KSL, which recently acquired access to first-run episodes of "Mad About You" when it became an NBC affiliate, will be getting even "Madder" next fall.
Ch. 5 has bought the local rights to the show's off-network run in syndication.Which, in a way, is no great surprise. If "Mad About You" was going to end up anywhere, it was going to end up on either Ch. 5 or KJZZ-Ch. 14, which apparently also made a bid. Ch. 2, Ch. 4 and Ch. 13 weren't interested.
And the word is that KSL got a pretty good deal on the Paul Reiser-Helen Hunt comedy, which hasn't been selling as well across the country as the syndicators had hoped. Word is that the syndicators came into town looking for $5,000 a week for the rights to "Mad About You," and got about half that out of Ch. 5.
The big question is - where will KSL schedule the show?
Nobody's talking officially, and it's more than a little early to be making such scheduling decisions.
But the popular, unconfirmed rumor floating around town is that Ch. 5 is going to put "Mad About You" on weeknights at 6:30 p.m. and move the newscast that currently occupies that time slot to 5 p.m.
Which would set up a couple of interesting matchups, should it come to pass. First, it would put Ch. 5 in direct competition with KUTV-Ch. 2 for the local news audience at 5 p.m. - a time slot where Ch. 2's newscast has faced no such competition.
And second, it would put "Mad About You" in direct competition with another off-network NBC sitcom at 6:30 p.m. - "Seinfeld" on KSTU-Ch. 13.
(The folks at Ch. 13 are already thinking about an ad campaign along the lines of "Why get `Mad' when you can get crazy?")
Stay tuned . . .
GREAT NEWS: Fox's outstanding drama series "Party of Five" is no longer hanging by a thread. At least not for the rest of the season.
The fourth network has ordered nine additional episodes of "Party," bringing this season's total up to 22. That's a normal full-season order.
" `Party of Five' is another example of Fox's commitment to staying with and nurturing quality programming," said John Matoian, president of Fox Entertainment. "With executive producers Christopher Keyser and Amy Lippman and their talented cast and writers, this show has opportunity to become classic television."
(Well, I won't argue with him about the "classic television" part of it, but until Fox has a lot more shows of this quality this can't be just "another example.")
THE BEGINNING OF THE END? This past week - for the first time ever - "Wings" beat "Roseanne" in the ratings.
It was close - "Wings" garnered a 12.3 rating to "Rose-anne's" 12.1 - but such a thing would have been unheard of a year or two ago.
ABC executives used to beg Roseanne to keep making her show. They don't do that anymore.
ANOTHER NEW SHOW: Fox has announced that, as of Dec. 3, it will fill the Sunday at 8:30 p.m. time slot with something called "What's So Funny?"
The half-hour shows is described as "a half-hour comedy digest spotlighting the past week's funniest moments in entertainment, sports and news," and will be hosted by Nick Bakay of "In Living Color."
Sort of sounds like the sort of thing a network sticks in its schedule when it doesn't have anything better to put on the air.
ONLY ON MTV: MTV has just announced plans for a new interview show, cleverly titled "The MTV Interview."
The cable channel is promising a "diverse array of guests" for the show, which will debut on Tuesday, Dec. 5.
And, from the list of guests that host Tabitha Soren will be grilling in that debut, they may just be right. Would you believe - Yasser Arafat, Sean Penn and Tupac Shakur.
(I am not making this up.)
QUOTABLE: Daytime talk-show host Danny Bonaduce, in an interview with the New York Daily News:
"There are certain parameters you have to do in daytime," he said, "but there are certain things I am unwilling to do, and there are certain things Disney (specifically, Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Television, which distributes the show) is not only unwilling to do but won't allow. . . . As for sleazy shows, Disney has told me that not only do we not want to do them, but if we feel that we have to (do them) to compete, we can afford the loss, and we'll just drop the show."
Bonaduce's show - "Danny!" - was, of course, recently dropped by KSL-Ch. 5 because of the sleaze factor.
ABC'S GOT THE BUG: The latest Disney movie scheduled for a TV movie updates is "The Love Bug," which will air sometime next season.
I don't want to sound too skeptical about a movie that hasn't even gone into production yet, but in this remake Herbie the Love Bug is scheduled to have a showdown with his evil twin, Horace the Hate Bug.
Sheesh.
THE BODIES PILE UP: According to CBS, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) will solve her 267th murder in the 250th episode of "Murder, She Wrote," which is scheduled to air on Thanksgiving night.
Once again, if you saw Jessica heading your way, wouldn't you run screaming into the night? For such a sweet lady, she certainly does leave a trail of death and destruction in her path.
IN FOR THE LONG HAUL: A week from today, the ABC daytime soap opera "One Life to Live" will air its 7,000th episode.
That's right - 7,000th episode.
To put that into a bit of perspective, remember that "Murder, She Wrote" - currently the longest-running entertainment show on any network - is some 6,750 episodes behind that.
That's a lot of soapy water over the dam.
(And "OLTL" isn't one of your older soaps, having debuted in 1968.)