Tv Land

Fran Drescher's new daytime talk show has the usual bells and whistles, plus a live band, and the one thing no other show has had, or ever will have. That laugh. It sounds like a constipated barnyard animal, or maybe an old tractor that turns over but can't get started. That a Fran Drescher noise would make you think of Old MacDonald's Farm is surprising, since she has been dragging that thick New York accent around since she started talking in Flushing, Queens, 51 years ago.bridal consultant who brought her sense and sensibility into the lives of a prim British father who was a Broadway producer, and his pampered children.

* "The Exes," 10:30 tonight, TV Land. * "I Hate My Teenage Daughter," 9:30 tonight, Fox 29. YOU MIGHT think it's casting that makes a TV show a hit. A big name does have a certain draw when it comes to the initial episode of a new series. After that first date interest is gone, the success or failure falls squarely on the writers' shoulders. Think of it this way: Jerry Seinfeld has the acting skills of a walnut. That didn't stop him from starring in one of the best comedies of all time, because the writing was so phenomenal.

'I love her voice," says Fran's date, in TV Land's new sitcom, Happily Divorced, which premieres Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. "Give it time," says her ex-husband. It has been a while since we've had Fran Drescher and her lovable honk in a sitcom. The Nanny closed down in 1999. Living With Fran had a little run six years later on The WB, but hardly anybody saw it. It's like a long-lost lullaby when Fran rolls over in bed at the top of the show and asks her anxious husband, "Whatsa mattah, Peetah?

Logo has acquired off-cable syndication rights to all 100 episodes of FX's "Nip/Tuck" and will begin running it in October, the gay-themed network announced last week. "Nip/Tuck," a show about plastic surgeons, was created by Ryan Murphy, the producer behind Fox's "Glee. " Hotter in 'Cleveland'? Joe Jonas will play Valerie Bertinelli's son in the Aug. 11 episode of "Hot in Cleveland," according to TV Land, which can only hope its viewers will be as excited by the appearance of an actual Jonas Brother as they seem to be about Betty White.

We must have been having an awful lot of fun. Where did the time go? Jane Leeves, the lovably loopy Daphne from Frasier , is 49. Valerie Bertinelli, the adorable younger sister from One Day at a Time , is 50. Wendie Malick, the boozy fashion editor and former supermodel in Just Shoot Me , turns 60 in December. And Betty White - well, she's always been pretty old, but now she's 88. The quartet comes to TV Land in the network's first original scripted program, Hot in Cleveland (premiering at 10 p.m. Wednesday)

I LOVE LUCY'S 50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL. 9 p.m. tomorrow, Channel 3. The golden anniversary of the classic CBS sitcom "I Love Lucy" is a television benchmark deserving of a timely, tasteful, terrific TV salute. It's gotten one - but not from CBS. Tomorrow night at 9, the network that brought us "I Love Lucy" half a century ago finally brings us its own prime-time salute to TV's first Queen of Comedy. "I Love Lucy's 50th Anniversary Special" arrives almost a full month after the show's real anniversary date of Oct. 15, 1951.

BEFORE WE GET all excited about the latest "good news" dangled to us from network TV-land - that the new series called "Hack" will be based and filmed in Philadelphia - let's do a reality check. Frankly, we're not convinced this show has legs. And the city could use one, since the presence of a long-running TV show can pump prestige and big dough into the local economy of the city where it's based. Look what "Cheers" did for Boston. And what "Laverne & Shirley" did for Milwaukee.

It's a turf war between the new media and the old - between the talk shows and traditional evening news, between electronic populism and an elite corps of political reporters, between "the people" (of all people!) asking questions of substance in the White House Rose Garden and inside-the-beltway pros asking about what interests them - process, polls and "character. " It's revolutionary. At this stage of the campaign, the hosts of the new media shows dominate the political game, and the high-salary stars in New York and Washington resemble "a barnyard of Chicken Littles," to quote the columnist David Broder.

Another witch has alighted in Salem, but this time the city is behaving hospitably. Perhaps that's because the witch in question is the irrepressible Samantha Stephens, portrayed during eight seasons of TV's Bewitched by the irresistible Elizabeth Montgomery. Yesterday, TV Land, the oldies cable channel, intended to unveil a bronze statue of the nose-twitching Samantha at a downtown park in the Massachusetts town. (Montgomery died of cancer in 1995.) The event commences a season of Bewitched nostalgia, including next week's DVD release of the series' first season.

Corporate synergy to the rescue. Should coverage of a war with Iraq preempt live broadcasts of the Oscars on ABC or the NCAA men's basketball tournament on CBS, those events could move to cable networks sharing the same corporate pedigree. The NCAA tournament begins March 18, with the national championship game April 7 in New Orleans. The 75th annual Academy Awards is March 23. For the Oscars - historically the second-most-watched program of the year, behind the Super Bowl - cable cousins include Disney-owned ABC Family, the Disney Channel, and ESPN.

THE NATION'S first free broadcast network targeting African-American audiences arrived in Philadelphia yesterday. Atlanta-based Bounce TV is an over-the-air free channel supported by sponsors and is geared toward black viewers ages 25 to 54. Unlike cable channels, Bounce TV is one of a growing number of networks carried on the broadcast digital signals of local television stations. Bounce TV executives - among them Martin Luther King III and former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young - said the new network's targeted demographic is vastly underserved and hungers for positive programming.

* "The Exes," 10:30 tonight, TV Land. * "I Hate My Teenage Daughter," 9:30 tonight, Fox 29. YOU MIGHT think it's casting that makes a TV show a hit. A big name does have a certain draw when it comes to the initial episode of a new series. After that first date interest is gone, the success or failure falls squarely on the writers' shoulders. Think of it this way: Jerry Seinfeld has the acting skills of a walnut. That didn't stop him from starring in one of the best comedies of all time, because the writing was so phenomenal.

'I love her voice," says Fran's date, in TV Land's new sitcom, Happily Divorced, which premieres Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. "Give it time," says her ex-husband. It has been a while since we've had Fran Drescher and her lovable honk in a sitcom. The Nanny closed down in 1999. Living With Fran had a little run six years later on The WB, but hardly anybody saw it. It's like a long-lost lullaby when Fran rolls over in bed at the top of the show and asks her anxious husband, "Whatsa mattah, Peetah?

NEW YORK - A few Betty White turn-ons: She likes a cocktail before dinner and a weekly poker night. She has a taste for french fries and hot dogs, and a jones for crossword puzzles. And, in service to her passion as a writer, reams of lined notebook paper really get her going. Indeed, White has written a new book, "If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won't). " It's a chipper, hopscotching meditation on her life, loves and career - with lots of photos - that reads like a chat with the beloved star.

PHIL ROSENTHAL would prefer I not call him a control freak. "I don't think it's freakish to want it correct," the star, writer and director of "Exporting Raymond" complained mildly. It was the morning after he'd screened his new documentary at Philadelphia's Cinefest for an audience that included a few dozen of the nearest and dearest of his Delaware County-native wife, actress Monica Horan. The documentary, which opens here Friday, is a comic look at Rosenthal's efforts to help Russia produce its own version of his long-running sitcom hit, "Everybody Loves Raymond," replacing Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton and their co-stars with Russian actors, but sticking - mostly - to the original scripts.

SO MUCH television, so little time: If we really are only as sick as our secrets, what does it say about us as a country that we have more than 2 billion square feet of space available to store things we don't want to live with but we can't bear to get rid of? What it says to A&E: "Storage Wars. " The latest cable show about Americans' love-hate relationship with their superfluous stuff premieres tonight at 10, with an episode that introduces storage-unit auctioneer Dan Dotson and a motley crew of buyers who hope to find treasure amid the stuff that gets sold, one unit at a time, when the owners stop paying their rent.

Fran Drescher's new daytime talk show has the usual bells and whistles, plus a live band, and the one thing no other show has had, or ever will have. That laugh. It sounds like a constipated barnyard animal, or maybe an old tractor that turns over but can't get started. That a Fran Drescher noise would make you think of Old MacDonald's Farm is surprising, since she has been dragging that thick New York accent around since she started talking in Flushing, Queens, 51 years ago.bridal consultant who brought her sense and sensibility into the lives of a prim British father who was a Broadway producer, and his pampered children.

On Tuesday's Today , there was Harry Hamlin and wife Lisa Rinna , the biggest one-two punch since Muhammad Ali . Each has a book just out: his Full Frontal Nudity is a memoir, and hers is titled, tee-hee, Rinnavation . And they have a new reality-TV show titled Harry Loves Lisa on TV Land. This show is the all-time endless-loop Möbius strip of PR: It's a show about Harry and Lisa selling a TV show about themselves and the TV show they're trying to sell!

BROADCAST PREMIERE week continues tonight with the debuts of three new series, several season premieres and the move of one popular show to a new night. What to watch? What to record? What to skip altogether?   8-9 p.m.   What's new: ABC's "My Generation" (8 p.m., Channel 6) and CBS' "$# ! My Dad Says" (8:30 p.m., Channel 3), along with the Thursday premiere of CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" (8 p.m., Channel 3) and the relocation of NBC's "30 Rock" (8:30 p.m., Channel 10)

Logo has acquired off-cable syndication rights to all 100 episodes of FX's "Nip/Tuck" and will begin running it in October, the gay-themed network announced last week. "Nip/Tuck," a show about plastic surgeons, was created by Ryan Murphy, the producer behind Fox's "Glee. " Hotter in 'Cleveland'? Joe Jonas will play Valerie Bertinelli's son in the Aug. 11 episode of "Hot in Cleveland," according to TV Land, which can only hope its viewers will be as excited by the appearance of an actual Jonas Brother as they seem to be about Betty White.