Where to be and what to watch...

Have you heard? Hollywood stars are rillyrilly concerned about the environment. Plus they like traveling to attractive locales far from the Star/Us/In Touch magazine photogs who make their lives a living hell. Put it together, and you get tonight’s premiere of Trippin’ (MTV, 10:30 p.m. ET). It’s a 10-part reality-adventure series with Cameron Diaz traipsing across the world—accompanied by pals including Kid Rock and Drew Barrymore—in a quest to “explore some of the most exotic, environmentally unique places on the planet and seek to discover ways to preserve them,” as the press release puts it. Like so much TV today, it’s a derivative idea: As demonstrated on History Channel’s four-part series Conquest of America starting at 9 ET tonight, celebs of yesteryear like Henry Hudson spent plenty of time exploring some of the most exotic, environmentally unique places on the planet. They just weren’t that big on the whole preservation thing. 

Punk’d by Captain Kirk! After Star Trek’s revivification in the 1980s, Riverside, Iowa, declared itself the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, thus inviting the wrath of the gods. And it arrived last fall, in the prosperous form of one William Shatner, intent on hoaxing all 928 Riverside residents into believing that he was making a science-fiction movie in their little town. Instead, contrived Hollywood insanity played out in front of unsuspecting farm folk! The result, Invasion Iowa, runs tonight (Spike, 9 p.m. ET) through Friday. The advertising upfronts roll on: This morning, Court TV convenes at Michael’s restaurant in New York City. Awestruck marketing types in attendance wonder if they will ever achieve anything in their careers as sublime as the channel’s own advertising for Impossible Heists. Showing images such as a would-be thief suspended from a ceiling, accompanied by the logo “Well hung,” the campaign accomplishes the miracle of making the channel’s coverage of the Michael Jackson trial seem like a cleansing experience. OK, that’s going too far. But still. 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the peer-to-peer file-sharing case Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., a confrontation that has rather largish ramifications for the entertainment business (story on page 12). Today, staffers at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel roll their eyes every time they hear the phrase “P2P” in the hallways as attendees arriving for a three-day Digital Hollywood conference on digital-rights management and anti-piracy chatter endlessly about the Supremes case. Meanwhile, we’ll be at home, seeing how many minutes elapse after the premiere of the corporate-intrigue drama Eyes (ABC, 10 p.m. ET) before it’s available for downloading.

Ken Auletta, fresh from debriefing Dan Rather’s cranky colleagues in The New Yorker, heads over to the Bryant Park Grill in New York this morning to conduct “A Conversation with Roger Ailes.” An eager mob is likely to turn out for the Syracuse University-sponsored Newhouse School in New York breakfast series, since the Fox News Channel chairman and CEO is a reliably entertaining and combative interview, just the way Auletta likes ’em.

Here’s a note from the Vision World Foundation, about new programming for WXEL-TV in Palm Beach, Fla.: “Hello, everyone! Just a reminder that Cooking Without Looking, the first TV show for people who are blind/visually impaired/low vision is going to be taping Friday, April 1, 2005 (this is no joke, ha!) at 9 a.m.”

Email info for B&C Week to b&cweek@reedbusiness.com