So, what could a UPN family melodrama set in 19th-century Kentucky possibly have in common with a city in northern Utah?
Would you believe . . . a name?And the fact that the family name in "Legacy" is Logan is not a coincidence. The show's creator and executive producer, Chris Abbott, was born in the Cache County city.
"I named the Logan family for Logan, Utah," Abbott said. "Absolutely."
"Legacy" follows the lives of a well-to-do family of ranchers and horse-breeders - a widower and his five children, most of whom are young adults. And Abbott feels more than a bit strongly about using Logan as the name for the family in her show.
"For me, it's kind of been a talisman. It's like a good-luck symbol, naming them Logan," she said. "There was a line in the pilot - `This is going to be a good year for the Logans' - and I just demanded that we keep that line because I felt like it was like an omen for the show. I really wanted to keep that line."
Abbott actually spent a good deal of her childhood living in the Beehive State.
"I lived in Utah for 12 years and then we moved everywhere," she said. "I lived in Chicago, Alabama, Oregon - everywhere.
"My dad was a college professor and he just liked to move around a lot. It gave me a wide understanding of people from all over the country - of people from all different cultures and all different walks of life. I really think it was a good thing.
"At the time it was a bad thing, but in retrospect, it was a good thing," she said with a laugh.
Abbott's original ambition was to be an actress. In addition to theater productions, she appeared in more than a dozen national commercials and had parts in projects ranging from "The Kentucky Fried Movie" to the TV series "CHiPS."
Eventually she turned to writing and producing, with credits that include "Father Murphy," "Cagney & Lacey," "Magnum, P.I." and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."
But she never forgot her roots.
"All of my family is still in Utah and Idaho," she said. "Salt Lake, mostly, and then a lot of my family is in Preston, Idaho - just over the border. Moved there when polygamy became outlawed many, many, many generations ago," she added with a laugh.
And her days growing up in less-than-urban places like Logan and Vernal helped inspire "Legacy," which also has a rural setting.
"Oh, I love that kind of life," Abbott said. "And this show shares those values, quite frankly."
"Legacy" is scheduled to debut on Friday, Oct. 8.
SCIENCE FICTION: Producer Aaron Spelling has done a lot of different kinds of shows, from "Mod Squad" to "Dynasty" to "Love Boat" to "7th Heaven." One genre he's never gotten into, however, is science fiction.
Or has he?
"I think that . . . `Charlie's Angels' was science fiction but no one would believe me," Spelling said. "I mean, if anybody believes that three young ladies - beautiful young ladies - graduate from the police academy, are given terrible jobs and are hired by a man over the telephone who pays them $500 a week and they wear $5,000 Nolan Miller gowns . . . "
LIKE GIRLS? Colin Mochrie - one of the comedians who is a regular in ABC's new pseudo-game show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" - said there's a great deal of training and practice that goes into becoming an expert at improvsational comedy, which is the backbone of the show.
"In a way, we're like athletes," Mochrie said. "Except that we're older, fatter and run like girls."
HE'S A BEAUTY: Boomer Esiason may not seem like the logical choice to host this year's Miss America Pageant. But the former NFL quarterback and new member of the "Monday Night Football" broadcast team will follow in the footsteps of Bert Parks and Regis Philbin.
And, oddly enough, even he isn't sure why.
"To be honest with you, I have no idea how that came about," said Esiason, appearing with his "MNF" partners Al Michaels and Dan Dierdorf.
Out of the blue, Esiason got a call asking him if he was interested in the job.
"I did kind of an informal poll of family, friends, people that I know, people sitting on this panel," he said. "I asked if this would be a good situation for me. And then the more I thought of it, the more exciting it became for me.
"And, no offense to you guys," he said, turning to Michaels and Dierdorf, "but I'd much rather be doing that than sitting with you. But I just thought it was a great opportunity. And it's something that is very serious for the competitors, much like football is."
"This was a first," Dierdorf said. "This was the first time I think we ever heard a Miss America Pageant equated to a football game."