker shows, audiences have been introduced to a cast of stoic pros, antagonistic foils, and the occasional Everyman who hits the jackpot.

Late yesterday, the Bush administration found itself in a showdown with network television, and it was the White House that blinked, changing the starting time of last night's presidential news conference to accommodate CBS and Fox. Initially, President Bush was scheduled to meet the press at 8:30 p.m. However, that would have interrupted hourlong entertainment series on the first night of May "sweeps," when audiences are measured to determine advertising rates....