Fox Stumbles, Reschedules at Start of Season

The new prime-time TV season officially begins tonight, but Fox is already making some changes. “Get Real,” a new series starring Debrah Farentino and Jon Tenney as the parents of three teenagers that follows “Beverly Hills, 90210,” was supposed to repeat Mondays for the next three weeks to provide the show some additional exposure. After two so-so Wednesday outings, however, Fox yanked the planned Monday reruns, opting instead to continue playing episodes of “That ‘70s Show” in the time slot. A spokesman said Fox simply didn’t want to confuse viewers, especially in light of several preemptions that will occur in October, when coverage of the baseball playoffs begins. “Get Real” isn’t Fox’s only cause for concern, as its savage Hollywood spoof, “Action,” didn’t do as well as the network hoped in its debut Thursday. Though Fox was perceived as having some momentum coming out of last season, wholesale lineup changes (12 of its 19 programs are new or in new time slots) could take a toll. As it is, the network may have to suffer through a few long weeks until Oct. 25, when the Emmy-winning “Ally McBeal” begins its third year, followed the next week by the seventh-season premiere of “The X-Files.”

Pay-Per-View Offers Scoop on CMA Awards

For the music industry, there are no losers when it comes to award shows--after all, not only do the glittering galas do well in television ratings, but they also invariably pump up the album sales of artists who perform on them. And now there may be yet another way for the industry to cash in on a trophy show: The 33rd annual Country Music Assn. Awards will air Wednesday on CBS, but die-hard fans can also watch a pay-per-view “behind the scenes” event on Tuesday. For $9.95, “CMA Awards Backstage Pass” will provide three hours of live rehearsals, backstage interviews, historical retrospectives and musical performances by Mary Chapin Carpenter and Deana Carter. The idea is a novel one--none of the major awards shows have done anything like it--but no one seems sure that it’s a good one. “We really don’t have a clue how many people will buy this thing,” says Ed Benson, executive director of the CMA. “But if we break even on it, or even if we end up a little in the hole on it, it may still be a success as an exercise in promotion for the [CBS] broadcast.” The producers are hoping that the U.S. public’s seemingly insatiable hunger for celebrity news and backstage insights will make the pay-per-view event a tradition, Benson said. What type of sales are expected? John Rubey, president of the show’s distributor, Spring Communications, declined to cite a specific number, but he said that an audience “in the tens of thousands” is the target, although the number of actual subscriptions would be far lower because pay-per-view audiences typically gather in groups of five to 12. One group guaranteed to be watching is the organizers of the Grammys, Oscars, American Music Awards and other celeb-fests. The CMA’s Wednesday telecast, with performers including Shania Twain, Steve Wariner, Merle Haggard and Kenny Chesney, airs on tape delay here at 8 p.m. on KCBS Channel 2. The pay-per-view special begins at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

Screen Role Taps Into Rodman’s New Talent

At 6-feet-8, former basketball star Dennis Rodman isn’t the tallest actor to ever hit the big screen. After all, Gheorghe Muresan was featured as a 7-foot-7 Romanian behemoth in the 1998 Billy Crystal comedy “My Giant.” But how many actors can claim these accomplishments: five NBA championship rings, twice named the league’s defensive player of the year, author of two best-selling books, made big-screen debut with Jean Claude van Damme in 1997’s “Double Team” (admittedly a clunker at the box office, taking in only $11 million), co-host of an MTV series and recipient of more than $10 million in endorsement contracts. We won’t even discuss his wedding dress, that marriage to actress Carmen Electra or all the people who sue him. Now, fresh from his aborted, ill-fated tour with the Los Angeles Lakers, Rodman has been given his first starring role in the new action / comedy “Simon Sez,” which opens Friday. Rodman plays a secret agent hired to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy American executive. If you believe the film’s production notes, Rodman’s talent as an actor surprised director Kevin Elders. “He has a lot of depth to his facial expressions,” Elders declares, “which a lot of action stars don’t have.” He can say that again. Remember Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre in “There’s Something About Mary?” No buttercup, he. And, how about Shaquille O’Neal, the Lakers’ center? Wasn’t Shaq’s performance Oscar-worthy as the DC Comics superhero in “Steel” or as the friendly genie in “Kazaam?” At least former Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan didn’t embarrass himself in “Space Jam,” but we’ll leave it to critics to judge the work in that film of fellow NBA stars Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Muggsy Bogues and Larry Johnson.

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers