Batters Up! Will Ratings Follow?

Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game has traditionally been one of the summer’s primary showcases, and NBC hopes Tuesday’s edition will be no exception, following a recent up-and-down ratings history and a summer that Peacock network executives would just as soon forget. All-Star ratings slipped to a 30-year low in 1997--when Fox carried the telecast--but rebounded to nearly 19 million viewers on NBC in 1998 and then 17.6 million on Fox last year, as interest in baseball surged thanks to the long-ball duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. For NBC, the game provides a welcome promotional platform to trumpet the upcoming Summer Olympics and its new prime-time series, after NBC officials faced internal criticism from top network brass for essentially sitting out this summer, letting CBS garner enormous media attention with its fabricated reality shows “Survivor” and “Big Brother.” Like virtually every other TV event, meanwhile, the All-Star Game has grown from a single telecast into a multi-night marketing opportunity, with ESPN televising the players’ “Home Run Derby” and a celebrity hitting challenge tonight. The home-run exhibition has topped all cable programs for that week the past two years, averaging roughly 9 million viewers--enough to pin even wrestling.

X Chromosomes Power ‘X-Men’

If the comic book roots and high-tech special effects of “X-Men” aren’t enough to attract teenage boys, the film’s female action figures may do the trick. Their names are Jean Grey, Storm, Mystique and Rogue--otherwise known as actresses Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Anna Paquin. Directed by Bryan Singer, the action-thriller, opening Friday, is targeted at teenage boys. It’s based on Marvel Comics’ team of mutant superheroes and stars Hugh Jackman, in his first major U.S. role, as Logan/Wolverine, a solitary fighting machine with retractable adamantine claws; Patrick Stewart, as Prof. Charles Xavier, the wheelchair-bound mentor of the X-Men and the world’s most powerful telepath, and Ian McKellen as Magneto, a powerful but evil mutant. But it’s the super-ladies of “X-Men”--coming from the world of movies, TV and modeling--who steal scenes. Netherlands-born Janssen, perhaps best known as the lasciviously lethal assassin Xenia Onatop in the James Bond hit “GoldenEye,” plays Jean Grey, whose telekinetic powers allow her to move objects. Berry, who won a Golden Globe for her starring role in the acclaimed HBO film “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,” plays Storm, who has the ability to manipulate the weather. Leggy Romijn-Stamos, who rose to fame as a fashion model and host of MTV’s “House of Style,” portrays Mystique, an evil metamorph who can transform into anyone or anything she sees. (Berry, Janssen and Stamos are on the cover of this month’s men’s magazine Maxim, with the headline “X-Mania!”) Paquin, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1993’s “The Piano,” plays Rogue, the alienated teenage girl who can absorb the powers of anyone she touches. The $75-million movie from 20th Century Fox has been a hot and heavy topic on the Internet for months and is eagerly awaited by comic book fans. The question now is whether that translates into a blockbuster hit.

Horning In on Gangsta Territory

Watch for the rap all-star group the Ruff Ryders to return in style to the nation’s album charts this week with a probable debut among the top 5--adding even more fuel to the genre’s commercial hot streak this year. One national retail chain, Wherehouse, even reports that it expects six of its top 10 sellers for the week to be rap artists: Eminem (who has the No. 1 album on the U.S. charts six weeks running), followed by Nelly, the Ruff Ryders, Lil’ Kim, Three 6 Mafia and Dr. Dre. And a seventh act, Papa Roach, is a hard-edged rock band with strong hip-hop influences, a la Limp Bizkit or Kid Rock. Violet Brown, Wherehouse’s urban-music buyer, says the notable theme among the current boom in the genre is a widening of styles and approaches. While the chain’s rap bestsellers are dominated by gangsta rap, Brown says, underground hip-hop is blossoming while rap-rock has become a blockbuster genre. “It’s an exciting time because we’re seeing it go off into different directions,” she said. “Underground acts that used to sell in the hundreds are now selling in the thousands, and the artists are dealing with issues and politics and culture more than the gangsta rap and the streets.” Gangsta rap will “always sell, but it’s not the only thing anymore,” Brown said, citing Common, Dilated Peoples and Jurassic 5 as acts presenting more eclectic themes. “It’s kind of like ‘been there, done that’ with the gangsta rap, but even those albums have tracks that are more [musically] interesting now and coming from around the country instead of just New York and Los Angeles.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers