Taking to the streets for Capt. Sulu

by John Zipperer

Fed up by what they claim is a franchise derailed, a sizable group of "Star Trek" fans — 4,500 of them and growing — has announced its intention to hold a street demonstration to pressure Paramount to get it back on track. It's part of an ongoing project called the Excelsior Campaign to have the next "Trek" series based on Hikaru Sulu from the original series. The WTO protest this may not be, but it is a serious attempt to bring back the fan activism that temporarily saved the original "Star Trek" from cancellation and made a series of theatrical films a success.

Kai Price, press secretary for the Excelsior Campaign, writes that the demonstrations will take place this April 22, not only at the Paramount offices but at stations around the world that broadcast "Trek." Trekkers tend to take their show seriously because it has touched them deeply with its idealism about a future that isn't as crummy as the present. 

(continued)

Pick To Click: They killed "Sports Night" for this?

"Talk to Me" (9:30 p.m., ABC) is supposedly the wacky on-air and off-air story about a New York morning-radio personality played by Kyra Sedgwick. So it's probably not a good sign that the radio scenes are the weak links in this new ABC sitcom. (For those of you expecting to see ``Sports Night'' in that time period, the show is off the schedule, probably for good.)

These days a half-hour comedy has only about 19 minutes to get in and get out. Judging by the first two episodes it appears much of that time will be spent ``on the air,'' as Sedgwick does her radio shtick with a roomful of sidekicks. But the banter has a controlled, scripted feel to it; it doesn't help that the show's first celebrity guest is Gene Simmons, a rock star who probably hasn't improvised a thing in 20 years. As often happens in the sitcom biz, the brightest talent on ``Talk to Me'' turns out to be the second banana: Sedgwick's sister, played by Nicole Sullivan, the versatile comic best known as a member of the ``MAD TV'' troupe on Fox.

I did find myself half-wishing I were at the National Association of Broadcasters show, as Sinclair Broadcast Group demonstrated their rebel standard for DTV on handheld devices about the size of an Etch-a-Sketch. If you haven't been following the contretemps between Sinclair and broadcasting's powers-that-be on this one, I'll write about it in an upcoming edition. But reports from the convention floor (courtesy Electronic Media) are that Sinclair's demo of the CODFM signal standard "knocked the socks off broadcasters" at the show. Sinclair used a Las Vegas TV station's facilities to air a live DTV broadcast in CODFM, the standard being used in Europe, to show that it is a viable competitor to 8-VSB, the standard American broadcasters have largely embraced. Sinclair's chief tech officer Nat Ostroff has spent more than two years patiently pointing out to anyone who will listen why 8-VSB is a dud; he sketched it out for me once in diagram form on a napkin in a Baltimore crab shack ...

The big news of the day, however, may have come from New York, where CBS-owned station WCBS-TV was found to have accepted $300,000 for an advertorial last month from a laser eye surgery clinic, then produced a news story about the surgery — a huge ethics no-no. Read Electronic Media's scoop (if you don't see it, try clicking on the Monday tab). For those of you who've followed the travails of Joel Cheatwood, under whose watch Jerry Springer once became a commentator on NBC-owned WMAQ-TV in Chicago and who recently took over at WCBS, no, he had nothing to do with this. "I can't believe they did that," Cheatwood told EM. "There will be a definitive line between news and advertising, and that's without question."

Previously on TV Barn:
10 April: Zehme on Letterman
7 April: CBS's loaded sked; "Phantom Menace" on video
6 April: ReplayTV and TiVo
5 April: "Wonderland" protests; Fox hits new low
4 April: "Falcone" v. "Sopranos"; new sci-fi stars
3 April: iCraveTV; BET v. Univision
31 March: Video kiosks; Tavis Smiley; Peabody Awards; quit griping about Oscar
30 March: Pilots of the airwaves (II)

Coming up next ... subject to last-minute changes:
Wednesday: Stuff I found on my desk after a week out of town!
Thursday: Reader mail

On this date... in 1977, Universal and Walt Disney Studios talk with Time magazine about the lawsuit they've filed to try and prevent the further sale of VCRs as "a violation of their copyrights ... The video tape systems in short have the potential of revolutionizing the television business." Young executive Michael Eisner is unavailable for comment as he's off in the company mail room, taking a Napster. -- Tom Heald

Copyright © 1999-2001 Aaron Barnhart | Back to TV Barn home