Fast Track

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee vows that his side of Congress won't block anti-indecency legislation as it did last year.

“We're under substantial pressure from so many people to do something about it,” he told reporters shortly after the House Commerce Committee overwhelmingly passed a bill hiking fines up to $500,000 for indecent broadcasts during hours when children are likely to be watching. He predicted a Senate version would pass “fairly quickly” but cautioned that Senate leaders haven't told him when there will be time for a full Senate vote.

The House Commerce Committee approved 46-2 a bill similar to the anti-indecency measure that passed last session. The bill bogged down in the Senate when a few lawmakers insisted on attaching measures attacking media consolidation.

The current House bill raises maximum fines from $32,500 to $500,000 for stations and from $11,000 to $500,000 for performers. It also requires the FCC to rule on indecency complaints faster, gives the FCC power to revoke violators' station licenses, and encourages broadcasters to reinstate a family hour and a voluntary code of conduct. The Senate version has been introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

Two amendments that would have shielded individual performers from higher penalties were defeated.

Alan Frank, president/CEO of Post-Newsweek Stations, is B&C's 2005 Broadcaster of the Year. He'll receive his award at the Television Bureau of Advertising's Marketing Conference on March 31 at New York's Javits Convention Center.

A consummate broadcaster, the Pittsburgh native made his mark at WDIV Detroit, where he was named general manager in 1988, and made it one of NBC's most powerful affiliates. Twelve years later, he was named president of Post-Newsweek stations, which owns a half dozen major-market stations.

As chairman of the National Affiliated Stations Alliance (NASA), he's a leader of the foes of media consolidation, fighting earlier FCC attempts to raise the station-ownership cap and battling with other affiliates for better treatment from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. He is also chairman of the TVB board and executive committee of the National Association of Broadcasters.

At the TVB Conference, which will once again be held in conjunction with the New York International Auto Show, Frank will also participate on a panel with the three previous winners of B&C's Broadcaster of the Year Award: David Barrett, president/CEO, Hearst-Argyle Television, (2004 winner), who will appear via videotape; Dennis FitzSimons, chairman, Tribune Co. (2003); and Dennis Swanson, EVP/COO, Viacom Television Stations Group, the first B&C honoree, in 2002. B&C Editor in Chief J. Max Robins will moderate.

Agenda and registration information for the TVB conference, which usually sells out quickly, is available at www.tvb.org.

Chris Noth, most recently Sex and the City's “Mr. Big,” will return to his old beat, Law & Order, reprising the role of Det. Mike Logan, this time as a regular on spinoff L&O: Criminal Intent.

Noth will split the lead duties with star Vincent D'Onofrio, each starring in 11 episodes.

Law & Order creator Dick Wolf says D'Onofrio needed some help, citing the “grueling pace” of being a single lead in an hour drama.

His erratic behavior—on the set, allegedly starting fist fights—has been reported for several months, particularly in the New York Post's Page Six column, and had NBC Universal executives considering Noth as an emergency backup in the lead-detective role since at least November.

Under the fiscal 2006 budget released last week by the Bush administration, TV stations that have not returned their analog channels would pay a combined total of up to $500 million in 2007 and again in 2008.

No fees would be due in 2006.

The fee would drop to $480 million in 2009 and to $450 million in 2010. Specifics of how the fee obligations would be spread among individual stations were not spelled out.

Since the Clinton administration, White House budgets have contained some form of spectrum fee to compensate taxpayers for the right to broadcast on stations obtained for free. NAB lobbyists have always managed to get the fees eliminated.

CNBC has named Mark Hoffman president. He replaces current President/CEO Pamela Thomas-Graham, who becomes chairman of the network. Hoffman leaves his post as president/GM of NBC Universal-owned WVIT New Britain, Conn., a job he has held since September 2001.

Hoffman was previously with CNBC, serving as executive producer, VP/managing editor and VP/managing editor, business development. He will be responsible for day-to-day operations, programming and technology.

Thomas-Graham will oversee strategic planning and explore possible brand extensions for CNBC. She has served as president/CEO of CNBC since July 2001 and was previously president/CEO of NBC.com.

Buena Vista Television has renewed rookie talker The Tony Danza Show for a second season.

The show has been renewed in 115 markets and over 80% of the country for the 2005-06 season. The talker has also been upgraded in several markets, most importantly in No. 2 market Los Angeles, where it moves up from overnight to a daytime clearance on one of Viacom's two stations, either KCBS or KCAL. Season-to-date, the show is averaging a 1.3 rating, which ranks it No. 3 among freshman first-run strips behind Entertainment Tonight spinoff Insider and talker The Jane Pauley Show.

George Herman, 85, the longtime Face the Nation moderator who spent 43 years covering politics and international affairs for CBS News, died Tuesday of heart failure following a long illness, according to the network.

Herman was the first reporter to broadcast a story about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972 and co-anchored coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. He appeared on TV for the first time during the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, the first to be televised. He left CBS News in 1987. Herman is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia, three sons and six grandchildren.

TLC has named David Abraham EVP/GM of the network. Currently GM of Discovery Networks UK, he replaces Roger Marmet, who resigned Jan. 27. Abraham, 41, has managed Discovery's nine UK channels since 2001. In the coming months, he will relocate to the company's U.S. headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., to oversee TLC's programming, production, development and operations.

Voom may be crippled, but some of its homegrown networks may live on. Cablevision Chairman Chuck Dolan cut a deal to buy the failing DBS service's assets from the company, including a cluster of HD movie and other channels that he started to feed the service. EchoStar is buying Voom's main satellite, but a Dolan company will buy the 21 original HD channels (primarily showing older movies) and related licenses. Terms were not disclosed.

The WB is picking up its longest-running show, drama 7th Heaven, for a 10th season. That early pickup, says WB Entertainment President David Janollari, will also make it the longest-running family drama in TV history, topping the nine seasons for Little House on the Prairie (NBC) and The Waltons (CBS).

The series, from Aaron Spelling, debuted on the network in 1996.

Producer Rich Hull was incorrectly identified in an article about the NAACP Image Awards (2/7, page 22).

Ratings for the Friends Monday-Friday syndicated run for the weeks of 1/17-23 and 1/24-30 are being reprocessed by Nielsen, according to Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The sitcom didn't appear on the list of rated shows that is the basis for the Syndication Ratings table in the Feb. 7 issue and this one (page 11).

Broadcasters vowed to take their fight to Congress and the courts last week after the FCC voted 4-1 to reject TV stations' demand for greatly expanded cable carriage rights for their digital channels.

As expected, the FCC upheld its 2001 ruling that stations will be guaranteed carriage of only one “primary” channel. Unless they can convince either lawmakers or judges that the FCC was wrong, stations will have to negotiate with their local operators to win space on cable lineups for the additional channels that digital technology allows them to offer.

By a unanimous vote, the commission also rejected broadcasters' added demand that cable systems carry both their old analog signals and the new digital versions while they are transitioning to all-digital operation.

“In Washington, there are no final victories and no final defeats,” says Eddie Fritts, president of the National Association of Broadcasters. “NAB will be working to overturn today's anti-consumer FCC decision in both the courts and Congress.”

The vote had another bad outcome for TV stations: Commissioners also committed themselves to resolving by year-end whether to saddle broadcasters with additional public-interest obligations or not. Congress ordered the FCC to examine whether broadcasters should be required to offer more news, kids programming or locally produced shows in return for the DTV spectrum, but the review has long been on the backburner.

Regarding multicasting, the FCC said broadcasters failed to demonstrate that the public benefit would outweigh harm to cable operators. Even on the 500-channel lineup that cable operators can offer their digital subscribers, some might be forced to drop lower-rated cable nets like CSPAN3 to make room for what would be hundreds of new broadcast programming streams in each market.

Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said broadcasters should take their case to lawmakers, who can eliminate ambiguity over carriage rights when Congress rewrites the Telecommunications Act over the next year.

Autism will be the subject of a multichannel programming effort from the NBC News networks the week of Feb. 21. The disorder, which currently affects about 1.77 million Americans, will be covered in reports on Today and Nightly News With Brian Williams, in addition to coverage on CNBC, MSNBC, NBC's O&Os, Telemundo and MSNBC.com. According to NBC, the Centers for Disease Control is announcing that autism is the “fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the United States.”

Today will feature weekly educational reports, culminating in a Feb. 25 segment with NBC Universal Chairman/CEO Bob Wright and his wife, who will discuss their grandson's diagnosis with the disorder and launch the Autism Speaks foundation.