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Show BULLETIN BOARD Our Business Services Directory or Business Card Directory puts your ad into 57,000 homes every day ABC and Nickelodeon team up for comedy series co-venture household. It's the most effective bulletin board in By Jay Bobbin, Tribune Media Services for fractions of a cent per town! aoo CLASSIFIEDS 394-1671 SILVER ANNIVERSARY | SAVINGS ON ALL “se COmpi¢ Ti Poo, © impor, SPAS “7. 3 AND POOLS &— =} FREE VACATION TO ANAHEIM, CALIF. WITH SPA OR POOL PURCHASE With the competitive state of television, networks are looking to some different suppliers for fresh material ... including other networks. In series terms, the first evident sign of that is on the air now. “‘Hi Honey, I’m Home’’ is ABC’s new Friday-night (8:30 p.m. on KTVX channel 4) comedy with a definite sensibility of TV history built-in, and for a logical reason, given its background. The show is about two neighboring families in New Jersey, with the Duffs being a reasonably normal clan of the 1990s consisting of a divorced working mother (played by Susan Cella) and her two sons (Pete Benson, Eric Kushnick). The next- door Nielsens are something else, though, and that fact happens to be implied by their very name. They’re a literal television family of the 1950s who became part of a socalled Sitcom Relocation Program after the cancellation of their series, so the parents (Charlotte Booker, OPEN DAILY 6-6) PHONE 473-3300 1490 E. 5600 S. your old hangers... 2 = For every hanger you recycie Your Valet will donate 1¢ to City Beautification Fund. Your CLEANERS Stephen Bradbury) and their offspring (Julie Benz, Danny Gura) now baffle the Duffs with their rather unusualtraits. Their decidedly old-fashioned behavior seems inspired by such programs as ‘‘The Donna Reed Show’’ and ‘“‘The Patty Duke Show,”’ which are currentstaples on cable’s Nick at Nite, and that’s no coincidence: Nickelodeon is supplying ABC with ‘‘Hi Honey, I’m Home,”’ and it also is repeating each episode the Sunday after its original telecast. This certainly is a new sort of programming arrangement, but one that appears to be only thetip of the proverbial iceberg, since ABC already has made plans to share other productions with cable firms. Later in the summer,it is slated to air ‘‘Stop at Nothing,’’ an adventure-drama movie with Veronica DOWNTOWN SOUTH OGDEN 29th & Washington 4305 Harrison Bivd (‘‘Hill Street Blues’’) Hamel and Lindsay (‘‘Mancuso FBI’’) Frost ROY that originally was made forthe par- (Next to Harmon's) tially ABC-owned Lifetime outlet, WORTH OGDEN 2600 No. Washington . ON THE COVER 5366 S. 1900 W which has shown it a numberof times in recent months. Then, in Nevember, ABC intends to present a celebration of MTY’s 10th anniversary with the music-video channel handling the bulk of the special’s production elements. MTVitself, will be marking that event this week since it first went on the air on Aug. 1, 1981, but ABC is holding its salute for the ratings-intensive November ‘‘sweeps’’ period, evidently believing that it can draw a more-sizable audience at a timethat is crucial to network revenues. “We just thought it was an interesting alternative,’’ says Stuart Bloomberg, ABC Entertainment’s executive vice president for primetime programs, of the entry into partnerships with the cable-TV industry ... which often is cited as one of the main reasons for the considerable decrease in audience shares accrued by the three major over-the-air networks. Bloomberg reflects that *‘Hi Honey’’ came about because ‘‘] really like what Nickelodeon does, specifically Nick at Nite, in its attitude (which embraces old TV shows as pop-culture icons). We went to them about a year ago to discuss some prime-time programming either for Sunday or Friday nights, because they seemed like smart people who didn’t talk down to kids, and I think we began to establish a good relationship with them. They developed a pilot for us last year, which unfortunately didn’t make the fall schedule, but out of that came ‘Hi Honey, I’m Home.’ They were making it for themselves and wanted to explore the potential for it also airing on network television, and because of our relationship, they broughtit to us.”’ Bloomberg claims the concept of ABC and Nickelodeon running the same ‘‘Hi Honey’’ installment “‘didn’t seem to be very problematic, but I just think in terms of trying to get fresh programming on thenetworks from people who have a different point of view, it made sense to go to Nickelodeon and MTV, ” Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah |