Morning Report - News from Jan. 15, 2002

TELEVISION

He Thinks the Lady Doth Protest Too Much

Fox News Channel’s combative Bill O’Reilly says Paula Zahn was just being politically correct when she said she was offended by a recent CNN promotion that described the morning news anchor as “provocative, smart and just a little sexy.”

CNN management quickly yanked the ad, admitting it was a mistake to describe a journalist in those terms.

“If Paula Zahn doesn’t think she’s there partially because she’s a good-looking babe, then she’s in never-never land,” O’Reilly told reporters in Pasadena over the weekend. Zahn, who left Fox News Channel in September to join CNN, is an excellent broadcaster, the talk show host said, “but Eleanor Roosevelt is not going to be anchoring your weekend news, OK?”

Composer’s Tribute May Never Be Shown

A lavish film production of the popular opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” with a six-figure budget, was to have been the jewel in the crown of BBC2’s Christmas programming last month and a way of acknowledging the 90th birthday of composer Gian Carlo Menotti.

Only one problem: At the last minute, the network discovered that it had failed to secure the rights to the project.

According to the Guardian Newspapers, BBC2 had to pull the program and may never be able to show it. The screen rights belong to an American company that hopes to make its own film version and will not sanction another, the Guardian said.

“I am not sure how the rights-checking procedure works or who should have done it,” a BBC spokesman said. “I believe the producers were very surprised to find that they did not have the rights.”

Documentaries Get a Boost From Sundance

The Sundance Channel, owned by Robert Redford and Showtime Networks, is launching a digital cable network devoted entirely to documentaries. They will run unedited and uninterrupted by commercials.

Redford said the channel, due to surface during the second half of the year, represents an effort to give documentaries “equal opportunity in the marketplace.”

“There [were never] many outlets for them, but documentaries have evolved in quality and into a very compelling form of storytelling,” he said. “I hope and believe [that] as documentaries move forward, they will serve another purpose--especially those that deal with social issues that the mainstream doesn’t.”

One Management, Two Voices, Moonves Says

CBS and UPN are under the same management team, but they will maintain two distinctive programming strategies, CBS President Leslie Moonves said Monday.

Moonves, who was appointed last month to take over the struggling UPN, said that UPN will not become “CBS 2.”

“That is absolutely not going to happen,” he said. “The two will have distinctive personalities with distinctive targets.” However, he added, development teams at both networks will be involved with each other, and shows developed for CBS that appeal to a younger audience might wind up on UPN.

UPN and CBS are owned by Viacom Inc. and were combined last month in an effort to cut costs and increase advertising revenue at UPN. Moonves said that a new UPN president will soon be named to replace Dean Valentine, who resigned Friday. Though ratings for UPN have increased this season because of such shows as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Enterprise,” the network remains unprofitable.

POP/ROCK

Angry McCartney Would Not ‘Let It Be’

The pop world got a reminder of Paul McCartney’s long-standing displeasure with superstar producer Phil Spector’s 1970 arrangement of “The Long and Winding Road” in a letter just released by the British public record office.

The scathing rebuke, sent to the singer’s lawyer, Allen Klein, revealed that McCartney hated the string accompaniment to the Beatles single--the group’s last No. 1 hit in America. Never, he said, would that happen again.

“In future, no one will be allowed to add or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission,” McCartney said in the correspondence, reported in the London’s Guardian on Saturday.

Spector, whose name will forever be associated with a string of striking pop singles in the 1960s (“Be My Baby,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”), worked on the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album, which featured “The Long and Winding Road.”

QUICK TAKES

NBC late night host Conan O’Brien, 38, married ad executive Liza Powell in Seattle on Saturday.... Writer Michael Crichton (“Jurassic Park”) has filed for divorce from his fourth wife, Anne-Marie Martin, to whom he’s been married for 14 years.... A Friday lecture by architect Rem Koolhaas, designer of the proposed new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been rescheduled. It will now take place Jan. 27 at UCLA’s Dickson Auditorium at 5 p.m.... The Broadcast Film Critics chose “A Beautiful Mind” as the best picture of 2001. The movie also received awards for best actor (Russell Crowe), best supporting actress (Jennifer Connelly) and best director, a category in which Ron Howard tied with “Moulin Rouge’s” Baz Luhrmann.... The New York City production of “The Fantasticks” closed Sunday, finishing with 17,162 performances in a 41-year run.

Elaine Dutka