Quick Takes: No 9/11 moment on NBC

On Tuesday morning, there was a moment of silence in New York City and Washington, D.C., to honor the people who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The moment, which had the participation of the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department and President Obama and the first lady, was covered live by all the cable news channels, CBS and ABC.

But at 8:46 a.m., NBC’s “Today” show was airing an interview with Kris Jenner, matriarch of the Kardashian clan.

Jenner spoke with “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie about the new season of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and about her breast-implant surgery.

—Patrick Kevin Day

L.A. theater award nominees

Center Theatre Group led the field in nominations for the 2011-12 Ovation Awards, amassing 29, followed by the Celebration Theatre and Musical Theatre West with 16 each.

Productions that received the most nominations Tuesday included the Celebration’s staging of the musical “The Color Purple” with 13 nominations; Danai Gurira’s new play “The Convert” at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, with 11; David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” at the Geffen Playhouse, with eight; and the revival of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at the Mark Taper Forum, also with eight.

The satirical show “Forbidden Broadway: Greatest Hits, Volume 2,” at Musical Theatre West, received nine nominations.

The Ovation Awards honor stage productions in the L.A. area and are organized by the L.A. Stage Alliance. Winners of this year’s awards, which cover Sept. 1, 2011 through Aug. 28, 2012, will be announced Nov. 12.

Among the notable acting nominations are Jane Kaczmarek and Marylouise Burke in “Good People”; Stephen Spinella and Jonathan Cake in “The Grönholm Method” at the Falcon Theatre; and Alan Mandell, Barry McGovern and Hugo Armstrong in “Waiting for Godot.”

—David Ng

Couric leads in daytime talk

The Great Daytime Talk Show War of 2012 has just begun, but Katie Couric is in the lead.

In preliminary ratings, Monday’s premiere of “Katie,” in which the “Today” veteran and former “CBS Evening News” anchor gabbed with Jessica Simpson and Sheryl Crow, drew an estimated 1.535 million viewers from the top 56 U.S. markets. (National viewership numbers, which come out later, are expected to be higher.)

This put Couric comfortably ahead of the freshman talk-show pack: “Katie” outdrew “Steve Harvey” by 87%, “Jeff Probst” by 150% and “Ricki Lake” by 250%. The show also earned the highest daytime premiere ratings since “Dr. Phil” launched in 2002.

—Meredith Blake

Tough road for S. Korea indies

A South Korean director who won this year’s Golden Lion award for best movie at the Venice Film Festival expressed hope Tuesday that it will encourage theater owners who have shunned his works at home to screen more independent movies like his.

“This prize was very important,” Kim Ki-duk said at his first news conference after returning to South Korea. “I thought movie theater officials and theater owners will open their doors a little bit wider if I took this prize.”

Kim’s “Pieta,” the brutal story of a debt collector who cripples those who can’t pay until he meets a woman who claims to be his mother, won the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

While Kim, 51, has frequently been invited to international film festivals during his 16-year career, in South Korea his 17 previous movies saw little commercial success. Critics say his use of explicit violence and depiction of female characters as victims or subordinates to men also hurt efforts to draw audiences.

A few big corporations dominate South Korea’s film industry, leaving few screens for independent moviemakers. Some of Kim’s past movies played in fewer than five theaters.

“Even a good-natured person will feel anger in this kind of unfair monopoly,” Kim said.

—Associated Press

Man Booker shortlist named

Hilary Mantel, whose novel “Wolf Hall” was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, is a finalist for the 2012 award with its sequel, “Bring Up the Bodies.”

She and the five other shortlisted authors announced Tuesday are in competition for one of the world’s most lucrative and widely celebrated prizes for literary fiction. The Man Booker, worth about $80,000, will be awarded in London on Oct. 16.

Also in the running are Jeet Thayil for “Narcopolis,” his first novel; Will Self for “Umbrella”; Tan Twan Eng for his second novel, “The Garden of Evening Mists”; Alison Moore, a prize-winning short story writer, for her debut novel, “The Lighthouse,” and Deborah Levy for “Swimming Home.”

—Carolyn Kellogg