Channel surfing with your local television editor . . .
Fans of "Unsolved Mysteries," rejoice. The show hasn't breathed its last after all.NBC canceled the show in May after airing it for nine seasons. But CBS has ordered it as a midseason replacement series.
Word is that Robert Stack will return as the host.
Stack was not, however, the original host of "Unsolved Mysteries." Can you name the two actors who preceded him in that role?
(For the answer, see below.)
A LONG WAIT: Fans of "Murder, She Wrote" don't have Jessica Fletcher around to solve mysteries anymore.
The show, which was canceled by CBS a year ago, had been seen in daily reruns on the USA cable network. But USA recently replaced it with "Walker, Texas Ranger," of all things.
There are reports that "Murder, She Wrote" will show up on the Family Channel - but not before the fall of 1998.
In the meantime, however, CBS will air an all new "Murder, She Wrote" TV movie - titled "South by Southwest" - during the upcoming TV season.
NEW HOST: Daisy Fuentes, best known as a model and MTV host, will be the new host of "America's Funniest Home Videos" when the series returns to ABC as a midseason replacement show at some undetermined point in the future.
And, in a way, her job should be fairly easy. She can't possibly be any less funny or more annoying than Bob Saget was.
AN UPDATED WESTERN: CBS is going to make an attempt to revive the TV Western. The network has ordered a two-hour movie and six one-hour episodes of a series based on the 1960 film "The Magnificent Seven."
(Which was, in turn, based on the 1954 Japanese film "The Seven Samurai.")
The premise was that seven gunslingers pooled their talents to help the helpless in the Old West.
The 1960 film starred Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and Horst Buchholz. The cast of the TV series includes Ron Perlman (who was the beast in the CBS series "Beauty and the Beast") and Michael Biehn.
Expect the series to appear sometime after the first of the year.
MAJOR WARFARE: The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which is based in Los Angeles, is fighting with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which is based in New York.
The issue? NATAS has nominated five commercials for National Emmy Awards and ATAS doesn't think commercials should be eligible.
And you thought that people in the television industry weren't petty and distracted by minutiae.
QUELLE SURPRISE: CBS has fast-tracked a made-for-TV movie about convicted rapist Alex Kelley and plans to produce and air it during the 1997-98 season.
The network has had a project about Kelly, the "preppy rapist" who fled to Europe and spent eight years on the run, for more than a year. But his recent conviction on rape charges after returning to the United States made the story that much more compelling to CBS.
It would be nice if any of this were surprising, but it isn't.
REALLY BAD: You'll be thrilled to know that principal casting is complete for the upcoming ABC movie "Bad as I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story."
You're no doubt on the edge of your chair waiting to find out that Dwayne Adway will play Rodman. (I've never heard of him, either.)
And you'll be ecstatic to learn that Rodman hmiself will introduce the movie and "comment periodically" on the events depicted.
Gee, can't wait for this one, huh?
"INK" RUNS OUT: If CBS President Leslie Moonves had it to do all over again, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen might still be starring in "Ink."
"The mistake we made was in guaranteeing them a Monday-night time slot," Moonves said. "Once we did, we were stuck and we had to put the show on the air."
You may recall that five episodes of "Ink" were produced and then scrapped last fall. The show was completely revamped with new writers, producers and supporting actors. Only Danson and Steenburgen remained.
"Looking back, we should have just held off and waited until at least January," Moonves said. "It was a mistake to rush the show on the air."
He said he thought "Ink" was good and "getting better," but that it "had some baggage" from its quick makeover. "We wanted a fresh start," so he axed "Ink" and gave its time slot to the new Bob Newhart-Judd Hirsch sitcom "George & Leo."
Still, Moonves insisted it was a difficult decision.
"That was probably the toughest call I had to make - to Ted and Mary, telling them they weren't renewed," he said.
ANSWER: Raymond Burr hosted the first "Unsolved Mysteries" - an hourlong special in January 1987. Six more specials were produced in the next year, the first two hosted by Karl Malden and the next four by Robert Stack.
Stack was the host when "Mysteries" became a weekly series in the fall of 1988.