UPN Announces Its Amish Show Is Ready to Bow

LOS ANGELES, July 8

Scratch, scratch, squeak, squeak! That scurrying noise you hear is the sound of the rats at UPN running for cover after announcing they will debut the controversial "Amish in the City" reality series in just three weeks.

"We're proud to present this series," UPN entertainment president Dawn Ostroff said in Thursday's announcement. This comes as something of a surprise because she's been hiding this series like a detainee at Guantanamo since January. That was when she and her boss, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, announced UPN was developing a series in which it would tempt a bunch of Amish kids to leave the fold by having them move in with a group of "mainstream young adults" of UPN's choosing -- you can just imagine -- while the cameras record their activities. Sort of "Witness" meets "The Real World."

At the time Moonves said UPN was developing the project because "we couldn't do 'The Beverly Hillbillies' " and besides, "the Amish don't have as good a lobbying group." The "Beverly Hillbillies" reference is to a reality series that CBS -- which, like UPN, is owned by Viacom -- planned to foist on the public, in which some real live Appalachian rubes would be jetted to Beverly Hills for a year with CBS trotting them out for the amusement of the local gentry and, of course, millions of TV viewers.

In Thursday's announcement, UPN said that its Amish and non-Amish gang had shacked up in an ultra-modern Hollywood Hills home and that its mainstream young adults of choice included a "handsome swim teacher," a "fashion-forward party girl," a "colorful club promoter," a "busboy/musician," an "inner-city student" and a "strict vegan. " During their encounter, the youths made a trip to the ocean, rode a helicopter to a resort island and walked the red carpet at a Hollywood movie premiere. UPN also included some mentally disabled folks in the fun and games; the network says that among the housemates' scheduled activities was "working with the mentally disabled."

Can't wait.

UPN upstaged PBS's day at the opening of Summer TV Press Tour 2004 here with its little programming bomb, for which PBS chief Pat Mitchell should be grateful. Mitchell dropped a bomb of her own when she told critics Thursday that the public broadcasting network gave CNN show host and political analyst Tucker Carlson a PBS program because otherwise the poor dear would only have the one opportunity in his career, which is just unfair.

You know, you just can't make up stuff this good.

"Tucker Carlson already has a show. He already has a platform, so rather than differentiating yourself from the other outlets, you start to look more like them," commented one critic to the woman who heads the If We Don't Do It Who Will network, dedicated, Mitchell has said, to giving voice to those who can't get theirs heard on those other networks.

"Well, the show that Tucker does for us is not at all like the show he does for CNN," Mitchell responded. "And I think, why are we limiting him to being able to do only one thing in his life?"

A couple of minutes later, she added: "I don't know why you'd want to box Tucker in to having only one opportunity in his career." Mitchell apparently is unaware that Carlson's career also includes the opportunity of contributing to Esquire magazine and that in the past he has been afforded the opportunity to cover politics for such publications as the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

She denied that the show was the result of efforts by Corporation for Public Broadcasting chief Michael Pack, a former documentary filmmaker with ties to the Bush administration, to get a conservative talk show on the network. A few weeks before, the New Yorker published an article in which Pack, who 1 1/2 years ago pitched to Mitchell a show called "Lynne Cheney's History Book," is said to be credited with saying he pushed for Carlson to get the gig. On Thursday, Mitchell insisted that of four pilot shows produced to fill the 10 p.m. Friday slot, Carlson's was the best.