7:40 a.m.

6 pounds, 13 ounces

New York University Hospital

It’s a writ of baby-us corpus! Court TV copy editor Susie Felber endured 14 hours of unproductive labor before opting for a C-section. “At this point, I don’t care if you take him out of my nostril,” Ms. Felber, who is also a stand-up comic, told her doctors. “My recovery was a nightmare,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter, because I get this great door prize”—an ivory-skinned, lanky baby with a full head of hair that is beginning to fall out. “He looks like an extra in The Day After,” commented the new mom, 35, married for five years to Edward Holland, 42, a Web editor for The Financial Times who’s “really well educated, and very British and serious. The baby turns him into complete goo.” Longtime West Villagers, the couple conceived their son the first week they moved to a two-bedroom in (gasp) Weehawken, N.J. “The office became a nursery—boom!—overnight,” Ms. Felber said.

Great news: Bitches are back!

Being noble and self-denying and altruistic is totally over. Self-involved disco slags with flippy bangs are suddenly all the rage! The caring celeb—that gal who cannot accept an award without professing how “humbled” she is by it—is suddenly déjà vu. The era when even Ginger Spice became a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador appears to have finally come to an end.

Personally, I am delighted to see the return of the overachieving, stop-at-nothing, nakedly ambitious media whore. The holier-than-thou movement was starting to rot the elastic on my sequined headband.

Re sequins, let’s talk about the reigning queen of the new bitch trend: Madonna.

“New York is not for little pussies who scream,” singeth Madge on her new, utterly great Confessions on a Dance Floor CD, adding, “If you don’t like my attitude then you can F off.” This new and delicious Madge incarnation—trashy 70’s hairdo, fishnets, hooker blousons, spangled shoes—feels a lot more authentic than the English lady of the manor, the Kabbalist or—most preposterous of all—the demure children’s author in the print shift dress and pastel cardigan.

Madge, you have finally figured it out: We love you because you have clawed your way to the top. You are a driven, talented bitch. You wanted fame, glamour, adulation and wealth, and you wanted it for one reason only: It was your reward for being more fabulous than the rest of us. Voilà!

Madonna is not the only bitch in town at the moment.

One of the c**tiest characters ever to strut the boards has finally arrived in the U.S. I’m talking about the wondrous, gin-swilling Beverly—as interpreted by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the revival of the 70’s Mike Leigh cult classic Abigail’s Party (the Acorn Theater, 410 West 42nd Street between Ninth and 10th avenues, 212-279-4200).

I would strongly advise you not to miss this demented production. Ms. Jason Leigh’s imperfect accent and her whiny voice, though jarring at first, ultimately work in her favor to create an even more bitchy Beverly than the Alison Steadman original. Watching Ms. Jason Leigh, whose hairdo is tellingly and startlingly identical to Madge’s new ’do, I was transported back to an era when media folk were mercifully apolitical and nobody expected them to play a role in solving the world’s problems.

For those of you who are too fabulous to go to the theater and experience this brilliant play, there is no shortage of nouveau bitchery on television: Court TV crime-buster Nancy Grace, Julie Cooper-Nichol of The O.C. and Tanya Turner on Footballers’ Wives, to name but three.

Now back to Madge: Not everyone loves the new back-on-top, hard-as-nails Mrs. Ritchie. Writing on Salon last week, that clever bitch Camille Paglia expressed her concern that Madonna “is starting to morph into the mature Joan Crawford of Torch Song, still ferociously dancing but with her fascist willpower signaled by brute, staring eyes and fixed jawline.” In a kind and caring way, Ms. Paglia goes on to posit the notion that Madonna runs the risk of “turning into a pasty powdered crumpet like the aging Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (What gives? I thought you Italian bitches always stuck together?)

Madge, don’t listen to her. She crazy. We love your new CD and we adore the insanely careerist you. A Garboesque retreat from the public gaze would deprive us all of so much in the coming years. Powdery crumpet, anyone?

So now let’s talk about that über-bitch hairdo. I, for one, am giving it a major thumbs-up. Y’all have been sporting that Kate Moss seaweedy look for far too long. It’s time to bitch it up.

I consulted top celebrity hairdresser Jimmy Paul—Madge’s scalp is one of the few he has not touched—for tips on how to replicate the Madge/ Abigail’s Party look.

“I call it a Farrah-slash-Gilda, as in the Rita Hayworth movie. It’s all about a deep side part and loads of Bumble and Bumble Thickening Spray,” said Mr. Paul when I grilled him during a Barneys ad shoot last week. He continued, “It’s not as hard as it looks. Put electric rollers in at a 45-degree angle. While they cook—and I do mean cook!—you will have plenty of time to paint your face.”

Burn, baby, burn!

Even without the new digs, Mr. Ailes’ appointment earlier this month to head the Fox Television Stations group marks him as the ascendant figure in the post-Lachlan realignment of News Corp.

Mr. Ailes’ newest territory is the most profitable unit of News Corp., bringing in $900 million in operating income last year, or more than one quarter of the company’s total operating income. But unlike the Fox Broadcasting Company or the Fox News Channel, it remains one of the more vaguely known parts of the Murdoch empire, with no Homer Simpson or Bill O’Reilly to embody it.

The station group has been around since 1986, when Mr. Murdoch began buying up local television stations to carry his Fox network programming around the country.

Eventually, buying affiliates from independent owners and from other station groups, News Corp. amassed 35 stations. Among those were pairs of stations in nine markets—including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—which allowed Fox to save money by sharing a certain amount of staff.

All told, the Fox Stations Group now accounts for around 20 percent of the Fox network’s affiliates and employs some 5,300 people. It is the second-largest station group in the country, behind only Viacom’s station group.

Yet it has largely remained an aggregation of individual stations, not a streamlined national brand reaching out to local communities. Said one high-ranking executive who has worked both with Mr. Ailes and in local television, “That’s what’s missing at Fox, and that’s the first thing Roger’s gonna try to do.”

Mr. Ailes, a product of Warren, Ohio, has a history of connecting to small-town America. After producing the Ohio-based Mike Douglas show, the young Mr. Ailes made his name by putting Richard Nixon on television in 1968, making him look appealing to local viewers.

Building a station-group identity would be another feat of packaging. Right now, the affiliates get two hours of prime-time programming from Fox on weekdays, seven hours of kids and nighttime programming on Saturdays, four hours on Sundays, and an assortment of sports events and specials. That’s less than what ABC, NBC and CBS offer their affiliates, because the Big Three also have morning and late-night shows and national evening newscasts.

The individual Fox affiliates fill up the rest of the day with local newscasts and syndicated programming, either first-run or reruns.

In another bit of centralization, Mr. Ailes will also oversee Twentieth Television, which produces some of this first-run syndicated programming and distributes off-network programming.

And Mr. Ailes will remain busy running the top-ranking Fox News Channel he helped build from scratch. But to varying degrees, the job of heading a stations group can be a hands-off job.

Mr. Ailes’ rough organizational equivalent at Sinclair, which owns 61 stations (including 20 Fox affiliates), would be David Smith, the company’s president and C.E.O. Mr. Smith is described by his company as a big picture, long-term strategic thinker; day-to-day operations are run by chief operating officer Steve Marks. Mr. Marks is an approximate analog to Jack Abernethy, C.E.O. of the Fox Stations Group, and Mr. Ailes’ right-hand man and former deputy at Fox News Channel.

Each Fox Group station has a general manager, who reports up the corporate ladder to Mr. Abernethy, who reports to Mr. Ailes, who reports jointly to Mr. Murdoch and News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin.

Much has already been made about the initial challenges that Mr. Ailes will face in the job: what to do (if anything) with morning and late-night time slots; how to convince Nielsen to change its people meters to boost Fox-friendly urban-viewership numbers; how to make local news more watchable; how (or whether) to proceed with the development of a Fox business channel; how to balance his new responsibilities with his old ones at Fox News.

Said one insider: “I don’t think there will be time for a lot of golf.”

Over linguine with truffle oil and two Dewar’s on the rocks, Henry S. Schleiff laid out his vision for the future of television news: less God-like monotone, more Nancy Grace.

“The audience doesn’t need a didactic voice,” Mr. Schleiff said. “The audience wants a friend who’s smart, who’s credible, who’s Diogenes—but a cool Diogenes—who says, ‘Here’s the story. Here’s my way in. Agree or disagree, but here’s my analysis.’”

Henry S. Schleiff is not—at the moment—a broadcast-news executive. He is chairman of Court TV and, at 57, one of the nation’s leading purveyors of human misadventure.

Though he was talking about Edward R. Murrow, his network broadcasts salacious trials interspersed with antagonistic commentary and programming themed around the judicial system.

And it works: In seven years, Mr. Schleiff has boosted Court TV’s viewership by 55 million people. He has become a queen-maker to the slightly off-kilter (on Ms. Grace, one of his most popular anchors, his stated position is “You go girl!”). He has given America more Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson than it can handle—or not quite enough.

Consequently, and because his capacity for self-promotion is as discomfittingly perfect as his smile, Mr. Schleiff has become one of those hot shots whom everyone assumes has preordered curtains to fit the windows on the executive floor of 30 Rock. He has been talked about as a possible successor to Neal Shapiro as president of NBC News, or of a conglomerate that also includes CNBC and MSNBC. He is also rumored to have his eye on Jonathan Klein’s job as president of CNN.

That he has no discernable network news background doesn’t seem to factor in (though, as Frank Biondi, his onetime mentor and the former chairman of Viacom, said, “News folks can get awfully snippy at that”).

Said one broadcast network executive: “One of the biggest parlor games in Manhattan is guessing what big job Henry Schleiff is going to do next.”

While Mr. Schleiff doesn’t openly participate in this game, he is an enthusiastic spectator: sitting back, sipping scotch, subtly goading the gossip with evasive one-liners and non-denial denials. His official word on other jobs is: “I don’t see anything right now on the horizon that I think personally and totally selfishly would provide as much fun, challenge and interest as I see coming up on Court TV.”

In the words of Susan Krakower, the senior vice president of prime-time programming at CNBC and a close friend and former employee of Mr. Schleiff’s: “That’s a bunch of bullshit if I ever heard it.”

Mr. Schleiff is not some newfangled television executive. On the contrary, he is distinctly old-fashioned, of the same mold as Leslie Moonves, Fred Silverman and Brandon Tartikoff.

“I would say he was born with a William Paley gene and a Shecky Green gene,” said Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC Nightly News and a Schleiff acolyte. “He was born with a ton of personality and the ability to navigate a room full of very important people and an industry where knives are always drawn. I will say he has an increasingly rare quality in television. I think he has vision.”

That vision may have carried him as far a person can go at Court TV. When Mr. Schleiff took over in 1998, the channel was ranked 44th of 44 ad-supported, Nielsen-rated television networks. Once a channel by lawyers and for lawyers, it had become a channel by lawyers and for whatever insomniacs and potheads happened to cruise by, to the tune of a 0.1 rating, on average. Now it regularly rates a 0.9 and frequently ranks in the top 12.

“The good thing about cable is it’s still the Wild West,” Mr. Schleiff said one recent morning in his tchotchke-laden corner office at Court TV headquarters in midtown. Behind him, a television on mute showed a man on trial for attempted homicide, apparently involving some drunken gunplay. The accused fidgeted on the stand. Mr. Schleiff twitched gleefully in his armchair. “You can still experiment with cable. You can still try things. As long as you understand what your audience comes to you for, they give you pretty wide leeway.”

In his first moves as head of the network, Mr. Schleiff bought the rights to popular syndicated dramas, such as Homicide, and set about wooing personalities, including Catherine Crier and Dominick Dunne, to host their own shows.

“Henry pays attention,” said Ms. Crier, who had worked at Court TV previously and was lured back in October 1999. “He makes a point of working with people, not working over them, which happens to be my own personal managing philosophy. I find it inspiring.”

“He’s great to work for if you’re a woman,” said Ms. Krakower. “My job with Henry was the last job I ever loved.”

“Henry is one of the most charming people I’ve ever met,” said Mr. Dunne. “He is hilariously funny. He misses nothing. I happen to be several of those things myself. We got along from the first day that we met.”

Mr. Schleiff, he said, calls him “Domster.”

In fact, Mr. Schleiff has pet names for many of his adult male friends. At lunch one day at Michael’s, from his regular table—table 27—Mr. Schleiff identified the grizzled industry types around the room as if they were Labrador puppies in a cardboard box. In the course of this tour, CBS publicist Gil Schwartz, a man known to occasionally display the temperament and facial expressions of a bear, was described as “adorable.”

Between bites of his regular Cobb salad, Mr. Schleiff talked about his latest project: Court TV’s recent rebranding. Through a complicated process of television meiosis, a single network divided into two this summer: Court TV News, which includes the daytime trial coverage; and Seriously Entertaining, which includes the original series and movies shown at night. First the headlines, then the loosely fictionalized programming that’s been ripped from them.

“I think the stories that we can cover on Court TV are just so right for these times,” he said. “People get the importance of it. People get the value of seeing these trials. And if you tell the story well, if you combine compelling execution with high stakes and importance, then I think you have the prescription for a very successful network.”

Or a somewhat more successful network newscast?

When Mr. Schleiff talks about how to improve television news, he does it in the way Dan Rather might address the challenges of writing a sitcom: by going with what he knows. That may mean glossing over sticking points for television newshounds—such as the issue of leadership on the evening news, of an anchor who tells viewers which stories are most important—in favor of a programmer’s sensibility. How do you get more eyeballs at 6:30? Give the people what they want: drama, pathos, the good stuff.

That’s not to say Mr. Schleiff is in favor of replacing political coverage with pop-star molestation-trial analysis. He said that he’s most proud of the advocacy work he’s done since coming to Court TV: the Voting Rights Act symposium he went to in Washington recently; the cases he has argued—unsuccessfully as of late—to open up federal courtrooms to video cameras; the laws he has fought to change; the other advocates he has honored.

“He’s a bright light in the media world, where there aren’t too many bright lights these days,” said Sherron S. Watkins, the Enron whistle-blower and the recipient of a Court TV Scales of Justice award. “I think he’s trying to maintain a network that does things a little differently,” she said, “that doesn’t necessarily cater to the imperative to keep everything short, quick and entertaining.”

Mr. Schleiff grew up on Long Island, the child of a financier and a stay-at-home mom. Little Henry traveled a smooth trajectory from the cradle to the University of Pennsylvania to the Manhattan office of Davis, Polk & Wardwell.

During his six years at Davis Polk, he subscribed to Variety and took up writing freelance for Saturday Night Live. He had exactly two pieces of material accepted, for Guido Sarducci sketches, and neither, by his own admission, drew any great laughs. The experience did give him an opportunity to interact with writers and comedians, and it allowed him time to hone a specialty in dead-Pope humor. “There’s a very narrow window for that—only about once every 20 years when you can use this stuff,” he said. “But it’s timeless.”

In 1978, Mr. Schleiff went to work at Viacom, where he had a long career that involved several different jobs where he oversaw the production of many famous shows, and one notable but less famous Simpsons cousin called Twisted Puppet Theatre.

In 1998, Time Warner chief executive Richard Parsons approached him about the Court TV job. Per Mr. Schleiff’s request, Mr. Biondi said that he called Mr. Parsons with a reference: “There’s not one other job for C.E.O. in the country that I’d recommend Henry for, other than this one. He’s got something your network needs desperately: a sense of humor.”

Or, as Mr. Dunne, the Domster, put it: “So many television executives are withdrawn from everything. But Henry just mixes with everybody; it’s all the same to him. His humor’s the same. There’s people who save their funniest stuff for their most important friends, you know? And he’s the antithesis of that.”

Nothing seems to delight Mr. Schleiff more than flaunting his wit on the Manhattan and Hamptons party circuits. “I love New York City,” he said. “I love the pace of it. I love the people. I love the action, the turmoil. I would be hard-pressed to live anywhere else.”

To demonstrate his cocktail-party bona fides, and to sweet-talk the Mayor into a project about New York’s counterterrorism plans, Mr. Schleiff went one recent evening to a party for the New York entertainment community at Gracie Mansion.

Immediately upon arrival, Mr. Schleiff began a fruitless quest for scotch. Along the way, he figure-eighted through the party, swapping jokes with Homicide producer Tom Fontana, making nice with Cindy Adams and chatting up Katherine Oliver, the commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. His three-person entourage jogged to keep up.

Settling for white wine, he looped through the backyard tent, remembered everybody’s name, took a picture with Mayor Bloomberg.

Toward the end of the evening, a William Morris agent, all winks and nudges, approached with the latest rumor. “I heard your name in the trade winds,” he said. Mr. Schleiff smiled his neon-white, too-perfect smile. “Oh, everybody’s always talking,” he said, in a way that was almost convincingly sheepish. “But really, who knows?”

"It was like the skies opened up and everyone and their mother wanted to talk to me," said Ms. Dimond, who was wearing a bright blue First Lady–style dress suit, her face still caked in on-air makeup after a three-hour show.

It was Ms. Dimond whose camera crew first captured shots of the police cars entering Mr. Jackson's Neverland estate on Tuesday, Nov. 18, and it was she who first reported-on Larry King Live -that a warrant had been issued for Mr. Jackson's arrest.

Ms. Dimond, a contributor to Court TV, told her colleagues it would be "the mug shot heard around the world," and she was right. Consequently, Ms. Dimond's own mug came in a close second, appearing on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC and CNN, not to mention a half-dozen foreign outlets. On Monday, she acted as a correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America . Ten years ago, Ms. Dimond's dogged coverage for Hard Copy of Mr. Jackson's first child-molestation charge earned her a certain reputation-as a dogged tabloid reporter. Since then, the mainstream media has fully and completely embraced her kind of story: the pungent, tacky, rubber-necking spectacle of celebrity under extreme distress.

"I think it's inevitable," said Ms. Dimond. "I think too many people wrinkle their nose at the word 'tabloid.' It is what it is. And if people didn't respond to it, it wouldn't exist. But it does. Their denial that they've stepped into that realm is laughable. It's laughable. And it's not something they should be ashamed of-news isn't news if nobody watches. If you get on the air and start boring people with a script that makes them fall asleep, what good is that?"

Such was the Jackson story's draw that it bumped coverage of the conflict in Iraq out of the 24-hour news cycle-ABC's Nightline replaced coverage of President Bush's speech in Britain for Mr. Jackson-and even clawed its way above the fold in The Times two days in a row.

Ms. Dimond certainly got some level of satisfaction seeing her story flood every zone imaginable. Over the years, she said, she's been rebuffed by mainstream newsies because of her tabloid background. A decade ago, she said, Victor Neufeld, the longtime producer of 20/20 and now a morning producer at CBS, told her, "'You know, if you hadn't worked on that show [ Hard Copy ], you would have won a Peabody,' and I said, 'Well, O.K., maybe.' But from that point, 1994, I watched 20/20 , Dateline , 48 Hours -all of these shows-get more and more tabloid. They won't admit it, they wouldn't call themselves 'tabloid,' but that's exactly what they are. I would go to do stories and knock on somebody's door, say, 'Hi, I'm Diane Dimond,' and they'd say, 'Oh, I can't talk to you, I promised Diane Sawyer I'd talk to her.' I mean, that seriously was said to me.'"

Susan Zirinsky, the executive producer of CBS's 48 Hours -which also covered the Michael Jackson story on Saturday, Nov. 22-had no comment on being labeled a tabloid show, but she did admit that the public's appetite had changed over the years.

"I believe that the public's interest in things has varied," she said. "There is this incredible currency in celebrity, and magazine shows that are interested in stories that people are interested in are going to hit on these subjects. It's what we're supposed to do."

Ms. Zirinsky defined "tabloid" as a newspaper or TV show that is "likely to take things that are not truthful and, even with the barest of sources, promote that information." She also pointed out that The Times had run with the story, too.

The executive producer of Dateline NBC , David Corvo, also ran with the Jackson story and credited Ms. Dimond with breaking it in his program. He called her a "tenacious reporter." But Mr. Corvo said his show mixed popular stories with serious ones, which wasn't, by his definition, "tabloid."

"I'll have to leave it to Professor Dimond to decide what a tabloid is," he said. "There are techniques that tabloids use, like paying for interviews, which we don't do."

Then he added: "It was on the front page of The New York Times , for crying out loud!"

Ms. Dimond said that even the wizened news gods at 60 Minutes were, for all intents and purposes, doing what she considered tabloid journalism-but, she said, unlike their counterparts at other newsmagazines, executive producer Don Hewitt and co-editor Mike Wallace would readily admit it.

"Mike Wallace would be the first one to say to you, 'Yeah, I do tabloid,'" she said. "'I package it real nice, and look at my promos: They're tabloid through and through. They're the best in the business.'" Ms. Dimond said she was a friend of Mr. Wallace's, having worked with his stepson, film director Eames Yates, at Hard Copy in the early 1990's. Mr. Wallace was unavailable for comment, but a 60 Minutes spokesman said, "Not only did we invent the genre, we're still the gold standard by which other newsmagazines are measured."

Ms. Dimond got her start in television news at WCBS Channel 2 in New York in the mid-1980's, where she covered the "Baby M" surrogate-mother case. She went national with Hard Copy in 1990, covering the William Kennedy Smith rape trial, and then hit critical pay dirt with her coverage of the first Jackson case, which earned her star status in the tabloid market. It also earned her the ultimate tabloid accolade, a $100 million lawsuit by Mr. Jackson himself in 1995 against Hard Copy , which aired Ms. Dimond's interview with a woman who claimed a video existed of Mr. Jackson having sex with a 13-year-old boy. The judge dismissed Ms. Dimond from the suit.

Since then, she's worked closely with Geraldo Rivera at CNBC, hitched her wagon briefly to Roger Ailes' Fox News Channel, and most recently had her phone tapped by private investigator Anthony Pellicano because of her involvement with the Jackson case.

Despite the fact that the Jackson story made the cover of The Times , Ms. Dimond did distinguish between the newspaper's news values and her own.

"I'm in a different type of journalism," she said. "I don't know how many people are exposed to their product as opposed to my product, but I'm sure they've got a lot more supporters with a lot more education than the people who listen to mine. But I don't know … I don't want to slam The New York Times ."

Ms. Dimond said that populist news like the stuff on Fox served a purpose-it got people to watch news, which was why it was good.

"Everybody bemoans the fact that Fox News network is getting people to watch it," she said. "You know what? That's a good thing. Because at least they can form an opinion. If it's not an opinion that The New York Times happens to like, or the liberal media elite likes, well, that's too bad. America is not about one point of view. It just isn't."

While she may not get hired on 60 Minutes anytime soon, Ms. Dimond's latest coup has not gone unrewarded: On the day she spoke to NYTV, Court TV announced that Ms. Dimond would soon anchor its Thursday night prime-time program, Hollywood at Large .

Tonight, Court TV has a rerun of Forensic Files -you know, the one where they solve a murder case with the cat hair-but next week the show is dedicated to the Zodiac Killer case. For the record: The Zodiac Killer sent a hand-written letter to 60 Minutes in 1996, and Mr. Hewitt never aired a minute on the Zodiac story. Now that's will power! [Court TV, 23, 9:30 a.m.]

Thursday, Nov. 27

$ Recipe for the 77th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade :

1,000 cheerleaders, 500 clowns, 25 floats, 14 inflatable characters-not including Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker-12 marching bands, 10 novelty balloons, four toy floats, three "falloons" (a cold-air balloon-float hybrid-who knew?) and a handful of celebrities.

Turn volume off, let sit for 90 minutes. Warm. [WNBC, 4, 9 a.m.]

Friday, Nov. 28

$ Tonight, former Britney beau Justin Timberlake gives us a tour of his hometown in NBC's Justin Timberlake Down Home in Memphis . Mr. Timberlake recently told a reporter at a Jive Records teleconference about his average day:

"I usually sleep a lot. And I'll probably, you know, train for about an hour, maybe, you know-I like to work out on the road, do a little cardio. And, I don't know, me-my day consists of going to the venue and doing sound-check and then the meet-and-greet, and I usually end up doing a couple of radio interviews. And then about that time it's time for dinner and the show."

That's so weird, because that's, like, the exact same schedule as NYTV. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Saturday, Nov. 29

$ Did Justin Timberlake lose a bet to Bob Wright? Tonight he's back on NBC, hosting Saturday Night Live . [WNBC, 4, 11:30 p.m.]

Sunday, Nov. 30

y The producers of tonight's Comedy Central special for Richard Pryor insist the show isn't like those eerie Bob Hope 100th Birthday specials last spring, which in retrospect precluded the inevitable. Perhaps that's why they've called it Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, Motherfucker .

Still, it was a difficult show to make.

"It's very emotional for all of us," said Jennifer Lee Pryor, his wife twice over and the executive producer on the show. "But we didn't want to eulogize him. We didn't want to do that because there's plenty of time to go there. It's easy to go there, and people want to be sentimental, but you want to struggle against that because it just brings him down."

"I've cried more than once," she added.

Mr. Pryor, who turns 63 on Dec. 1, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, and has been confined to either a bed or a wheelchair for a number of years. His last appearance in public was at the Kennedy Center in 1998, when he received the Mark Twain Prize, although he still gets out to his local movie theater in Encino, Calif., every Friday. He saw Elf on Friday, Nov. 21.

"He loved it," said Ms. Pryor.

The hour-long special will feature a comic lineup of Mr. Pryor's spiritual offspring, admirers and Comedy Central mainstays, including Dave Chapelle, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart, Margaret Cho, Robert Townsend and Colin Quinn, each paying tribute and recalling the man's genius. Rapper Mos Def reads some of the poetry from Mr. Pryor's late-1970's diaries.

Mr. Pryor wasn't able to get involved in the project personally. His wife said he can still talk, but not much.

"He can, but he does it haltingly," she said. "He was pretty much monosyllabic until recently, but he's starting to use sentences again. There are times when I look at him and say, 'You motherfucker, you're fooling us.' He talks when he wants to talk. He's still the same person-he's just a sick person."

Ms. Pryor, the white, black-haired executrix of Mr. Pryor's estate, met the comic in 1977 and was first married to him in 1981, shortly after his attempted suicide by self-immolation. They were divorced a year later because of his erratic behavior, but eventually reconciled in 1984. Ten years later, Ms. Pryor wrote a book about her life with him, called Tarnished Angel , and two years ago they got remarried. She lives in a separate house a few minutes away from Mr. Pryor.

Ms. Pryor is now preparing Mr. Pryor's archival material for release, including four television shows and one special he did for NBC in 1977, which will be issued on DVD in March of 2004. She also sued and won the rights to his raw, late-1960's club recordings for the legendary Laff Records (some of his best material), which Rhino/Warner Records will release for the first time on CD next year.

For his part, Mr. Pryor is attended by a gaggle of Hispanic nurses and generally does a lot of hanging out with his dogs, a blond hound named Homer and an Australian shepherd mix named Spirit. Of course, Mr. Pryor watches a lot of Comedy Central, too.

" Crank Yankers is his favorite," she said. "Loves Crank Yankers . Loves Colin Quinn's show," Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn .

What does he think of today's young funny dudes?

"He loves Dave Chapelle, he loves Colin Quinn," she said. "He loves Tracy Morgan. He loves Cedric."

He recognizes his influence, she said, "but the truth is, he doesn't sit there and go, 'They all stole from me.' We all know. Those who know, know."

None of them can say "motherfucker" with quite the same conviction, though. [Comedy Central, 45, 10 p.m.]

Monday, Dec. 1

y Happy birthday, Mr. Pryor.

If you missed him the first time, he's on again tonight. [Comedy Central, 45, 10 p.m.]

Tuesday, Dec. 2

% The stars of the new Fox pseudo-reality show The Simple Life , Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie-perhaps you've heard of them-became fast friends while attending the prestigious Buckley School in Los Angeles, Calif. Paul Horovitz, the headmaster, has stated the values of the school on the official Web site:

"The Buckley Commitment-respect for others, kindness toward all, honesty, loyalty and self-reliance-will govern our conduct."

Let's just say these two may "accidentally" get erased from the alumni mailing list soon. Episode 1 brings further shame to the institution: When Ms. Hilton is introduced to an age-old water technology often used on farms, she asks, "What's a well for?"

Seriously. As an observant blogger recently pointed out: Stupid is the new smart! [FOX, 5, 8:30 p.m.]

Program title of the week: Angry Beavers . [Nickelodeon, 6, 2 P.M.]

Thursday, April 1

"Where should we put the Urine Guy?" a Court TV producer asked Lizz Winstead, the creator of the network's new show Snap Judgment . "Should we put him with the Marijuana Legalization Guy?" The Urine Guy, who sells his clean urine to drug-test-takers, is represented by one of the many index cards covering Ms. Winstead's office walls, summarizing story segments for her show: "Inmate who snores too loudly"; "Burglarizing vending machines in a women's bathroom"; "Carrying baby like a football."

Ms. Winstead, the co-creator of Comedy Central's The Daily Show , is much in demand for the news-parody and social-satire style of comedy she honed after 15 years of stand-up. Based on her Daily Show success, she was hired by Court TV to create Snap Judgment , a Daily Show - Talk Soup -type program poking fun at the legal system. The show premieres today, but next week she'll be out the door to develop a new show for Fox Television. Sitting in her office, crunching on Butter Rum Life Savers, Ms. Winstead is in an odd situation: She's launching a new program and, at the same time, she's getting ready to pack up and go.

Snap Judgment , hosted by the AM radio personality currently known as Lionel, is a novelty for Court TV, a satirical examination of the process it otherwise treats so reverently. The show contains court testimony from absurd lawsuits and profiles of obscure players in the legal profession. Though it will air weeknights, it is not as topical as The Daily Show ; it's taped two or three weeks in advance. It also contains commentary from "experts," but the network may need to be more judicious in its choice of subjects and guests: To comment on a pedestrian lawsuit about a neighbor playing rock music too loud, Snap Judgment retained the services of an unprepared Ozzy Osbourne impersonator from a Black Sabbath cover band. It didn't help that Lionel asked lame questions like, "You play rock music. Anyone ever tell you to turn it down?"

Of course, Court TV is limited in the guests it can draw from. "If you can't get Ozzy because you're Court TV, you get an Ozzy impersonator," said Ms. Winstead. Yet she's not trolling for big-name guests. "When celebrities come to town pumping their shit, they go on Letterman, Rosie, the Today show, The Daily Show and all those programs. I don't want to battle for that."

Ms. Winstead, who said she "is in her 30's," is as famous for leaving The Daily Show as she is for creating it. In January 1998, she walked away from the show after the host Craig Kilborn told Esquire , "To be honest, Lizz does find me very attractive. If I wanted her to blow me, she would." Mr. Kilborn was suspended, and ended up leaving the show soon after to launch a CBS late-night show that made its debut March 30. Though she will not comment on the specifics of leaving The Daily Show , Ms. Winstead said that most of the time she got along with Mr. Kilborn. "Everyone thinks I'm boycotting his show," she said, "but I'm curious to see what it's like."

Ironically, Mr. Kilborn's replacement, Jon Stewart, is a friend of Ms. Winstead. She was a segment producer on Mr. Stewart's syndicated talk show back in 1995, and she said she considered him to host The Daily Show originally, but he was too busy. Instead, Comedy Central chose Mr. Kilborn. "Craig was an amazing host, because he had this air of mystery," said Ms. Winstead. "You wondered, 'Is he in on this or not?'"

Since leaving The Daily Show , Ms. Winstead has been associated with several projects. During a summer in East Hampton, she wrote a sitcom with former Daily Show correspondent Brian Unger, but UPN didn't pick it up. And though it seems masochistic, she consulted on the pilot for The Man Show , an exercise in self-conscious misogyny that Comedy Central developed after ABC passed. "It was more ironic than just misogyny," she said. And as a bonus, she said, ABC sent her to a spa when it was over.

With Mr. Unger, she begins developing a news parody for Fox this month, a magazine show that will look at the events of the past week. (The Fox Broadcasting Company's new chief programmer, Doug Herzog, used to hold the same job at Comedy Central, and wooed Ms. Winstead.) On this show she will appear on-air, as she did at The Daily Show , and she may write the show solely with Mr. Unger. Oddly, for a show created by two women (Ms. Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg), the current writing staff of The Daily Show is 100 percent male. "To write good social satire, it has to be part of your makeup," said Ms. Winstead. "There are less women comedy writers, and out of that group, it's hard to find women for this particular genre." [Court TV, 40, 7:30 P.M.]

Friday, April 2

Yes? Marv Albert returns to national TV with the Lakers-Suns game at Phoenix. [TNT, 3, 8 P.M.]

Saturday, April 3

"Drugs played absolutely no part," said Marty Krofft about his creations, a colorful, hallucinogenic cast of characters that include H.R. Pufnstuf, the Bugaloos, Witchiepoo, Whoo Doo, Weenie the Genie, Kaptain Kool and the Kongs … and Richard Pryor. Even his name–Krofft–sounds like it came to a stoner in a daydream; actually, his ancestors simply made up the name long ago.

Mr. Krofft is one of the more successful producers of children's programming. Together with his brother Sid, he created a slew of shows in the 70's that still have fans today, many of whom believe there's a psychedelic influence to all those oversize puppets; "Kroffties," Mr. Krofft calls the fans. The brothers are enjoying a comeback of sorts: Beanbag toys of various Krofft characters are on their way in July. Rhino Home Video is releasing a three-volume box set of Krofft programs in May, including Land of the Lost, Far Out Space Nuts (with Bob Denver), The Lost Saucer (Ruth Buzzi, Jim Nabors), Lidsville (about a mysterious world of hats, with Charles Nelson Reilly as the evil Whoo Doo) and Richard Pryor's Saturday-morning effort, Pryor's Place .

And this morning, TV Land debuts a much-welcomed new series, Super Retrovision Saturdaze , a five-hour blast of Saturday-morning television from the 60's and 70's. Included are the Kroffts' H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund and the Seamonsters ; Terrytoon's Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse and a slate of animated series spun off from other TV shows or from real life: The Jackson Five , Star Trek , The Harlem Globetrotters , The Brady Kids and Fonz and the Happy Days Gang , which followed Henry Winkler's character as he traveled through time. Plus the network will sandwich in some old Saturday morning TV commercials, or "retromercials," for sugary breakfast cereals, and it's created a house band, the Saturdaze, which plays 70's bubble-gum pop.

The Krofft brothers continued to work into the 80's and 90's, designing puppets for D.C. Follies and producing variety shows. And at age 67 (Sid) and 60 (Marty), they're currently developing another Pufnstuf movie (the first was in 1970) with the screenwriters of Ed Wood and The People vs. Larry Flynt , and a film version of Family Affair with John Hughes for Warner Brothers. Plus they're planning a half-hour show called Andy Lumpkin's Puppeterium with Bobcat Goldthwait. "He's the star of a kids' show, and he gets electrocuted, and the show takes place in hospital room while he's in a coma," said Marty Krofft. "The characters come from his dreams, but they're all negative characters. It's the opposite of what we're known for."

What they are best known for are their trippy, fantastical, absurdly whimsical early efforts, which also included the variety shows The Krofft Supershow and The Krofft Superstar Hour . Their first creation, H.R. Pufnstuf, remains their most famous. The giant puppet Pufnstuf originally appeared in a live show for Coca-Cola at the 1964 World's Fair, said Mr. Krofft.

Recently HBO's sketch-comedy program Mr. Show with Bob and David offered a dead-on Pufnstuf spoof called "The Altered States of Drugachusetts," featuring characters named Hallucinojenny and Jonesy. "I think they were worried we were going to sue, but I liked it," said Mr. Krofft. Still, he's resolute about the narcotic influence. "Everybody wants to think what they want, but I don't know how anyone can create anything on drugs." [TV Land, 85, 8 A.M.]

Sunday, April 4

Backstreet Boys: Coming Home . Thats everything you need to know. [Showtime, 48, 7 P.M.]

Monday, April 5

It happened to Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Craig Kilborn. Once a comedian proves himself on a basic-cable network like MTV or Comedy Central, he's gobbled up by the big broadcast networks or by syndication. Is Tom Green next?

Mr. Green, a Canadian export known for his audacious stunts and pranks (he left a bloody cow's head on his parents' bed, etc., etc.), is MTV's hottest star, having received a guest slot on The Late Show With David Letterman , plenty o' press coverage, and a television campaign for Pepsi. And suddenly, The Tom Green Show is MTV's highest-rated regularly scheduled show among the 12-to-34 demographic, though it falls behind Road Rules and Celebrity Deathmatch among the core 18-to-24 demo. Mr. Green's humor is overt, physical and puerile, and can be damn funny; he's like the kid in high school who was really good at making prank phone calls. Unlike the current network lords of irony (Mr. Letterman, Mr. Kilborn and Conan O'Brien), he is certainly not cerebral.

One executive in charge of late-night programming at a major network said he's unsure of Mr. Green's prospects, and that success at MTV is not necessarily indicative of mainstream appeal. "It's a big network, but it's small," he said. "It's successful, but with a 2 rating." MTV originally bought only 10 episodes of the show; at press time, it was deciding whether or not to order more. (It will.) [MTV, 20, 2 P.M.]

Tuesday, April 6

Iditarod . [USA, 23, 9 P.M.]

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

If you want to see an Easter-related picture, you don't have much choice: The monopoly is held by the Fred Astaire-Judy Garland-Irving Berlin 1948 charmer, Easter Parade [Saturday, April 3, WNET, 13, 9 P.M.; Sunday, April 4, Turner Classic Movies, 82, 6 P.M.; WNET, 13, midnight; also on videocassette] . The movie was conceived, written and prepared by M-G-M's Arthur Freed musical unit to star Gene Kelly, but shortly before shooting was to begin, Kelly badly twisted his ankle. Two years earlier, Astaire–after a string of box-office disappointments, and with Kelly clearly in ascendance–had announced his retirement. Now, though, M-G-M asked Fred to come back and replace Gene. He did, the picture was a smash, and Astaire had another decade of starring roles. Both the part itself and the gist of the numbers have more of a Kelly feel, but Astaire pulls everything off with his usual aplomb–indeed, maybe this difference in basic approach helped to give Astaire his new lease on picture life. Certainly the best of his post-retirement movies, Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon , is very much a Gene Kelly kind of musical. But Easter Parade is not really in the modern Kelly league of On the Town , An American in Paris or Singin' in the Rain ; it's essentially an old-fashioned piece, accounting perhaps for some of its attractiveness as the square era's finale.

The plot (fashioned first by Sidney Sheldon, of all people, then restructured by veterans Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett) starts out during Easter 1911 as Fred's dancing partner–Ann Miller at her most exaggeratedly movie-starrish–quits to strike out on her own, taking some huge Broadway offer and leaving Astaire romantically in the lurch, too. So Fred is forced to find a new partner, reluctantly picks Garland and then, of course, trains her to such star power that by Easter 1912, the new team of Astaire and Garland far outshines selfish Ann. In between, there are about 17 Irving Berlin tunes–7 new at the time, 10 from his voluminous catalogue–the centerpiece, of course, being the title Easter anthem where, "You'll find that you're/ In the rotogravure …" (The picture easily won the Oscar for best musical score.)

If you had to come up with a single succinct word for Easter Parade , it's the same one that could sum up most of the films directed by Charles Walters, of which this was only the second: likable. Having begun as an actor-dancer and choreographer (most significantly on Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis ), Walters went on to make, among many others: the only Astaire-Rogers color film, The Barkeleys of Broadway ; the last Garland-Kelly, Summer Stock ; the appealing Frank Sinatra-Debbie Reynolds romantic comedy The Tender Trap ; the Sinatra-Bing Crosby-Grace Kelly-Cole Porter High Society ; and Cary Grant's final picture–and Walters' last, too– Walk Don't Run , released in 1966. He never had the panache or wit of Minnelli or Stanley Donen, but for unpretentious affability, Walters was dependably consistent.

To see Judy Garland in Easter Parade , however, taking a not very rewarding part and managing to present herself as mature yet innocent, savvy yet vulnerable–and superbly bringing off the difficult dancing–becomes all the more poignant when you realize she only did two other starring roles before being kicked out of M-G-M, which led to her first suicide attempt. So the failed, though glorious, 1954 comeback of A Star Is Born was only two pictures (plus a cameo) after Easter Parade : a bracing hint of how tough the grind of picture stardom in the old studio system must have been for some players, especially women. This awareness also gives the greater valiant edge to the magnificent Astaire-Garland highlight here, in which they dress as Chaplinesque bums and sing and dance the utterly delightful Berlin novelty number, "A Couple of Swells." They certainly were.

"Court TV is such a victim of its own success," said television reporter Terry Moran, who left Court TV in 1997. "A lot of other networks cover the law now. That's why I'm at ABC."

So what's a once-glorious cable channel to do? New Court TV president Henry Schleiff, formerly a lawyer at the hoity-toity firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, hopes to win back the viewers without sacrificing the identity established under Court TV founder Steven Brill. But, actually, he's willing to alter the cable network's DNA for better ratings.

" This was what we were looking for," Mr. Schleiff said in his office the other day, handing over a sheet with the ratings. And if the improvement came from an instance of stunt programming–a full day of all Homicide reruns–well, at least there was some movement there. Mr. Schleiff, a former law review editor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, started work last Oct. 1. The new prime-time schedule he devised began, partially, on Jan. 1. "First of all, we said, forget law, let's go wider–which is justice," he said. "And then, at the same time, not only should we be providing information, we should be providing entertainment."

The network's nightly offerings now include a half-hour legal newsmagazine, Pros & Cons ; reruns of the NBC crime drama Homicide ; an abbreviated Johnnie Cochran talk show that now features celebrity guests such as Roseanne and Chris Rock, as well as courtroom combatants; and an hourlong documentary series called Crime Stories .

Would he go so far as to air the syndicated Cops , if he had the chance? "It's a show we would consider," said Mr. Schleiff, who crafted Montel Williams' show and aired Jerry Springer's during stints at Viacom Inc.'s broadcasting and entertainment groups and the USA Network's production arm, respectively. Mr. Schleiff has also cut a deal with Lionel (né Michael Lebron), a former prosecutor and talk-show host with a schtick, for a talk show called Snap Judgment . "It's kind of an MTV-visits-the-lower-courts," said Mr. Schleiff. He has also had discussions with celebrity-crazed journalist Robin Leach and John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted . Gavel-to-gavel trial coverage still fills Court TV's daytime schedule.

Not everyone at Court TV likes the new mix. Jeff Ballabon, the head of Court TV public affairs who negotiated with judges to get cameras in courtrooms, recently left for Channel One, the national school channel. But others don't mind the change. "You get tired of seeing your employer described as 'the moribund cable network,'" said one employee who asked not to be named.

Mr. Brill, the founder, had lofty aspirations for the channel. It would be one great ongoing civics lesson. Then came O.J. Simpson. The notorious trial made the civics lesson go down all too easily, and suddenly Court TV found itself in the odd position of leading the charge of the tabloid press. It also drew great numbers. At the end of the O.J. freak show, however, Mr. Brill showed he was serious indeed about the public good: He decided to broadcast live for two weeks from The Hague for the International War Crimes Tribunal, complete with hours of translated Serbo-Croatian.

"Brill said you can't call yourself Court TV and not broadcast this," recalled Mr. Moran.

The O.J. crowd tuned out, and the ratings numbers looked like mere hash marks.

Mr. Schleiff is also considering a show similar to the A&E Network's Biography . In fact, his programming strategy owes a lot to A&E. In picking up old Homicide episodes, he's mimicking A&E's acquisition of Law & Order repeats.

He said he plans to use a video diary from one senator during the impeachment proceedings, but said he doesn't plan for the network to devote as many hours to the impeachment case as it did for the Simpson trial–which could leave viewers confused.

Barry Scheck, who frequently appeared on the network during Steve Brill's days, said: "You'd hope that they'd get ahead, put together a huge educational effort, say, by educating the public on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. If there were a two-hour special on Court TV, with all the scholars talking all about all the history of impeachment, you'd watch that, right?"

Mr. Schleiff said that he had turned down multiple offers to re-enact the 1868 Johnson trial.

"I flipped it on last night," said Ronald Goldfarb, author of TV or Not TV: Television, Justice and the Courts , "expecting to see the impeachment hearings–what else could it be? But what I saw instead were reruns of Homicide . I just don't need Court TV for Homicide reruns."

But the new president thinks Court TV needs to go a little less C-Span for its own survival. "It's as simple as some version of cowboy and Indian," Mr. Schleiff said. "I think people want to see the good guy chase the bad guy and catch him. I think it's as simple as that."

Merger Moves Closer; White & Case Looks Ahead

The partners of White & Case, who for the past two months have been wooing Brown & Wood to create a landmark mega-firm, discussed the proposed merger en masse at a retreat in Key Largo, Fla., from Jan. 6 to Jan. 8. The firm's accountants reviewed Brown & Wood's books in December. According to one close observer, some White & Case partners have been concerned about shortcomings in Brown & Wood's San Francisco office.

The Clinton Jury

N.Y. Law checked in with a half-dozen trial consultants, the sort who pick apart juries and turn the trial into a piece of theater, to see how they would earn their keep during the Senate impeachment trial. Half confessed they felt pretty useless, since the jurors in this case have pretty much already confessed their bias. "Talk about high crimes and misdemeanors," said Sonya Hamlin, the Manhattan-based author of What Makes Juries Listen Today . "Every one of these senators has committed perjury. They have all sworn on the Bible to be impartial, but they all belong to a party, and they all know how they will vote."

Amid such a farce, go with common sense.

"You simply want to make sure that you don't lose any of them by anything you do," said consultant David Ball. "If the White House moved for an immediate dismissal, I think some of the Democrats would be offended that the White House is not going along with the way they want to do it. Because it puts them in a position of having to vote for things they don't want to vote for."

After that, just play to television. Put Bill Clinton on the stand if one or two votes defect, said Dr. Louis Genevie, president of Litigation Strategies in midtown. "I think he would want to defend himself. That would give him the spotlight, where he likes to be," he said. The President would be safe from tough cross-examination: "Anything that is done to smear the President in front of the entire world, and not have a practical result of removing him from office, is self-defeating."

You can reach N.Y. Law by confidential e-mail at mfleischer@observer.com.