Golden Oldies Feted
By PJ Bednarski -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/31/2005 6:03:00 PM
Lifetime Television, where the old NBC sitcom Golden Girls plays five times daily, will celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary by showing episodes from noon to 11 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 11. (Actually Golden Girls premiered on Sept. 14, 1985, but Lifetime has the year right.) On its Web site, Lifetime will sell Golden Girls ringtones, voicetones, voicemail greetings and graphics.
Lifetime has aired repeats since 1997, and each week more 16 million viewers seen an episode of the sitcom starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty.
On Nov. 11, comedians Mo Rocca and Judy Gold, and Michael D. Craig, author of a Golden Girls trivia book, will appear in interstitials between episodes. The night will end with a replay of The Golden Girls Reunion, Lifetime’s highest-rated special ever.
There’s also a sweepstakes, the winner of which gets a trip to New York, lunches with McClanahan and then sees her appear on Broadway in Wicked. Next week, Lifetime and Warner Home Video release a special DVD package featuring the Lifetime "Intimate Portraits" of the four stars, and later in the month, Buena Vista releases the third season of the series on DVD. Doesn’t seem quite enough, does it?
