TUBE TALK ''Monday Night Football'' fans can say goodbye to a certain commentator's arcane references, from Aeschylus to Ziffel (as in Arnold, the pig from ''Green Acres''), and hello to ''Boom!'' and ''Whap!'' John Madden is leaving Fox to man the booth with Al Michaels for ABC's weekly game. After the departure of Pat Summerall, Madden's broadcast partner of two decades, from Fox when his contract expired after this year's Super Bowl, the network allowed the 65-year-old Madden to leave as well, even though he had a year left on his contract. On Wednesday, as soon as ABC knew Madden was available, it sacked Dennis Miller and Dan Fouts, who had failed to boost the show's ratings over the last two years.
The irony for Fox is that it lured Madden away from a handshake deal with ABC eight years ago by offering him a higher salary, then kept him from bolting four years ago by giving him a raise; but now, his $8 million salary was apparently more than Fox wanted to spend. Its replacement team, expected to be Joe Buck and Cris Collinsworth, will surely be cheaper than Madden and Summerall. And yet ABC will pay Madden only $5 million a year for four years. ''This wasn't about money,'' Madden said....
Nextel will underwrite the cost of airing CBS' ''9/11'' documentary on March 10, so the show will air without commercial interruptions. Any breaks in the two-hour program, which will be hosted by Robert De Niro and will feature rare footage shot inside the north World Trade Center tower during the rescue attempts, will be public service announcements, probably related to terror-relief fundraising efforts. Still, some victims' families aren't happy about the telecast, which they fear will reopen not-so-old wounds. But CBS insists that its footage, which no one outside the network has seen, is of great historical value and is not explicitly gruesome....
Given the eternal conflict between ''The Partridge Family'' and ''The Brady Bunch,'' wouldn't you like to see it settled mano-a-mano? So would Fox, which is planning a special for March 13 called ''Celebrity Boxing,'' in which Danny Partridge and Greg Brady -- er, Danny Bonaduce and Barry Williams -- will duke it out for in the boxing ring for three two-minute rounds. There will be two other cards that night, a ''bad girls'' bout that pits against Amy Fisher, and a third fight between yet-unnamed celebrities. Fox execs say they were inspired, not by MTV's ''Celebrity Death Match,'' but by a charity match Bonaduce fought with fellow former child TV pop family star Donny Osmond a few years ago. (One of the producers is Dick Clark, Bonaduce's colleague on the morning show ''The Other Half.'') Handicappers are surely already laying odds on Fisher over Harding (because a gun beats a lead pipe) and on Bonaduce over Williams (he's got more experience, not just in the previous match with Osmond, but also outside the ring with a transvestite he beat up in 1991).
Not that the other networks are above this sort of thing. CBS, which has announced a third season of ''Big Brother,'' is also mulling an abbreviated (10-day) version of the contest, in which celebrities would be locked in the house together. Howard Stern has already volunteered, though only if he gets to torment Kathie Lee Gifford. Stern's other conditions: ''It has to be a month in the house -- can't be 10 days, I've got to break her down -- no food provided, and only the two of us,'' he said on his radio show Wednesday. Stern getting to ''torture'' Gifford ''would be the highest-rated show in the history of television,'' he said.
You Might Also Like
- DVD Review Out of Time (Jan 06, 2004) | Allyssa Lee
- Movie Review Out of Time (Oct 03, 2003) | Owen Gleiberman
- Movie News Jack Black's ''School'' rocks the box office (Oct 03, 2003) | Dave Karger
- News Summary Chart-topper Alicia Keys fends off Aaliyah | Gary Susman
- News Summary Ricky Martin will host an AIDS awareness program for MTV | Sandra P. Angulo
- News Summary Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey are engaged | Gary Susman
