SHORT STICK LOSES: The reasons for the eagerness for an end to the Hollywood writers’ strike have started to become more plain, with news such as the story ran in the Hollywood Reporter, detailing just how much the networks and studios have suffered from the lack of new scripts since the strike began early last November.
FX, the Fox farm team cable network, has apparently been forced to cut short the second seasons of two of its promising new shows, citing the lack of new scripts and “economic reasons.” Dirt, starring Courtney Cox as a tabloid rag editor, ran out of scripts and had to stop shooting last December, as did The Riches, the critically-praised show about a family of thieves starring Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard.
The second seasons for both shows are apparently only seven episodes long, and reportedly end abruptly, in mid-storyline – a bug, not a feature, for most fans, who’ll probably have little enthusiasm for the shows when they debut in the next few months, and which will likely hurt DVD sales as well. Neither show drew huge numbers in their first seasons, and FX had to do “a lot of crunching of cume ratings numbers before renewing both series in May,” according to the Reporter, but the network insists that the short seasons will not be a factor in possible third season renewals.
No – low viewership would probably be a reason for that, which might happen because, well, viewers know they’re going to be left hanging after just seven episodes. Chicken and the egg, folks; it has to be remembered at times like this that the people running the networks often have business degrees and get paid a lot more than you or I. Put that next to Teflon and cheap air travel as marvels of the modern age.
TYRA LIED: The Moment Of Truth is the big ratings success of this very troubled season, and everyone’s piling on to share a bit of the buzz, like Tyra Banks, who invited host Mark L. Wahlberg and his lie detectors onto her daytime talker to get her fib factor measured.
According to a story on PageSix.com, Tyra really is friendly with supermodel nightmare Naomi Campbell, and does care about the self-esteem of the young girls she’s ushered into the meatgrinder modeling industry, but she lied when she claimed that she wasn’t jealous of Oprah Winfrey, her self-proclaimed idol, and when she said that she thought every winner of America’s Next Top Model deserved their prize.
“Oh, gosh, that was really, really hard,” Banks said after the ordeal was over, prompting one to wonder aloud: Was that a lie, orthe truth? To be fair, even God has been known to be a bit jealous of Oprah during sweeps week, and after nine seasons, Tyra might have imagined that Stephanie Seymour and Christie Brinkley got their start on the show.
Rick McGinnis
