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By SHARON FINK, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 6, 2002

MAYBE ABC STILL IS DESTINED FOR LAST PLACE: Some people are getting irritated at ABC's efforts to promote Push, Nevada, one of the network's new fall shows. And some of those people are at ABC's Good Morning America.

When weatherman Tony Perkins was doing his schmooze-with-the-crowd thing outside GMA's New York studio Wednesday morning, he encountered members of the Push, Nev., hockey team, who were so enthusiastic they tried to give Perkins a Push hockey T-shirt.

No, there is no such town as Push, Nev. Yes, the hockey team members were actors hired by a marketing company that was hired by ABC's entertainment division to promote the show. And by all accounts, Perkins, and the rest of the GMA people and ABC's news division, which runs GMA, had no idea they were being used.

An ABC News spokesman declined to comment to Variety, but the show biz newspaper says GMA executives had a little chat with their ABC entertainment counterparts when they realized what had happened. They were assured nothing like that would happen again.

"(Push, Nevada) is a show that is very different, and we are trying to market it in a different way," an ABC spokesman tells Variety. "(The marketing company) didn't take into account the kinds of questions that could arise by enacting this sort of strategy within the same company (airing the show)."

Meaning the Push people should have been sent to the Today show instead. Or CBS's Early Show, but no one would have seen them.

* * *

MAYBE THEY WANT HER "STAR WARS' LOOK: Most teenage girls want to look like actor Natalie Portman, according the ym magazine's first reader beauty poll.

Portman, Star War's Padme Amidala, was the big winner with 42 percent of the votes cast by 1,000 girls ages 13 to 19. Second was Jennifer Lopez (15 percent). And either the Osbourne family has moved off the hot list or these girls have gone through their pink-hair stage: Kelly Osbourne got 5 percent support.

Topping the worst-look list was flamboyant rapper Lil' Kim (47 percent), followed by Christina Aguilera (34 percent), last seen at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a 2-inch-long skirt and strips of cloth crisscrossing her breasts.

* * *

MAYBE WORLD PEACE IS POSSIBLE: Also when last seen, Aguilera looked like she wanted to smash Eminem with the MTV award she presented him. Once backstage, she ripped into him, New York's Daily News says, venting some of her distress over being the subject of an untrue and unflattering reference on one of his songs.

When Aguilera was finished, Eminem hugged her, and she hugged him back.

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