TELEVISIONNext Ellen Incarnation: A Weekday Talk ShowAs...

TELEVISION

Next Ellen Incarnation: A Weekday Talk Show

As Rosie O’Donnell and Sally Jessy Raphael make plans to leave the daytime talk arena, Ellen DeGeneres is getting ready to enter. She has signed a deal to host an hourlong syndicated talk/variety show beginning in the fall of 2003.

Produced by Telepictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television, the weekday series is contingent on what happens with her CBS sitcom, which is currently on the bench. CBS is expected to make a decision in the next few weeks about whether to renew “The Ellen Show.”

DeGeneres, who began her career as a stand-up comic, is best known for her earlier ABC series “Ellen.”

‘Real World’ Turned Into MTV Movie

Let’s see if we’ve got this straight. MTV, which kicked off the current TV fad of mixing fiction filmmaking elements (casting, sets, situations) with the documentary genre to produce unscripted dramas in the form of its long-running series “The Real World,” is now going to turn the concept around by making a TV movie about the so-called reality show. It will feature a combination of real actors and former “Real World” cast members.

Got that?

More simply, Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jon Murray, the creators and producers of “The Real World,” are producing a TV movie for MTV called “The Real World--The Lost Season,” to air Aug. 6. The plot: A group of people assemble to tape a new edition of “The Real World” but wind up being kidnapped to another location by a young man who had been unable to land a spot on the show. He’s determined to make his own version and threatens to blow up the house if they don’t comply.

MTV didn’t say whether the TV movie is based on real events.

RADIO

Ed Pyle Named

KNX News Director

Ed Pyle, executive news producer of KNX-AM (1070) since 1990, on Friday was named news director. Beginning April 29, he’ll replace Bob Sims, a 33-year veteran of the all-news station who has been news director since 1982. Sims is retiring for personal reasons, the station said.

Pyle’s career spans more than three decades. He joined KNX as a reporter in 1985 and for the previous 10 years had been a news editor and news director at KFWB-AM (980).

Ronnie Bradford, KNX’s news producer since 1982, will take over Pyle’s job as executive news producer.

MOVIES

Good News/Bad News Review for Diaz

It may be the worst good review Cameron Diaz has ever received--a write-up of her latest outing, “The Sweetest Thing,” by the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter.

“The best thing about Cameron Diaz, God love her, isn’t how bad she is, which is wonderful enough,” he wrote. “It’s how oblivious she is to her awfulness.... She’s so awful she’s fabulous.”

How awful is she? “She can’t dance, she can’t act, she can hardly walk and to see her is to love her forever. She’s so cursed with beauty, no one has ever had the nerve to tell her she stinks, or to school her, or even direct her just a bit.

“Unguided, she gets by entirely on the powerful grace of her three most striking attributes: her legs, her attitude and her butt. When she doesn’t know what to do, which is frequently, she just shakes any one, two or three of the above, to brilliant effect.”

MGM, New Line Settle ‘Goldmember’ Dispute

New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. have reached an agreement that will allow New Line to resume using the disputed title “Austin Powers in Goldmember” on its new James Bond spoof this summer.

In return, New Line agreed that for all future titles that may be construed as parodies of Bond, the titles must first be subject to approval by MGM.

MGM had previously filed a protest with the Motion Picture Assn. of America, claiming that the “Goldmember” title was an infringement on its 1964 Bond film, “Goldfinger,” starring Sean Connery.

A three-member MPAA arbitration panel subsequently ruled that New Line had committed a technical infraction by going public with the title before it had been properly registered. New Line then launched a nationwide effort to retrieve thousands of posters and movie trailers that had already gone out to theaters.

With the agreement, New Line is expected to soon launch a large-scale marketing campaign on behalf of the Bond spoof, which stars comedian Mike Myers as the bespectacled, snaggletoothed British secret agent Austin Powers.

The film is scheduled to be released in North America and the United Kingdom on July 26.

THE ARTS

All-Chinese ‘Turandot’ Tour Planned

Promoters of the highly successful “Three Tenors” concerts have announced plans for a 15-city North American tour of Puccini’s final opera, “Turandot,” with an all-Chinese cast. Anaheim will be one of the stops during the September-October outing.

Organized by the Rudas Theatrical Organization, the production will be mounted in the round at sports arenas and convention centers. And, in another break with operatic tradition, the singers will wear microphones because of the often-poor acoustics in those venues.

“Turandot,” which premiered in Milan in 1926, had one of its most famous stagings in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 1998. It’s the story of the cruel Chinese ice-princess Turandot, who poses three riddles to each of her royal suitors. Those who fail the test are executed.

QUICK TAKES

Frank Sinatra Jr., 58, is bringing his famous dad’s songs back to the Las Vegas Strip in a show called “Sinatra Sings Sinatra” that will run at the MGM Grand hotel-casino May 8-15.... On April 24, NBC’s “The West Wing” will present a special documentary episode--a mix of dramatic scenes from the series and interviews with former White House staffers such as David Gergen, Dee Dee Myers, Henry Kissinger, Leon Panetta and former President Gerald Ford. Karl Rove will represent the current administration.... Dolly Parton, whose new bluegrass-inspired album is scheduled for release July 9, has announced that she’s hitting the road with a new band after a 10-year hiatus from regular touring.... Nona Gaye, the daughter of Marvin Gaye, who made her film debut in “Ali,” has been cast in two sequels to “The Matrix”--taking over the role played by Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in August.... Elton John, who has just been appointed chairman of the board of England’s prestigious Old Vic Theatre, is working on a musical version of “Billy Elliot,” the New York Times reports.... Though local environmentalists opposed the move, “Survivor” creator Mark Burnett has received approval from the Thai government to shoot the fifth season of his unscripted series on Tarutao Island, where political prisoners were once sent.... Showtime Networks is creating a gay programming block on the network’s multiplex channel Sho Too. Dubbed “Night Out on Sho Too,” the four-hour block will run Wednesday at 9 p.m. starting May 22 and repeat on Saturdays at 10 p.m....Three-time Oscar-winner Michel Legrand is making his Broadway debut with the musical “Amour” (formerly titled “Le Passe Muraille”). The project, the story of a civil servant who can walk through walls, will be directed by James Lapine and opens at the Music Box Theater on Oct. 15.... KABC-AM (790) talk-show host Larry Elder will guest star on ABC’s “Spin City” Tuesday night, playing him- self.