Survival: Improbable
It looks as if the IMF has cracked its last case on ABC's revival
of Mission: Impossible. The series has been put on hiatus (the
network's land of the living dead) after a two-year run. Originally
conceived as a way to use old scripts to make new shows during the
writers' strike that delayed the 1988-89 season, Mission: Impossible started strong but fell quickly and ranks 89th among prime-time shows
this season. Also off the air, but given a better chance of
returning, is CBS' Doctor, Doctor, which ranks 61st.
Going for the Gold
Sit on your couch and stare at the TV — no, make that three TVs — all
day and all night for a week, and you still won't have seen all of
the longest single-event program in history. After paying $401
million for the broadcast rights, NBC plans to offer cable
pay-per-view audiences 600 hours of '92 Summer Olympics coverage,
using three channels to show different events simultaneously. NBC and
Cablevision will charge one fee (up to $150) for the pay-per-view
Gamess which will supplement 160 hours of Olympics on the network.
Courage Is a Five-Letter Word
With a set of gay characters, a tiny $12,000-per-episode budget,
and just two segments each month, Secret Passions, appearing on
public-access TV since January, is no ordinary soap opera, but
producer David Gadberry says mainstream soaps weren't offering the
story lines he wanted to see. ''The networks haven't dealt with gay
characters,'' says Gadberry, whose series has drawn fire from the Rev.
Donald Wildmon's American Family Association. ''It takes a lot of
courage — spelled B-A-L-L-S — to do a show like this.'' Reports that
Coors, long a target of protests by gay activists, might sign on as a
sponsor are premature, but a Coors spokeswoman would not rule it out.
Principal Role
Her Dallas days are over, but Victoria Principal will
return to series television next fall in an hour-long drama to be
produced by Aaron Spelling for ABC. The still-untitled show, once
known as Chicago, is now set in Los Angeles, and will feature
Principal as an investigator for the L.A. district attorney's office
and a single mother to a teenage girl. Production will begin this
month.
Donald, Duck
These may be dark days for Donald Trump, but even as news
of his divorce clogs the headlines, plans for Trump the Media
Sensation are proceeding rapidly. Warner Bros. Television plans to
move ahead with its game show Trump Card, unworried that the Don's
TVQ scores, a measure of audience popularity, are rock-bottom (even
lower than those for Pat Sajak). TNT, meanwhile, says that its
docudrama The Donald Trump Story is still in the works for 1991.
And, after the eight-or nine-figure divorce settlement is hammered
out, Trump may even have a new steady waiting in the wings. ''I would
sleep with Donald Trump for that kind of money,'' talk-show host
Arsenio Hall told his audience recently, ''and I would let him betray
me.'' How's that for the art of the deal?
A Really Big Show
Wanted: 600 pounds of sizzle, to be divided among three ladies.
20th Century Fox Television has put out a casting call for ''big,
beautiful, and funny'' women to fill the starring roles in Babes, a
comedy pilot. The requirements include a great sense of humor, sex
appeal, and at least 200 pounds of avoirdupois.
No Laughing Matter
VH-1, the mellow-music sister to MTV, is dropping comedy
programming from its lineup and sending it over to HA!, the comedy
channel that's due on cable systems April 1. In a plan to refocus on
music specials, VH-1 will keep the comedy-and-music series Leifer
Madness, but it reportedly plans to drop Rosie O'Donnell's Stand-Up
Spotlight and its short comedy films. The baby-boomer
gab-and-gripe-fest The Whole Enchilada also is disappearing from the
VH-1 schedule, because of low ratings.
Knot Over Yet
Knots Landing, the most popular of CBS' warhorse prime-time soaps,
will return next fall for a 12th season with its cast largely intact,
Lawrence Kasha, the show's co-executive producer, says. Shedding some
light on the show's whirlwind plotting, Kasha explains that Knots'
producers and writers ''use focus groups constantly (to test
characters),'' and scripts can change quickly when something isn't
working. A recent example: ''People thought that we'd made Gary Ewing
(Ted Shackelford) too much of a wuss. We corrected that.''
Hammer and Sickle
The fortunes of two Russian families over the last century will be
the subject of Mother Russia, a 10-hour HBO miniseries scheduled for
1992. Budgeted at $23 million, the drama will attempt ''to have
Americans experience who the Russians are for the first time,'' says
co-executive producer Derek Hart, who plans to shoot the film in the
Soviet Union next year. Industrialist Armand Hammer will
coproduce Mother Russia, which will begin before the Russian
Revolution and include events as recent as the Chernobyl disaster; if
negotiations with Gorky Film Studios are successful, the film will
air in the Soviet Union as well.
Midnight Runs
Two new series will vie for young adult viewers in the crowded
late-night field. ABC has settled on L.A. radio personality Rick Dees
as its best hope in the wee hours; his comedy-variety series Into the
Night will appear weeknights after Nightline, beginning July 16. And
in September, My Talk Show, a sendup of local community programming
that Joe Flaherty (the beloved Guy Caballero of SCTV) will produce,
begins airing in syndication.
