By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, January 10, 2008

NBC has finalized plans to fill the gaping hole in this Sunday's prime-time schedule left by the wreck that was the Golden Globe Awards, now known as "that one-hour news conference naming Globe winners to be covered exclusively by NBC News."

Before that, starting at 7 p.m., Matt Lauer will host a two-hour "Dateline NBC" special called "Going for Gold," on which will be interviewed: nominees James McAvoy, Sally Field, Ellen Page, Amy Adams, Kyra Sedgwick, William Shatner, Nikki Blonsky, Patricia Arquette and others.

That's NBC's way of thumbing its nose at the Writers Guild of America, which had asked the Screen Actors Guild to advise its nominated members not to participate in the "Dateline" walk-up show, which, yes, will run twice as long as the actual Golden Globes "ceremony."

Lauer will be teamed with Kathy Griffin, who has been deputized by NBC News to provide commentary for the two-hour walk-up show, which also will feature the NBC "Football Night in America" gang predicting Globe winners.

The Globes News Conference will air at 9 p.m., the remnant of the four-hour orgy of booze-fueled red-carpet arrivals, acceptance speeches and Jack Nicholson sightings that had attracted 20 million-ish viewers to NBC annually since 1996.

This leaves only the 10-11 p.m., formerly Golden-Globed, hour as yet unfilled on Sunday. NBC initially hoped to plug it with "Access Hollywood"-ish coverage of post-Globe parties. But since nearly all of them have been canceled, NBC News announced yesterday the final hour will be filled with a rerun of "American Gladiators."

The trophy show was gutted after the Writers Guild of America, which is on strike against the producing companies over "new media" residuals, refused to give producer Dick Clark Productions a waiver and announced it would instead picket the show. The Screen Actors Guild then announced it had canvassed its members, who almost unanimously said they would not cross the picket line. NBC announced this week it would cancel the usual ceremony but salvage the Globes as a one-hour "news conference" that print reporters may attend, but NBC News will be the only broadcaster allowed in.

As NBC tried to salvage its coverage of the trophy show, the Screen Actors Guild was asking its nominated members not to do interviews with "Dateline."

"We're well aware that NBC is attempting to evade the strike by taping interviews with celebrities under the guise of a 'news' program," Jeff Hermanson, assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, told The TV Column.

"We consider that 'struck' work."

The guild says it will picket the Globes, presumably to make sure NBC does not try to sneak in any A-listers, who might lend a couple of ratings points to the news conference.

* * *

Sunday's "American Gladiator" rerun may wind up being NBC's most watched show that night, judging by CBS's ratings results with its Tuesday night broadcast of the strike-ravaged People's Choice Awards.

After the Writers Guild declared the awards a "struck" show, it was reconfigured into a Home Shopping Networkesque nightmare that lacked an audience, lacked stars, lacked everything except Queen Latifah locked in a room wearing an evening gown, prattling hysterically to the camera about "The People" and introducing taped acceptance speeches given by winners with varying degrees of train-wreckedness.

Best of all was Reese Witherspoon, named favorite female movie star. In her canned acceptance speech from the set of her new flick, Witherspoon said she was soooooooo sorry she "couldn't be there" but she was soooooo busy on the set of her new movie, which she named about three times.

In his acceptance speech for the favorite leading man trophy, Joaquin Phoenix attempted to give a nod to striking writers, presenting his speech silently, using placards with words on them. Except he spelled his own name wrong, which seems to suggest someone else wrote the cards for him. Wouldn't that person be, um, a writer?

The People's Choice Awards show clocked its smallest audience on record -- just under 6 million viewers, compared with last year's more than 11 million viewers -- and plunged more than 50 percent among viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, who are the Holy Grail of advertisers.

On the other hand, that 5.96 million audience for the People's Choice Awards is still about 5.4 million more viewers than watched Monday night's Critics' Choice Awards, which was not struck by the Writers Guild and therefore was fairly thick with celebs, including George Clooney, Brangelina, Daniel Day-Lewis, Don Cheadle, D.L. Hughley, Mrs. Tom Cruise.

Despite the star wattage, the Critics' Choice Awards show tanked (in fairness, its best-ever number was just 3 million viewers, which it clocked two years ago on the now-defunct WB network) because it was on cable.

Not only that, it was on VH1 -- totally off-brand. Had Tila Tequila served up the Critics' Choice Awards version of all-around-nice-guy-of-the-year trophy to Cheadle, instead of George Clooney doing the honors, we might be telling another ratings story today.