Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

In the news

New CNN show will go on without Novak

CNN rolls out Wolf Blitzer at the head of new program Situation Room on Monday, but he'll have to do without Robert Novak, who was suspended Thursday night for uttering a barnyard obscenity and walking off the set of Inside Politics.

CNN announced in July Blitzer would be joined regularly by Paul Begala, James Carville, and others, including Novak. But on Thursday night, Novak lost his temper during a discussion about U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris' Senate ambitions when Carville's needled him.

"He's got to show the right-wingers that he's got backbone," Carville said. "Go ahead, the Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching. Show them you're tough."

Novak replied: "I think that's (expletive), and I hate that. Just let it go." Then he walked off the live show.

On Friday, CNN told the Associated Press that Novak has been asked to "take some time off."

Novak has been under fire for his role in identifying CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and President Bush critic Joseph Wilson.

"I had told him in advance that we were going to ask him about the CIA leak case," anchor Ed Henry said near the end of the show. "He was not here for me to be able to ask him about that, and hopefully we'll be able to ask him about that in the future."

Situation Room will air weekdays from 3-6 p.m. and is promoted as a way to combine traditional reporting "with the newest innovative online resources such as blogs, Web sites and podcasts."

Viewers asked for it, now they're going to get it. Belleair's Hulk Hogan and his family are coming back to VH1 early next year for 12 new episodes of the celebreality show Hogan Knows Best.

Hogan (a.k.a. Terry Bollea) scored with viewers as the overprotective dad dealing with daily hassles, marking VH1's highest-rated series debut when the first episode aired July 10. The cable network ordered a new season that's four episodes longer than this summer's run.

The series is in steady reruns on VH1, with the last new episode to air Sept. 4. Still to come are four fresh shows, including one where Hogan and wife, Linda, get away for a romantic interlude, and Hogan takes on City Hall in a real-life battle over noisy animals he has kept on his property.

Army Archerd, the genteel Variety columnist whose three-dot dispatches helped make Hollywood gossip an art form, will soon be retiring the column he has written for 52 years, the trade paper said in Thursday's edition.

The announcement said that the final column by Archerd, 83, would be published on Sept. 1, but that he would continue to contribute articles and work on his memoirs.

Peter Bart, the editor in chief of Variety, said Archerd's twice-weekly "Just for Variety" column - which, over the years, touched on items from the major, like Rock Hudson's battle with AIDS, to the minor, like the latest starlet to land a part (or a boyfriend) - would be discontinued.

"There could be no replacement for Army, and no one will replace him," Bart said from his office in Los Angeles. "His niche and talents are very special."

Reached by telephone, Archerd seemed upbeat. "I will have the time now to go through the 53 years at Variety," he said. "I've got 50 years of show biz to go through. I've got plenty to write about."

[Last modified August 6, 2005, 01:35:13]