Ted Danson

It's official: "The Simple Life" back for 2nd season on Fox ... NBC counters Super Bowl with "Queer Eye" ... Ted Danson, "Becker" ending its run this season ---------- Edited by RedEye staff ([email protected])

TODAY: Mun2 exec Moises Velez moderates a panel on reaching the Latino audience presented as part of the Intl. Documentary Assn.'s Doc U series. Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater. Documentary.org/doc-u WEDNESDAY: Lena Dunham, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Matthew Weiner and Glen Mazzara are among the scribes taking part in the Sublime Primetime panel sesh with Emmy-nommed writers. Writers Guild Theater. WGFoundation.org FRIDAY: Heifer Intl. fetes Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson at its Beyond Hunger...

Now that Shelley Long has decided to leave "Cheers" (8 p.m. Thursdays on NBC-Ch. 5), don`t count on seeing Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane tie the knot on this season's finale. Insiders are saying there's no way they`re going to let Sam go through with the wedding and end up without a wife next season.

Let's stipulate that ABC Family isn't trying to reinvent the sitcom, and that nobody has cornered the cute-baby market, or the concept of having single men raising one. Even with that level of generosity, "Baby Daddy" is as stale as an old Diaper Genie, a series of poopy one-liners, powdered with little "Aw"-inducing moments of heart. While the concept ought to be a fertile one, there's not enough duct tape in the world -- the guys' preferred method of holding diapers together -- to make the show more than gratingly...

Holly Robinson Peete ("Hangin' with Mr. Cooper") will guest-star in Sunday's "Pacific Blue" (USA, 7 p.m.) as a schoolteacher trapped -- on a beach, naturally -- with a crazed gunman. - Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen ("Ink"), Drew Carey ("The Drew Carey Show"), Quincy Jones and Lea Thompson ("Caroline in the City") will be presenters at the "23rd Annual People's Choice Awards," airing Sunday on CBS. Don Johnson ("Nash Bridges") and Roma Downey ("Touched by an Angel") host.

TORONTO (Reuters) - The finish area of a World Cup ski cross race that claimed the life of Canadian Nik Zoricic was described as a "death trap" on Wednesday by the skier's family who are demanding an independent investigation into his death. The family said they will remove any threat of a lawsuit if the International Ski Federation (FIS), Alpine Canada and Swiss police conduct a full investigation into the March 10 death of the 29 year old in Grindelwald,...

Hot spots When Ted Danson showed up at last weekend's opening of Toontown in Disney- land, he was without wife Casey, without friend Whoopi Goldberg, and without the rug he usually wears on "Cheers" to camouflage his bald spot. . . . Vice President Al Gore is keeping his scalp spot pretty well hidden (except from those who watch him from a balcony).

The success of last year's "Dolphin Tale"proved this theorem: Imperiled marine animals plus true-ish story plus workmanlike sincerity plus happy ending equals a hit. Will the equation hold for director Ken Kwapis' whale movie"Big Miracle"? The film is surprisingly good, though the "surprisingly" part betrays certain low-bar expectations going in. So be it. Kwapis, whose recent screen work ("He's Just Not That Into You,""The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants")...

Showtime has assembled a cast of Ted Danson, Steven Weber, Marg Helgenberger, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Dennehy and Matt Keeslar for "Thanks of a Grateful Nation," a film that focuses on the effects of gulf war syndrome. Producer Tracey Alexander tells Variety the film is also an indictment of the dealing of chemical weapons to countries like Iraq.

Beastie Boys "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two" 3 stars (out of 4) The Beastie Boys were once unlikely innovators, whether taking the art of sampling to previously unimagined heights with the Dust Brothers on "Paul's Boutique" (1989) or fusing punk and funk with rap on "Check Your Head" (1992). Now they traffic in affable, danceable, self-deprecating '80s nostalgia. The notoriously bratty trio has hung on long enough to embrace what once would've been...

Martin Short first practiced law in 1979 as the naive, bumbling Tucker Kerlin in the short-lived but beloved sitcom "The Associates." Five years later, he slipped into the snakeskin of Nathan Thurm, a chain-smoking, paranoid corporate attorney who made regular appearances on "Saturday Night Live." So you would expect that the comic's latest legal turn on TV would have him greasing his hair into a pompadour and pratfalling into the jury box. But the appointment is "Damages," one of...

Poor Sam Malone (played by Ted Danson). He's dealt another blow to his ego on Thursday's episode of "Cheers," at 8 p.m. on NBC-Ch. 5, when a celebrity auction doesn`t go the way he expected. He donates his old baseball jersey to the auction, and the reaction is "Sam who?" Nobody makes a bid on it. Sam recovers, of course, and in a future episode, he puts his ego aside to help Diane (Shelley Long) cheer up Frasier (Kelsey Grammer), who hasn`t been the...

Ted Danson strolled along Santa Monica Beach, a bit overdressed among the sneaker-and-sandal crowd in his crisp button-down and dark blazer draped over one shoulder. As he studied the horizon, an incognito Dave Chappelle caught his eye and Danson deftly sidestepped a clutch of oncoming tourists to present himself before the comedian. "How are you?" he said, offering his hand and tilting that closely cropped snow-white head of his. "You are like a hero in my family." ...

I recently read somewhere that if Ted Danson and Shelley Long hadn't been picked to star in "Cheers," two other actors were ready and waiting to play Sam and Diane. Do you know who they were? As the story goes, William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn were the second choices for the parts. Devane went on to a long run as Greg Sumner on "Knots Landing," then followed that with the short-lived "Phenom" and "The Monroes"; Eichhorn has surfaced a lot as a guest star in this...

Northwestern's new president is equally fluent in the economics of higher education and the pass-coverage abilities of Sherrick McManis. A self-described "sports nut," Morton O. Schapiro spent Saturday at Purdue, cheering on the Wildcats from their sideline. He lobbied the refs for holding calls on the right tackle assigned to Corey Wootton and gently razzed the zebras for mismarking a punt. "We lost 4 yards," Schapiro said later. "Trust me." Schapiro and his son, Matt, rode...

From "The TV Guide TV Book," by Ed Weiner (HarperCollins, 1992), come these various and sundry television show costs: 1. Ted Danson's salary ("Cheers")-$450,000 a show 2. Andy Griffith's suits ("Matlock")-$2,000 a year 3. "Designing Women" wardrobe-$12,500 a show 4. Burning wagon ("Wagon Train")-$3,000 5. Doughnuts ("Twin Peaks")-$150 a week 6. Mr. Rogers` sneakers-$29.95 7. Stopwatch ("60 minutes")-$130

Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, has turned his long short story "Bored to Death" into a situation comedy, also titled, though less aptly, "Bored to Death" (8:30 p.m. Sunday, HBO). Each version revolves around a character named Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn-based writer of fiction and nonfiction who is having a hard time finishing his second novel and is drinking too much white wine -- which is his idea of drinking less alcohol -- and...

The premiere of "Cosby" on CBS had the best rating of any 8 p.m. (7 p.m. CDT) debut in 12 years, getting about 16.8 million homes to tune in for Bill Cosby's return to sitcoms. The last show with a more-watched premiere was its now-legendary forerunner, "The Cosby Show" on NBC, in 1984. "Cosby" scored a rating of 17.3 (about 16.8 million TV households) Monday night and a hefty 27 share of all homes watching TV at that half-hour. "Cosby" is being counted on to raise the fortunes of...