Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Returning

MTV has signed up "The Osbournes" for an additional 20 episodes to begin airing in January 2004. "I miss the [expletive] cameras, to be honest," Ozzy Osbourne said when asked why the family, which previously had said they were done with the show, agreed to allow camera crews back into their home. "I'm an entertainer, and that's what I do."

Sci Fi Channel has ordered an eighth season of "Stargate SG-1" for summer 2004. It will serve as a launch pad for a spin-off series, "Stargate: Atlantis."

(Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV Editor)

'Cupid' replaces 'Guardian'

CBS's summer "reality" series "Cupid" will take over the 9 p.m. Tuesday time slot next week, bumping reruns of Pittsburgh-set legal drama "The Guardian" for the rest of the summer.

CBS has been airing "Cupid" reruns in that Tuesday slot for a couple of weeks but will move originals there beginning Aug. 5.

A CBS spokeswoman said "Cupid" reruns have done well in that time slot and that putting original episodes there will benefit from the "Big Brother 4" lead-in. Presumably, she means in the young-adult demographics; the first "Cupid" rerun on Tuesday performed slightly below what "The Guardian" did the week before in household ratings.

Entering its third season, "The Guardian" returns Sept. 23 with new episodes.

(R.O.)

MBC forum airs

MBC, a national cable network carried on Comcast's digital tier at Channel 482, will broadcast the "Future of Black America Forum" from 5 to 7 tonight from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. This town hall-style meeting will be held in conjunction with the Urban League's 2003 annual conference.

(R.O.)

Local news and politics?

More than half of the top-rated local newscasts ran no campaign stories in the seven weeks leading up to last year's midterm congressional elections, according to a report released Wednesday by the University of Southern California's Lear Center Local News Archive. The study was released the same day the House of Representatives voted to reverse a recent Federal Communications Commission decision relaxing media ownership rules.

The study also criticized local TV stations for running nearly four campaign ads for each campaign news story. Of the stories, 48 percent were devoted to the "horse race" aspect.

The report monitored more than 10,000 half-hour evening news broadcasts on 122 stations in the top 50 media markets during the seven weeks leading up to election day.

(Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times)

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