Dancing with the Stars
This could be another one of those "Who knew?" TV summers.
Ballroom dancing? Evander Holyfield? Seinfeld's J. Peterman? Trista Sutter! It's an unlikely mix that helped make Dancing with the Stars last week's No. 1 show, with 15 million viewers. It also led the competition in viewers 18 to 49.
If you've missed it, here's the premise: Each week a celebrity (and that term is used loosely) performs with a professional ballroom dancer who has helped train them in the rumba, cha-cha and other steps that haven't been seen on the networks since the advent of color TV. Then viewers and a panel of experts judge the pairs and award the winners a trophy. That's right, a trophy.
Dancing with the Stars has given ABC its best summer ratings for an original episode of an entertainment show since Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was still on fire in 2000. Despite its unlikely format, the show has been a huge hit in the U.K. (as S
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Ted Koppel
When longtime Nightline anchor Ted Koppel announced last week that he'll leave ABC News in December, there was heavy speculation that it meant the end of his late night news program. While ABC News execs plan to revamp Nightline, the thinking is that Disney won't be able to resist the temptation to bring in more advertising dollars with a late-night entertainment show. But Koppel — who has every reason to be skeptical of company promises since Nightline's near-death experience a few years ago — believes the show will still be on the air two years from now.
"I do," he told the Biz last week. "I think that it's not as easy as people think to create an entirely new broadcast that has any kind of legs. I'm old enough and have been around ABC long enough to remember how many times the network tried to put on a program at 11:30 at night that failed. When you finally have a broadcast that's survived for 25 years, I think you need to expend all the energy
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