Two Cents
Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/14/2001 7:00:00 PM
"I strongly doubt that people, when they see the actual show [ Temptation Island], will find it either sleazy or salacious."
-Gail Berman, president of Fox Entertainment, as reported in The New York Times.
"To borrow a most-apt phrase from Sen. Pat Moynihan, this is just another example of 'defining deviancy down.' What society used to consider unthinkable is now not only acceptable, but attractive. And when it becomes a yawn, deviancy must be defined even further downward to satisfy viewers' taste-or, rather, lack of it.
"Fox bears the blame for this particular little exercise, but other commercial networks are not blameless. They, too, have found that sleaze sells. And why take the high road when there is gold to be found in the gutter?"
-Editorial in the Jan. 9 edition of New York's Daily News about Fox's Temptation Island before the television show premiered.
Three Sisters is clearly a case of demographic-it is selling the ads and then writing the scripts."
-The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert on NBC's new sitcom.
"Mr. Turner has always had a keen interest in Russia."
-Maura Donlon, Ted Turner's spokeswoman, on his intentions to acquire a stake in NTV, a private Russian television network, as reported in The New York Times.
"I don't think [ CBS Evening News] was actually replaced. I think there were a couple of markets where it may have been moved. But, if Dan Rather is going to be moved anywhere, it might as well be Jesus Christ who does it."
-Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, at last week's winter meeting of the Television Critics Association.
"The only way Dan Rather leaves the CBS Evening News is in a pine box."
-Joe Peyronnin, executive vice president, Telemundo, voices his opinion on CBS'in-house race for Dan Rather's anchor seat, as reported in TV Guide.
"In the end, Anatomy of a Hate Crime suggests that America is short on that most precious of commodities-love-and challenges us all to find it."
-Los Angeles Time's Daryl H. Miller's review of MTV's movie on the murder of Matthew Shepard.
"He wanted to be bad. He wanted to play villains on Law & Order. Maybe he wanted to become the next Benjamin Bratt. He wanted to pick up chicks. Little did he know that teenage girls all over America were tuning in and turning on to the toddler show-and it wasn't just because of the animation."
-New York Post's Cool For Kids column ripping into Nickelodeon's Blues Clues' host Steven Burns, who is leaving the show because he is bored with his character.
"For some reason, the starving filmmaker is supposed to go on an even worse diet."
Steven Okazaki, director of HBO's Black Tar Heroin, speaking in The New York Times on the problems of public funding for TV documentaries.
"Ah, you know Spike. There's a short list of people whose opinions matter to me, and Spike is not on that list. I mean, the show is off the air! If you're still complaining about it, then I can't please you, and I don't give a damn what you think!"
-Chi McBride, star of Fox's Boston Public to Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times. McBride faced criticism from director Spike Lee for his role as a wisecracking Lincoln slave in UPN's 1998 cancelled comedy, The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.
"Don't feel sorry for Ancier. He'll run another network in time. Plus, he created The Ricki Lake Show, which, if Dante were still alive, would call for an additional level in the Inferno."
-Tim Goodman, the San Francisco Chronicle, on the future of Garth Ancier, former president of NBC Entertainment.
"This is the American genius. We are in pursuit of happiness, with the emphasis on pursuit. We're searching, we are restless, we are experimenting, and jazz epitomizes that."
--Jazz director, Ken Burns, in an interview on Thirteen.org.
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