TUBE TALK ''Queens Supreme'' sounds like either a drag act or a soft-serve sundae, but actually, it's an upcoming comedy-drama on CBS about a courthouse in the New York City outer borough. It marks the TV-producing debut of Julia Roberts, whose company, Shoelace Productions, is teaming with Revolution Studios (makers of her ''America's Sweethearts) to create the series....
Just as in TV news, where networks seem content to poach each other's stars rather than create new ones, so it goes in the late-night talk realm, where NBC's creation of a show for Carson Daly is starting to look like a sneak preview of ''The Late Shift: The Sequel.'' As Bill Carter chronicled in his book and TV movie ''The Late Shift,'' the chaos surrounding Johnny Carson's retirement 10 years ago led to the ascension of Jay Leno to ''The Tonight Show,'' several outlets trying to woo the passed-over David Letterman away from NBC (ultimately, of course, he went to CBS), the launch of Conan O'Brien's show, and the creation of several short-lived talk shows on rival networks featuring established stars who proved ill-suited to the format -- notably, Chevy Chase, whom Fox signed when it couldn't get Letterman, and whose notorious 1993 show on Fox lasted six weeks.
Fox hasn't had a late-night show since then, but it wants one now, and according to TV Guide (a sister company to Fox within Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), it is thinking of swiping O'Brien to host it. O'Brien's NBC contract reportedly expires in September, and though ''negotiations haven't heated up yet,'' an NBC exec tells TV Guide, ''we know Fox is all over [O'Brien].'' Says a Fox exec, ''It's no secret that we want a piece of the late-night action. And CBS has surely shown that the way to get in the game is to pay a lot of money to somebody who is already a success.''
Moreover, the Fox bigwig says, ''We're an infinitely stronger network than we were when we went after Letterman,'' capable of offering O'Brien more than the $2 million per year he reportedly earns at NBC, plus an 11 p.m. time slot that could bring him many more viewers than his current night-owl post at 12:35. But O'Brien isn't the only possibility for Fox, as several other late-night stars may also be up for grabs when their contracts expire this year: Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and even Letterman. Let the games begin....
