Maury Povich is the host of "Twenty One" -- but don't call him a game-show host.
"No, no, no," Povich said. "I mean, I still say it -- I'm not a game-show host, I'm hosting a game show. There's a lot of contrasting and conflicting feelings there."Apparently.
Povich, whose daytime talk-show is going strong, admits some ambivalence about taking the job, partly because he does "Maury" in New York and "Twenty One" tapes in Los Angeles. It was a concern for his wife, ABC newswoman Connie Chung, as well.
"There was some serious talk with my wife in terms of traveling back and forth from New York, and she was hesitant in the beginning," he said. "She came out and watched the taping. And I asked her, 'Well, Con, what do you think? Are you happy I took it?' She said, 'Absolutely.'
"So I think for me at my age (61), this is a great challenge."
NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT: You may or may not be aware that NBC bought a minority interest in the PAX TV network (and I use the term network loosely) a few months ago. And, chances are, you're not aware that NBC has put a weekly edition of "Twenty -One" on PAX's Saturday-night schedule.
But NBC affiliates around the country are aware of it. And they're not happy, worrying that it will dilute what audience there is out there for the game show, which airs on the peacock network on Mondays at 8 p.m.
(Local NBC affiliate KSL-Ch. 5 is pre-empting it this week only for a charity event. See accompanying box.)
Whether they like it or not, they'd better get used to it. Just look around the current schedule, where "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" airs on both NBC and the USA cable network and "Once and Again" airs on both ABC and Lifetime cable. What with all the cross-ownership of TV networks and cable networks and so on, it's only going to happen more and more.
It ought to be especially interesting to see what might happen if Viacom is given the go-ahead by the FCC to operate both CBS and UPN.
PAST SCANDAL: "Twenty One," of course, was famous in the '50s for igniting the quiz-show scandals when it was revealed that the show was fixed. Not that, obviously, that dissuaded NBC or the producers from reviving the show.
"We talked about it, but we decided there would be one major difference -- we weren't going to fix this show because you don't have to do it," executive producer Fred Silverman said. "It's good. It's a really good show. And you just have to write good questions and get good contestants. That's basically the name of the game."
And no one is worried about history repeating itself.
"There's no way you would want to fix a show. It's against the law, so it's not even an option," said executive producer Philip Gurin. "And we take security very seriously, certainly, at our show. We have guards around the question material. We keep the questions in a safe. Not until the morning of the show does anybody else on the staff know what the questions are, just Fred and myself."
Television editor Scott D. Pierce may be reached by e-mail at pierce@desnews.com.