New Syndie Weeklies Are a Diverse Bunch

The only thing the new weekly offerings for next fall have in common is that they are offered once a week. This year, the selections cover a wide array of topics from pop culture to extreme sports, talent competitions and paranormal phenomena.

America's Moving To…, from Mansfield Television Distribution, WorldLink and WENA Productions, is a half-hour entertainment program that will focus on a different American city each week. Besides giving viewers a chance to tour a city's neighborhoods, cultural offerings, and local activities like skiing or surfing, the show also offers advertisers an opportunity to place their wares within the show. Ryland Homes, the show's presenting sponsor, hopes viewers will keep the home builder in mind if they are considering moving and building a home.

So far, America's Moving To… has been cleared in 33 markets covering 30% of the country; in those cities, it will premiere this month. Mansfield says. Hosted by Mark Atkinson and Kathleen Ray, the show will have 18 original episodes.

New York-based Hearst Entertainment is hoping teenagers will want to watch CosmoGirl!, a weekly half-hour intended to help TV stations meet their FCC requirement for children's educational programming. The show will mix pop culture, career advice and girls' empower- ment into a show that Hearst hopes will appeal to both teenage girls and boys.

"We know that there's a need for this type of programming," says Rob Corona, senior vice president of domestic distribution for Hearst Entertainment Group. "And we know there's a desire on the part of TV stations around the country to fulfill that need with the best product we can put there."

Hearst is just starting to shop CosmoGirl! and plans to pick a production company and host in February. The program will draw from the information and expertise at Hearst-owned CosmoGirl! magazine.

Telco Productions Inc. has Missing, a weekly half-hour that focuses on missing adults and juveniles, with help from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, law-enforcement agencies and the FBI. The show profiles missing people in the hope that the media attention will help locate them, along the lines of shows like John Walsh's America's Most Wanted.

"What is appealing to the stations is that Missing is a very community-oriented and viewer-involved show," says Alex Paen, president of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Telco. "People can identify with anyone who is missing or lost, and they want to help find them."

So far, Missing has been cleared by seven Media General-owned stations, including ones in Chattanooga, Tenn.; Tampa Bay, Fla., and Roanoke, Va. It also has been cleared in Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia and in some smaller markets, with coverage in about 30% of the country, Paen says.

Zoom Culture is adding Playground Earth to its slate, having launched BKS Entertainment's Hip-Hop Nation on 100 stations covering 75% of the country in early November. Playground Earth focuses on extreme and other sports, with segments featuring stars of their sports, such as skateboard legend Tony Hawk, BMX rider Dave Mira, pro beach-volleyball star Albert Hanneman, Chicago Cubs favorite Sammy Sosa, and pro surfer Josh Mohr.

Zoom Culture will have 26 original episodes of Playground Earth available for stations Oct. 1, with a 50-50 barter split and eight minutes of ad time per episode. An early pilot aired on Fox Sports Net in April 2001, but new producers have revamped the show and added a new host, model and former Arena Football League cheerleader Crystal Atwood.

Combining elements from reality shows like American Idol and Star Search, Western International Syndication plans one-hour weekly The Talent Agency. The show will pit performers from all disciplines—singers, comedians and dancers—and adults and kids in competitions that will continue all year. Each episode will declare winners in each category, and those winners will go on to compete in the next episodes. At the end of 22 episodes, the most decorated champions will compete against each other.

"We believe there is a great trend of talent competition shows in prime time right now, but we see no straight-ahead talent-competition shows in daytime today," says Chris Lancey, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Western International Syndication, which also syndicates Showtime in Harlem.

Talent Agency should appeal to a multicultural audience. The hosts are African-American Alex Thomas, from The Jamie Foxx Show and Moesha, and Eve Longoria, a Mexican-American who also stars on daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Don Weiner, who has produced such shows as Star Search, 30 Seconds to Fame and Showtime at the Apollo, will produce.

Paramount Domestic Television is the only major-studio-based syndicator with a new weekly show. Unexplained Mysteries will examine paranormal phenomena, such as Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster or UFOs. Besides shooting a lot of new footage, the show will draw from a library of an old Paramount show, Sightings, according to John Nogawski, president of Paramount Domestic Television.

"The weekend-hour business for us has become a much more difficult business to produce for," he says. "We used to produce scripted hours and be in that business in a big way, but that business has become less profitable."

Paramount is positioning Unexplained Mysteries to be immediately profitable and relatively inexpensive to produce.

In the off-net arena, Twentieth Television is offering Angel, a spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that currently airs on The WB, and Sony Pictures Television has Walker, Texas Ranger.