The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 43

THE GUIDE JACQUELINE LEE LEWES 1 was Also coming on board are Janet Gibson (most recently in London doing stories for the Nine Network), Virginia Hauffegger (ex-The 7.30 Report in Melbourne) and, as already announced here, Charles Wooley (Sunday) and Howard Sacre (Channel Ten). Meanwhile, Real Life presenter Stan Grant was busy in the studio last week while camera angles, lighting and other technical things were worked out. This week it will be rehearsal time. Causing some raised eyebrows is the fact that Channel Seven in Adelaide will be showing Real Life at 7 pm and Home and Away at 6.30 pm, the reverse of what the other stations in the network are doing. Should we read something into this? No, says Seven, it's got something to do with daylight saving and Adelaide will come into line when that's all over.

DEEP BREATH and here we go again. This year has kicked off to such an early start that you'd be forgiven for thinking that official ratings rev up on January 20. That's when a lot of local shows, most notably Hinch, Real Life and A Current Affair with Jana Wendt, return. Actually the real ratings don't start until February 9, by which stage some of the battles may have been won or lost. Already feeling the heat is Network Ten.

Instead of doing what everyone thought it would do, that is, move Neighbours to 630 pm to provide an alternative to current affairs, it left the soapie at 7 pm to do battle with the Seven Network's Home And Away. After a week of being battered by the Seven show, Neighbours is already looking like a lost cause. Studs didn't do particularly well either during its first week. on air but, as we always kindly say, it's early days yet Ten launched this show with a T-shirt, a classy little number in black with the logo "STUDS DO IT ON TEN" blazoned in silver on the back. I Mi.

Jana Wendt not amused at headlines claiming she and her husband are back together again. her marriage by people who didn't fork out the $3.10 for the magazine to find out what the story really was. Work on Wendt's specials has begun with the arrival on station of Gareth Harvey, back from the US and rearing to go. SBS HAS also consolidated its 1992 early evening schedule. From 530 pm to 6.30 pm it will screen World Sports, which includes a season of soccer and a general roundup of sport, followed by its World News program then, at 7 pm, Dateline with Paul Murphy who is now to do all six programs, including the one on Saturday night The Saturday night edition will run for one hour.

Pria Viswalingham, who presented the weeknight Dateline, is reading the news for now and will do specials for the multicultural broadcaster. ANOTHER big test for Ten will be whether Hinch can draw viewers at 6 pm. There is a school of thought that television viewers, being creatures of habit, will automatically THE ANNOUNCEMENTS were pouring out of Ten last week including its daytime line-up of American talk shows: Sally Jessy Raphael at 1 1 am, Donahue at 1.30 pm and The Oprah Winfrey Show at 2.30 pm. So much talk, so many opinions, so many American accents. Bert Newton and Derryn Hinch are beginning to look like token Australians.

Still, Bert will have two shows, the morning gig and New Faces. Scuttlebutt at Ten has it that a Lear jet is on standby for Newton who is in Adelaide doing his Wizard of Oz pantomime. He will be commuting daily from Adelaide for his morning show from January 20 and the jet is said to be there just in case something goes wrong with a scheduled flight Star Search was axed at Christmas without a whimper or a press release. Also gone without a trace is Blind Date and Greg Evans. Poor Greg.

Once his departure from a network made headlines. This time no-one seemed to notice. Talk of a Young Talent Time show at Ten has also been revived. THE NINE Network's talks with actress Rachel Ward about a presenter role on its new travel and leisure show, Getaway, have come to nought. The program's executive producer, David Lyle, a northern beaches neighbour of Ward and husband Bryan Brown, did his best but the actress turned down the job.

The show will have four presenters, two of each for the program are casting consultancies Prue's Zoo in Melbourne (which came up with Sophie Lee) and Maizels and Associates in Sydney. They are looking for "personable people who might want to go A reporting background would obviously be a help, but it's not the only criterion. Asked when the show will go to air, Lyle replied: "When it's ready." Sigmund Freud watching Discovering Psychology or STUDS Luck on Studs From Page 1 This critic suspects that the writers had taken over with the comments that the gals made about their dates-after that first phone call. "Good God, it's Li'l Abner," said Cindy. "Golly, it must be the Mayor of Mayberry," said Cat.

Indeed, most of the quotes during the show have a stick shift and I kept grinding my smack of enough double entendre (or Double Nintendo as Kylie Mole says) to indicate that much of the show is written and rehearsed. And surprisingly, the whole thing is not as gross as its publicity would have one believe. For a -start, Studs is conducted in surprisingly good humour. While young Darren gets the mickey taken out of him, be gives as good as be gets and he ultimately wins over, and wins, the girl. The whole thing is not as icky as Perfect Match, basically because it takes over where that show leaves off.

The distinguishing feature of Perfect Match is nervous tension as contestants sweat over the prospect that the set will slide back to reveal a sea of acne, or, worse still, the most expressed fear on the show that heshe has "eaten garlic!" Another difference is that the Yanks, despite the scenario I've painted here, are still generally more confident and articulate than Australians. They are also much more inclined to let it all hang out, as they are wont to say. Thus, where we might find a Perfect Match contestant might return from a weekend at Hayman Island with a bloke and mumbling "It was the American girls, who've invariably picked up their date at his home in their car, tend to say things like "We finished up hanging from the chandeliers in the bedroom with a bottle of Moet et Chandon for With so much sex around these days and TV now slipping into something more comfortable, a sort of soft-porn mode for the '90s, it was surprising to learn from Prof, von Brain back on SBS that the area that controls all the naughty bits is actually only tiny. "Next, deep within the brain is the limbic system which contains several structures that make up the old mammalian brain, that we have in common with other mammals It also regulates emotions and the powerful drives of self-preservation and sexual desire. The four most important parts of the limbic system are the emygdela, the hippocampus, the hypothalamus and the thalamus." The hippocampus is in fact the basic information processor, the bit mat is actually the most likely to help me guess what sort of ratings Studs might expect.

I suspect Studs will do a bit of business, but the big question, the one that's got the neurones really hitting the channel receptors out at Ten, is does the show have the legs? Ten say they'll be happy if it does business for a year. Working against it is that it has a very American remoteness about it. However, six months might be time for someone to get something up locally. In the long run, I can't imagine the show setting the world on fire but, then again, this is an audience that is hanging around watching Neighbours, so I guess anything is possible. I know one thing, though, and I'm sad to say it.

I suspect a show about whether a couple of studs bonked a trio of chicks in LA will still rate better here than a 26-part series on the workings of the human brain "The cerebrum is divided into two halves, the cerebral hemispheres which are connected by millions of nerve fibres that make up the corpus closo, a conduit for messages travelling between the right and left sides of the brain I knew that. Whooh! Whah! Right On! Give Me Five! i HARD COPYJs toying with the idea of a story about the battle of the current affairs programs this year and there's even talk the program will send along cameras to catch guests filing in for the Seven Network's cocktail party launching Real Life this week. Now there's a thought maybe I could wear the Studs T-shirt to that It's glittery enough. 0 Rachel Ward said no to neighbour David Lyle. turn on 6 pm news, either on Nine or Seven, forgetting Hinch.

It may take a while for fans to find him. Meanwhile, at Ten's Ultimo headquarters, lots of money (someone said it was $750,000) is being spent on voice booths and editing suites for the Sydney end of the show. Some people in the newsroom are said to be thin-lipped about the expenditure. HOW ABOUT the announcement out of Network Ten. that it will be screening the American current affairs program Inside Edition This show was one of those spawned by the American program A Current Affair.

Ten describes this as "a most extraordinary news magazine It has, apparently, "integrity and edge, substance as well as In the US, it screens week nights on the ABC network at 7 pm. Ten says it won't be stripped here, so presumably we will get a compilation of the week's hottest stories. Ten will give no details of timeslots. Why not? It's a puzzlement Is Ten keeping this program in the wings in case something falls over? Or is it just that it doesn't want to let the other networks know its plans. CHATTING to various networks about an idea for a lifestyle program are brothers James and David Reyne.

OF COURSE, the big battle will be the one between Real Life on Channel Seven and A Current Affair at Channel Nine. Sighs of relief at Seven that Mike Willesee, hosting the summer edition of AC got the interview with singer Fairlie Arrow out of the way before Real Life made its debut The Real Life people thought that Jana Wendt may have had the singer tied up for her first show back on air. Willesee, in fact, has been burning up stories at a rate of knots the rivalry between ACA's Summer Edition and the Jana one is intense. Those Summer Edition people are determined no-one will call them the B-team again. Willesee may well continue the association.

ACA's new executive producer, Stephen Rice, says Willesee is giving "serious consideration" to the idea of doing special reports this. year. AC A has added reporters to its team. Joining in February is Chris Smith, who was with Hinch until it THE SEVEN Network is delighted with the pilot of sitcom The Newlyweds, which Crawfords has just produced in Melbourne. The pilot was written by Ian McFadyen and Maryanne Fahey and stars Lisa McCune (in a role originally offered to Georgie Parker, who had to say no because of other commitments), Katrina Foster, Richard Healey, Cathy Godbold, Rhys Muldoon, Stewart Faichney and youngster Tenley Gilmore, who is also appearing in the Crawford show Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left for the Seven Network.

This week Crawfords begins taping a mystery game show, Cluedo, for the Nine Network. Ian McFadyen hosts this one and the cast includes Peter Sumner, Joy Westmore and George Mallaby. Also talk that Andrew Daddo, who was in the pilot, will be in the cast. 4 Ut BROOKVALE 70 VfarrtngabMall 9382551 CASTLE Mil (Opening. Mid October) 407 Castle Towers 8999079 PARRAMATTA level 4, Westfield Sboppingloun 689 2687 CARUNGFORD 108 Carlingford Court Shopping Centre 87 1 7853 MOS A VALE Bungan Street 997 5313 DEE WHY (Open 7 days) MASTERTONE ELECT ROSICS 824 Pittualer Road 9822384 MUCH TALK, at Channel Nine about the cover banner on The Australian Women's Weekly.

Labelled it says "Jana and husband together The implication is obvious that Jana Wendt and her husband, producer Brendan Ward, had been reunited after a marital split. Not so. The story is merely about how Wendt and Ward will be working together again on her special one-hour programs planned for this year. They met and married during their days together on 60 Minutes and have been together ever since. Wendt is said not to be amused by the banner, and is getting heartily sick of being quizzed about "TheCD52willturnyourideas of a budget CD.

player upside down" HIGH FIDELITY-OCT91 143 YORK ST. SYDNEY- PH. 267S883 2S SMH The" Guide; Monday, January- l3iI992.