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Movie Review
"Hamlet"
There's something rotten in Denmark, but not in this darkly glittering update of Shakespeare's great tragedy.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[05/12/00]

Movie Review
"Battlefield Earth"
L. Ron Hubbard's pulp sci-fi classic comes incomprehensibly to the screen starring Scientologist John Travolta.
By Andrew O'Hehir
[05/12/00]

Music Review
Sharps & Flats
Teen trio Hanson grows up on "This Time Around." But will they still have an audience willing to listen?
By David Cantwell
[05/11/00]

Column
"The poor dears!"
Director Mike Figgis talks about putting his troupe of actors through the rigors in his four-films-in-one marvel, "Time Code."
By Michael Sragow
[05/11/00]

Music
The reeducation of Lauryn Hill
The hip-hop songstress says she wrote and produced her multiplatinum album. A lawsuit contends that's not the whole truth. Behind the case is a bigger question: What is a pop song, anyway?
By Rodd McLeod
[05/10/00]

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By consistently drawing numbers that a year ago were unthinkable (nearly 30 million viewers per episode), the Regis Philbin-hosted show, serving up greedy thrice-weekly broadcasts (Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday), has become a marauding behemoth on the TV landscape, with competing shows and network execs scrambling to get out of its way.

"How do you compete?" wonders Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBC. "It really is a unique TV force of nature."

"I wouldn't want to be programming against it," agrees Mike Greco, manager of broadcast research for ad agency BBDO. He notes that there have always been weekly blockbuster programs, from "Bonanza" to "The Cosby Show," that sucked the life out of the competition on a given night, but never a show that has caused ratings damage nearly every other night of the week.

"It's like catching lightning in a bottle," boasts Andrea Wong, vice president of alternative series for ABC, the division that gave birth to "Millionaire."

So powerful has "Millionaire" become that it has almost single-handedly stopped several industry trends dead in their tracks. Among them: the erosion of broadcast TV at the hands of hard-charging cable, the decline of family viewing and NBC's decade-plus dominance of Thursday-night prime time. The show has also boosted TV viewership across the board to all-time high levels this season.

All of this from a game show that recently featured a contestant pondering, on-air, a single question for nearly 15 minutes. That's not the sort of stuff they teach in programming school.

"The greatest breakthroughs are shows that were never supposed to happen," says Tim Brooks, senior vice president of research for the cable channel Lifetime and coauthor of "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows." "Nobody would have guessed that this is how ABC's fortunes would turn."

"What a difference a Regis makes." That's how researchers Steve Sternberg and Stacey Lynn Koerner summed up ABC's "Millionaire"-powered turnaround in a recent report for TN Media, a major media buying firm. The network, which hadn't been on top since the halcyon days of "Home Improvement," "Roseanne" and "Ellen," has ridden "Millionaire" to 19 straight weekly ratings wins as the most-watched TV network, according to Nielsen Media Research.

And the network broke its old ratings record in style. Forget the recent flap between Time Warner and ABC parent Disney, which saw ABC's signal go dark for nearly two days in at least part of seven major markets. Four celebrity "Millionaire" episodes, with stars like Dana Carvey, Ray Romano and Kathie Lee Gifford winning money for charity, aired Monday through Thursday at the height of the corporate tug of war and still posted monstrous numbers. The first attracted more viewers to ABC than CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and WB got during the same hour combined. The night Rosie O'Donnell took the hot seat, 36 million viewers tuned in -- a new "Millionaire" best.

One more ABC fun fact: Two weeks ago the network averaged 18 million viewers, the third-highest weekly total in the network's history. (The only higher weeks were Super Bowl and Oscar weeks.)

With firepower like that it seemed ABC last week was toying with the competition. On the final celeb night of "Millionaire," with comedian Romano in the chair, the show deliberately went eight minutes past the 10 p.m. hour. The result? "Millionaire" beat the first half-hour of the competing "ER," the first time any show had done that to NBC's franchise.

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Not coincidentally, the special celebrity episodes kicked off the all-important quarterly sweeps period, when local TV advertising rates are determined. ABC plans to air 17 "Millionaires" during the 28-day sweeps period. Most devastatingly, it aired a special edition of the show against "60 Minutes" and will do the same against "ER's" upcoming season finale.

Thanks to "Millionaire," ABC has won the last two sweeps periods, in November and February. If, as expected, the network pulls off a May win, it will be the first time in 22 years ABC has captured three consecutive sweeps periods. An added bonus for ABC this time around: By boosting the show's ad rates up to $500,000 per 30-second spot, the four celebrity-themed episodes are expected to generate more than $40 million in revenue.

Just how big has "Millionaire" become? If you accept ABC's research that says most of the show's viewers are exclusive each night (meaning they don't tune in on either of the other "Millionaire" nights), roughly 50 million different people watch one of the episodes each week counting all three telecasts. By comparison, last year's No. 1 program, "ER," drew, on average, roughly 25 million viewers each week.

Few shows have ever thrown around that kind of weight, which means competitors are nervous these days as the networks fine-tune their fall lineup in time for this week's upfront buying spree -- the annual billion-dollar ritual when advertisers lock up TV commercial time for the upcoming season.

Among producers, everyone's hoping to avoid becoming next fall's "Chicago Hope" while dreaming of cashing in as the season's "The Practice." Both programs' fortunes were changed dramatically by "Millionaire."

If the creators of ABC's "The Practice" don't send daily thank yous to "Millionaire" executive producer Michael Davies, they should. "The Practice," which follows the "final answer" phenom on Sunday nights at 10 p.m., has seen its ratings soar this season, up nearly 50 percent during February's sweeps, compared with same time last year, when it followed the news magazine "20/20." Suddenly the courtroom drama starring Dylan McDermott has become a bona fide blockbuster, ranked No. 8 for the season and drawing nearly 20 million viewers weekly.

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