Word: network
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...network is kind of the same way. Coming up on its 10th birthday in 2005 - that's, like, 150 in youth-culture years - once a year it shows up, bobs its head, and promises to hang on to its young audience with a new set of teen soaps and hot young bodies that it injects into its schedule like Botox...
...been a bad ratings year for the network, which had to sit by and stew while bigger networks raided its youth niche with reality shows. In the ultimate WB indignity, it was Fox that landed last year's hot teen soap with "The O.C." Network CEO Jordan Levin flatly apologized to advertisers, in particular by practically promising to commit ritual suicide for having decided, last year, to focus on scripted rather than reality shows. "We will never make that mistake again," he pledged, mustering as much contrition as an entire administration did over the Abu Ghraib scandal...
...Next season, the network will try to make up for it with several reality projects of varying degrees of dubiousness. Besides its "American Idol" spoof, "Superstar USA," which just debuted, there'll be "Studio 7," a quiz show whose contestants spend a week living together before the big game, where they'll hopefully have torrid affairs with one another just like we've always imagined those "Jeopardy" contestants to do. There's "Big Man on Campus," a college dating show a la "The Bachelor." Call it "The Bachelor's Degree." On "Wannabes," 10 actresses compete to win a starring role...
...network also announced several new comedies. "Drew Carey's Green Screen" is an improv comedy show in which the scenarios acted out by the comedians are illustrated by animators. It's for everybody who loved "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" but found it too taxing on the imagination. Jeff Foxworthy, meanwhile, returns to the screen in "Blue Collar TV," a standup comedy/parody show on which he will continue to prove that redneck jokes are not offensive as long as you pay an actual Southerner to make them for you. On "Shacking Up," Fran Drescher plays a mother who shocks...
...loosely based on the former special-forces soldier's experience as a nanny in L.A. (He's been taking dramatic license with other people's stories on "Survivor" for years, so fair's fair.) There's "Global Frequency," a drama about a super-secret intelligence agency that, in the network PR department's words, seeks to "prevent international politics from undermining the security of the global community," which would make a great rationalization if we ever decide to forcibly seize the UN building. And there's what The WB simply described as an "upcoming reality project," which is television-speak...