Morning Report - News from Dec. 30, 1999

TELEVISION

Clinton to Address Kids: President Clinton will talk to the nation’s children about their future in the new millennium on Nickelodeon on New Year’s Eve at 7 p.m. Clinton’s three-minute speech kicks off the cable channel’s New Year’s celebration, hosted by Amanda Byrnes and Kenan Thompson, featuring episodes of some of Nickelodeon’s most popular series. Herb Scannell, president Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite and TV Land, said: “Having the president address kids about the important role they will play in our future sends a great message to them that kids matter and can contribute to their world.”

NBC News Leader: NBC’s “Nightly News” is ending 1999 with a strong finishing kick, topping its two rivals in the ratings as it heads into an election year. The “Nightly News” had an average of 10.8 million viewers during the final three months of the year, and ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 10.4 million. The “CBS Evening News” had just over 9 million viewers, on average.

POP/ROCK

DMX Brackets 1999: Rapper DMX had the first No. 1 album of 1999, and now he has the final one as well. The Yonkers, N.Y., rapper’s third album, “ . . . And Then There Was X,” debuts this week atop the nation’s album charts, 11 months after his “Flesh of My Flesh Blood of My Blood” was the top seller. The new disc sold 698,000 copies in its first week, the second-strongest debut of the year behind the Backstreet Boys’ “Millennium” in May. Celine Dion, the Backstreet Boys, Santana and Christina Aguilera round out this week’s Top 5, and each of those titles registered 500,000 copies sold during the final week of the holiday sales season. The only other Top 10 debut was “Still I Rise” by 2Pac + Outlawz at No. 7. The No. 1 single: “I Wanna Love You Forever” by Jessica Simpson.

PEOPLE

Ricky Martin the HOTTEST: In its first “HOT Celebrity Monitor” nationwide poll, People en Espanol magazine reports that Ricky Martin ranked highest in the hearts of U.S. Latinos. Jennifer Lopez came in second, with fellow Latinas Gloria Estefan (No. 5) and Mexican actress Thalia (No. 6). Mel Gibson placed third and Julia Roberts fourth. The poll of 1,449 Spanish-speaking adults used questions about familiarity, likability, sexiness and trustworthiness to calculate a star’s HOT quotient.

Hitchcock the Most Influential: Alfred Hitchcock was chosen as the most influential film director of the 20th century in a French opinion poll. The director of such classics as “Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window” and “Psycho” won 33% of votes from 1,016 French people surveyed by French daily newspaper Le Parisien. Steven Spielberg (“Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan”) came in second with 32% support, and Walt Disney was third with 31%. French director Francois Truffaut, celebrated for film classics like “Jules and Jim,” was fourth with 19% of votes while Marcel Carne, remembered for his classic “The Children of Paradise,” won 13%.

Notes: Actor Don Johnson, 50, (“Miami Vice,” “Nash Bridges”) and wife Kelley Phleger, 30, have a new baby daughter, Atherton Grace Johnson, who will be called Gracie. . . . Blues artist Charlie Musselwhite is recovering in a Mexican hospital from injuries suffered two weeks ago when a tractor-trailer broadsided his car. “Ain’t no broken bones going to keep me down,” Musselwhite told the Clarksdale [Miss.] Press Register. “The people here at the hospital said I came as close to death as you can get.”