A meeting about magazines?
By Steve McClellan -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/8/2002
One of our Hollywood spies reports seeing Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution President Dick Robertson lunching with former Entertainment Tonight weekend co-host Julie Moran at the posh eatery Pinot Hollywood last Tuesday. Moran is said to be making the rounds of the studios in search of a new gig; her stint with ET ended almost a year ago.
So tongues were wagging last week as to what the meeting could be all about. Apparently, it went rather well: The spy reports that Robertson invited Moran and her family (she's married to actor Bob Moran, whose credits include Dumb and Dumber) for a day of fun in the sun at his Malibu beach house.
The speculation is that Robertson is considering Moran for a role in a new magazine show that Warner is trying to develop for prime time access. Warner has been very hush-hush about the details, but it could clearly serve as a companion for the syndicator's existing magazine, Extra. And there's also speculation that Moran is being considered for some role in Extra.
Sources familiar with the project hint that the new magazine would be "lifestyle"-oriented and not a pure entertainment-news magazine like Paramount's ET, although it would clearly compete with ET to the extent that Warner is able to clear it in access. In fact, Extra initially started as a straight entertainment-news magazine before being re-launched as a "celebrity-lifestyle" show to keep top-market NBC owned-and- operated stations in the fold after NBC took control of Access Hollywood.
Warner's new magazine project is just one of several magazines currently in the development pipeline. King World is said to be cooking one up for daytime while Universal's TV syndication division is producing a pilot for a magazine called Good News, from actor Will Smith's Overlook Entertainment. No comment from Warner at deadline.
Moran co-hosted ET Weekend for four seasons. Previously, she co-hosted NBA's Inside Stuff, an NBC Sports program that aired on NBC's Saturday-morning lineup when the network had the broadcast-TV rights to NBA games.
