Word: channelized
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...then ABC, then NBC and finally CBS gave in to the hard-line, no-cash bargaining position of the big cable companies. And all four chose the same face-saving, if-you- can't-beat-'em-join-'em terms of surrender: each TV network will start its own cable channel, which the cable operators will carry. We'll let you keep stealing our popular big-budget programs, the networks are saying, as long as we can produce some iffy new programming that you'll show and actually pay us for, pretty please...
...course, the networks now have no choice but to sound chipper about their not utterly voluntary expansions into cable programming. ABC, which owns the successful cable sports channel ESPN, seems to have the most coherent idea: yet another sports channel, ESPN2, which is to start next month with a more gonzo sensibility and a younger, duuude-skewing audience than the original channel. The people at Fox have been talking about launching a cable channel practically since chairman Rupert Murdoch was an Australian, and last week, under the gun, they announced it: FX, with a very cool logo...
...network that led the fight to get the new cable-compensation law passed, is still scrambling for its place in the new order. According to sources familiar with the network's negotiations, what had seemed two weeks ago a done deal -- CBS wouldlaunch a cable public affairs channel, a highly unnecessary crossbreed of CNN and C-SPAN -- seemed indanger of falling apart as TCI, the country's biggest cable operator, was playing even harder ball than usual...
...This is an industry in which weird stuff happens," says Paine Webber analyst Alan Gottesman. Weirdness is fine. There are plenty of goofy-sounding new cable channels in the works -- a channel devoted entirely to food, another devoted entirely to golf -- but at least behind those are single-minded individuals pursuing their dreams of having more shows about pesto and four- irons on TV. The broadcast networks' proposed channels, to the contrary, are not being launched mainly out of Ted Turnerian visionary determination, but defensively, hastily, by default...
...Sharon Stone, perfectly pretty in her pink '50s prom dress, was Barbie, live. (In postshow remarks, she volunteered an answer to the question everybody wants to ask Sharon Stone: "Did you fish and hunt with your dad growing up in Pennsylvania?" She did.) U2's the Edge, with a channel-surfing video wall and Deep Space Nine outfit, was pure 2001. And when Pearl Jam performed Neil Young's Rockin' in the Free World with Young himself, neo-'60s avatars alloyed with the genuine article and made the ecstatic audience feel as if they were in just the right place...