QVC's popular cubic-zirconia diva, Kathy Levine, isleaving the world of home shopping to host her own daytime talk show. Levine -- a formerSpanish teacher who has been a top host on QVC for 14 years -- gave notice to thenetwork's customers that she was leaving, effective the end of April, in a letter onQVC's web site. But so far, she has been mum about where the talk show will appear.One source said it would be for cable, raising the question of whether Levine be workingat other cable outlets that Comcast, which owns 57 percent of QVC, has stakes in, such asE! or spinoff Style. After all, Levine is typically paired with E! fashion commentatorJoan Rivers when the tart-tongued comedian hawks her costume-jewelry line on the shoppingnetwork. All Levine's lawyer, Lloyd Remick, would say is that she is prepping for anationally syndicated talk show.
Campaign-style billboards proclaiming, "Pryce forPresident. America is not for sale," began cropping up in New York and Californiajust days before the "Super Tuesday" primaries there March 7. So who is Pryce?It turns out that he's a character, portrayed by Tom Selleck, in Turner NetworkTelevision's original movie, Washington Slept Here, due in August inprimetime.
Speaking of movies, remember how Butch Cassidy and theSundance Kid would constantly look back at the persistent posse trailing them and ask,"Who are those guys?" Well, according to background materials from Showtime,which recently aired The Inspectors 2: A Shred of Evidence as its second movieabout U.S. postal inspectors, those guys were postal inspectors. Hey, you neverknow -- this might be a question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Oops! We goofed. Dave Mackey of Comcast Cablevision ofMonmouth County, N.J., e-mailed us to point out that The Wire recently erred inidentifying the mysterious questioner on Game Show Network's Inquizition seriesas Casey Kasem. "Your confusion arises from a similar show that aired in test lastseason from Pearson Television called 100%, a moody quizzer very similar to Inquizition.That show definitely featured Casey Kasem as the off-screen narrator/questioner."
Those who tuned in to NBC's Dateline lastWednesday night may be forgiven if they thought they had somehow stumbled onto premiumchannel HBO's The Sopranos. That's because NBC's newsmagazine wasplaying that Sopranos theme song over footage that resembled the opening segment ofeach episode of that "family" drama. Proving once again that imitation is themost sincere form of flattery, the newsmagazine used the HBO series' opening to colora story about a real-life mobster, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, and his latestreal-life run-in with the law.
A Wire correspondent settled in the other weekend to watch Trainspottingon Bravo, which decided to declare at the outset that the movie had been edited, but thatthe unedited version could be seen on IFC. Annoying, but a reality of basic cable. Still,as it happened, the editing, while extensive, didn't quite filter out 100 percent ofnaughty words from the profanity-filled flick. At least one "F-word" camethrough loud and clear, and during the occasions where the heavy Scots accents werehelpfully subtitled, the transcripts were rendered verbatim. A Bravo representative saidthe quality-control folks rescreened the movie last week and expunged the pesky expletive.Subtitles don't typically get edited on the network.
At the CTAM Digital and PPV Conference last week, InsightCommunications CEO Michael Willner confronted rumors circulating there that his MSO hadbeen sold to another cable company. When he heard the rumor, he said, his first responsewas, "How much did we get?"
Happy 80th birthday today (March 13) to an EastCoast MSO mogul who apparently plans to mark the event quietly and would rather no fuss bemade over it.
By Linda Haugsted, from bureau reports.
