B&C Eye

NBC is apparently still talking to Young Broadcasting about buying KRON-TV. Sources close to the situation say that, while the network has not made any offer for the station, executives have made it clear they view KRON-TV as an independent and would be willing to buy the station only if it were priced accordingly. Granite-owned KNTV(TV) is set to replace KRON-TV as the NBC affiliate in San Francisco Jan. 1. "This is not about taking the NBC affiliation away from KNTV or keeping it at KRON-TV," says a source familiar with NBC's position.

Call them skeptical, but most observers say that, if Young sells KRON to NBC, KRON will wind up the NBC station in the market. Young's challenge: Get somebody besides NBC interested. There was no comment from any of the parties involved.—S.M.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) is in a quandary. The person he would nominate for the last FCC seat—Andy Levin, minority counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee—is steadfastly opposed by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.).

Hollings says he won't move Levin's nomination, which may have more to do with a bill sponsored by Levin's boss, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), than with any problem he has with Levin. So, who's left?

Dashle's legislative aide Jonathan Adelstein, for one. But sources say Daschle is now hesitant to select his own staffer.—P.A.

The Twentieth Century Fox fanfare music played on a kazoo? After nearly 70 years, Fox is "jazzing up" its theme.

Creative executives at the studio have spent the past several months and close to $100,000 reworking the network's "Newman Fanfare," the signature six-second tune that plays over the end credits and klieg-lit logo on Fox TV shows and films. It is the first time since the tune was composed by Alfred Newman in 1936 that Fox has modified it.

Six different versions (six, four and two seconds) have been cut, including a jazzy piano version, a futuristic theme and even the kazoo rendition. Fox executives are also reworking interstitial music and the overall sound of the network as part of an aural re-branding. "When you consider technologies just around the corner, like PVRs, you are looking at the possibility that people will no longer think of channel position," says Rafe Oller, Fox's creative director. "So you have keep reminding them where they are."—J.S.

The surprising connection between political opposites Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Gloria Tristani lingers at the FCC, even though both exited months ago.

New Republican Commissioner Kevin Martin (above), a former aide to Furchtgott-Roth, in an Oct. 26 decision, followed Tristani's example by criticizing an FM license award to Liberty Productions.

Martin insists he's no carbon copy of his mentor, but he appears to be a stickler for bureaucratic process, a concern shared in several joint dissents by the conservative economist and the liberal Tristani.

Martin wanted his colleagues to stay the FM grant until a court challenge by Liberty's rivals is resolved. He agreed with Tristani's dissent, issued when the Biltmore Forest, N.C., license was granted in June.—B.M.

The Golf Channel has produced a special on how attacks on the World Trade Center affected, well, golfers. The hour New York Stories...of Enduring Spirit premieres Nov. 21 and features friends and family talking about the golfers that they loved who died in the collapse. The network's rationale is that a lot of Wall Street types who died that day were golfers, as were many firefighters with their odd shifts of 24 hours on, 72 hours off. OK.—J.H.