ABC Adds ‘Pizza’ to Its Friday Menu

ABC’s Friday lineup of “TGIF” comedies has for a decade catered to families and kids, with shows like “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Family Matters.” As a result, there were some arched eyebrows when the network decided to bench “Two of a Kind”--the sitcom starring twin moppets Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen--and add the at-times risque comedy “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” to Fridays, for a limited run beginning this week. Could this signal the end, or at least a directional change, for “TGIF”? If so, look no further than NBC’s “Providence,” a new Friday drama that quickly siphoned away many of ABC’s adult viewers. Facing that competition, the network might consider becoming a bit more adult itself, especially if “Two Guys’ ” Wednesday replacement, “It’s like, you know. . . ,” continues to deliver solid ratings. Not to be overlooked in all this is the fact that ABC’s parent, Disney, likes having all those kids tune in every Friday to a channel that can help promote its theme parks and Saturday morning cartoons. ABC also has other worries, because “Two of a Kind” is produced by Warner Bros. Television, whose sister network, the WB, is expected to expand to Friday nights next season and would no doubt love having the show if ABC drops it.

If It’s Friday, There Must Be a New Teen Flick

Now showing at a theater near you: “Attack of the Teen Movies!” By the time April is over, Hollywood will have released no fewer than 10 teen-oriented films in 1999. The latest one to arrive this week is “Go!,” an edgy Columbia Pictures comedy directed by Doug Liman (“Swingers”) about the misadventures of a group of young people whose lives collide in the raucous L.A. underground scene. It stars Sarah Polley and Katie Holmes as a pair of supermarket checkout clerks who, during a wild night of partying on the Las Vegas Strip, meet an impulsive Brit (Desmond Askew) who is driving a stolen car with his buddy Marcus (Taye Diggs). The film also includes a pair of TV stars (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr), who find themselves in the middle of a real-life drug sting. Television is awash in teen-oriented sitcoms and dramas, and movies are mining the same demographic. Studio executives know that, unlike most adults, teenagers will flock to the theater every weekend. So the studios have been cranking out plenty of low-budget films featuring young, up-and-coming actors, many of whom are already starring on TV. And, for the most part, the formula is working. This year’s onslaught of teen films began over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, when “Varsity Blues” grossed a healthy $17.5 million at the box office on its opening weekend. After that came “She’s All That,” “Simply Irresistible,” “Cruel Intentions,” “The Rage: Carrie 2,” “The Mod Squad,” “10 Things I Hate About You” and now “Go!” Coming later this month are the teen-oriented films “Election” and “Idle Hands.” But is the teen film market in danger of becoming over-saturated? Not necessarily. “The teen market is sort of a different animal,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitors Relations Co. “Older audiences may see a movie a month, but kids have sort of an insatiable appetite for entertainment.”

Everyone Everywhere Wants Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s first tour in a decade won’t start until Friday in Barcelona, Spain, but the buzz is already building. Demand for tickets on the European leg of the tour was so strong that the number of concerts has been expanded from 17 to 28. Second shows have been added in Barcelona and other cities, including Berlin and Paris, while third and fourth shows have been added in London. The U.S. leg is due to begin in mid-July. Should we expect the kind of three- and four-hour marathons that were the band’s trademark in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Tour insiders say that we won’t know until the band actually takes the stage, but a “sneak preview” last month in Asbury Park, N.J., suggests that Springsteen still likes to go for broke. Though the preview was scheduled to run for only an hour, he and the band ended up playing nearly three hours without a break. In the preview, Springsteen concentrated mostly on pre-”Born in the U.S.A.” material, though he did showcase one new song, “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

--Compiled by Times staff writers