Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 20

M'' Celebrity news. Err aimnent pfe 1 Evorv dav In I Fntortnlnment EDITOR: Bob Remington, 429-5346 .1 IS IS sunt. LIGHT 1 tag X' War with TV tabloid sparks boycott of Entertainment Tonight i i 1 mM Michelle Pfeiffer in next month's One Fine Day and is currently filming Batman and Robin for release next year, says that he first warned Entertainment Tonight of his intention last February. "I cant, in good conscience, do interviews for one faction of a company while the other is making a profit at my expense," he told ET in a letter nine months ago. At that time, a Paramount Television official wrote back pledging that Clooney would no longer be targeted by Hard Copy.

"I understand clearly your point of view," the Paramount official wrote, "and see no reason why there should be any areas of conflict in the future. We agree ly -y I i More Sinead trouble A furore is fomenting in Ireland over the casting of controversial singer Sinead O'Connor as the Virgin Mary in Neil Jordan's film. The Butcher Boy, syndicated columnist Marilyn Beck says. Catholic-raised O'Connor's bitter history with the church includes tearing up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live a few years ago. Beyond the stunt casting involved in putting O'Connor into the role her acting debut word from the set has it that her characterization is far from benevolent and serene.

Indeed, she appears to the troubled title character as an apparition uttering the strongest of profane words. Whether the lines will stay in the finished film is anyone's guess. The film's supposed to wrap by year's end. Tribune Media Services Medical updates Frank Sinatra, 80, hospitalized Friday for a pinched nerve, had his weekend stay at LA Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre extended Monday for several days. A centre spokesperson said the singer "was walking and talking (but) was also in obvious pain." Carol Channing, 75, was hospitalized over the weekend in Kalamazoo, forcing her to miss four performances of Hello Dolly.

She had gone almost 5,000 performances in the show without a miss. A hospital spokesperson said the star had "extreme dizziness," possibly caused by an intestinal virus. There's talk that the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan is sicker than thought. The band, which cancelled its fall tour here, has now cancelled $6 million US worth of European dates. The group's manager denied the singer is anorexic but said she is thin and exhausted.

Knight-Ridder Newspapers 'My Hometown' for real Bruce Springsteen will play his hometown Friday to benefit Freehold, St. Rose of Lima Hispanic Community Centre. The gig's open only to residents who showed ID Sunday to get $30 vouchers for a ticket at the door. "It's good to know that he is returning to his roots," said Sister Patricia Doyle, principal of the St. Rose of Lima School, which Springsteen attended.

Knight-Ridder Newspapers Early Madonna music Tracks recorded in 1981 by a then-unknown Madonna will be on sale this month in the CD Pre-Madonna. It's the work of Stephen Bray, her friend at the University of Michigan and now a music producer. A Madonna spokesperson said she's "not particularly enthusiastic" about the disc, but no legal action is planned. Knight-Ridder Newspapers Happy birthday to Roy Rogers is 85 today, Ike Turner is 65, and Art Garfunkel is 55. Mike Nichols will be 65 Wednesday, Sally Field, 50.

Knight-Ridder Newspapers Luke 'n' Laura's 15th The TV soap General Hospital will mark the 15th wedding anniversary of Luke (Tony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis) on the Nov. 15 show. When the wedding show aired, it got the highest ratings in the history of daytime TV. Knight-Ridder Newspapers Anthony Edwards, right, has joined ER against the tabloid TV show Hard Copy THE ISSUE: Hollywood celebrities are ted up with the invasive tactics of the tabloid publications and TV shows. WHAVS NEW: ER star George Clooney has decided to refuse to make appearances on the television show, Entertainment Tonight, in protest against the invasive tactics of tabloid program Hard Copy.

Both shows are owned by Paramount Other stars are now following Clooney's boycott. WHAT IT MEANS: The issue has renewed public scrutiny of huge entertainment conglomerates that can find themselves in trouble because of the policies of one of their divisions. WHAT'S NEXT. Even more stars are expected to support Clooney. The industry continues to await a statement from Paramount which has so far remained silent over the controversy.

JAMIE PORTMAN Southam Newspapers Los Angeles he night Tom Hanks was given a surprise birthday party by his actress wife, Rita Wilson, an uninvited and unwelcome guest showed up. "We had a crasher despite every conceivable kind of security measure we could take," an exasperated Wilson said last weekend. And he was no ordinary crasher. He was one of Hollywood's notorious paparazzi who had sneaked into the exclusive event with the sole purpose of surreptitiously taking photographs that could later be sold to the tabloids. "That puts us in a terrible position because it means friends who might be well known are compromised by coming to our party," Wilson noted.

As far as Wilson is concerned, such media behavior constitutes harassment and invasion of privacy which is why she is delighted with ER star George Clooney's declaration of war on the controversial TV tabloid show, Hard Copy. Wilson levelled her blast against tabloid journalism during press interviews for her new film, Jingle All The Way, which opens Nov. 22. She says that neither she nor Hanks shun legitimate media coverage, but the tabloids are another matter entirely. "That's why I think people are kind of cheering George Clooney on," she says.

Wilson's comments echo those of other Hollywood celebrities who have jumped to Clooney's support in recent days and endorse his hardball tactics against Paramount Studio, the powerful owner of Hard Copy, a program frequently condemned for its sensationalistic journalism. Clooney announced a personal boycott of Entertainment Tonight, the mainstream TV series which is also owned by Paramount, because of what he considered to be invasive coverage of his private life by Hard Copy. Since then, seven of his ER colleagues including Anthony Edwards and Eriq La Salle have followed suit In a joint letter to ER's producers, they said: "We find it very difficult to work with a show and help it earn money while the company that owns it uses that very Richard Helm Television "It's been over 23 years since TV was licensed in Edmonton. A new player will certainly shake things up." Drew Craig of the A-Channel toba quickly became one of the most competitive broadcasting marketplaces in Canada. The three TV stations in Winnipeg were suddenly confronted with a fourth, and all sorts of griping ensued about inadequate advertising revenues.

The same complaints are already being sounded here, along with sore-loser recriminations from CanWest Global of Winnipeg, which again lost its bid for an Alberta broadcast ing foothold. "I think it's natural for the broads casters to want to protect their rev- enues and their profits," Craig V- File photo colleague George Clooney's fight of its operation. Meanwhile, Clooney is suggesting that Paramount has nobody but itself to blame for this snowballing opposition to one of its top shows. Clooney, who co-stars with musical variety show spotlighting local talent in primetime, and The Sharing Circle, a weekly show by and for native Indians. Craig has also pledged to devote $14 million over the next seven years to Alberta TV and film production a potential Godsend to an industry struggling to maintain its momentum following cuts to provincial government funding.

"We recognize Alberta producers are handicapped to some degree because they don't have a tax credit or a provincial funding body," Craig said. "So certainly the priority is to give the money to Alberta producers." The company has also committed $920,000 for drama development over seven years, and $400,000 to train new producers. "I think you're going to see a whole generation of film-makers coming out of this province that are going to have huge impact on Canadian culture as a whole," says Joanne Levy, executive director of the A-Channel drama fund. Channel Surfing Videotron subscribers will notice some more changes and new faces to their hippy-dippy community station, The Edge. It's been a year since i "I'm not punching anybody and I'm not suing anybody.

This is a different way to fight it" George Clooney that Hard Copy will not be covering you in, any future stories." But Clooney now says Paramount didn't keep its word. He told The Los Angeles Times last week that his boycott would go ahead because Hard Copy recently "did an undercover story about my girlfriend and me." The aggressiveness of many paparazzi photographers often leads to fisticuffs with the celebrities they are pursuing. But Clooney is trying a new line of attack. "I'm not punching anybody and I'm not suing anybody," he told Trie Times last week. "This is a different way to fight it.

If it works and there's some change, great. If it doesn't, I did it to take a stand." Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are celebrities who are popular with the mainstream press and pride themselves on being co-operative with journalists. But Wilson finds nothing mainstream about the paparazzi with their cameras and camcorders. "I'm talking about the aggressiveness of these people," she said. "They follow you home.

They will not leave you alone. They don't take no for an answer. "There are places in the neighborhood where we can't go any more. We just can't. Sometimes we're in a restaurant and it's perfect and there's no one there and you come out and THEY'RE there.

Someone in the restaurant has been paid to give them that information." Wilson also believes the controversy over Hard Copy raises valid concerns about large entertainment conglomerates which are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, but which can -still land in trouble for the behavior of one of their divisions. So far, none of the celebrities boycotting Entertainment Tonight have threatened to go a step further and refuse to make movies for parent company Paramount. But Wilson concedes such a scenario would be interesting: "It would depend how bruised you are or passionate you are about it." But Pat Kingsley, one of Hollywood's most powerful publicists, suggested last week that the stars are starting to feel plenty bruised. "Actors have come to the point where they just refuse to be used and they're mad as hell," Kingsley said. Southam News Videotron decided to scrap the old, mostly boring community programming model and try something fresh.

People quickly noticed the leading-edge, quirky format. Michelle Belland, Videotron's director of marketing and sales, acknowledges the early Edge was little too avant-garde for many subscribers. Changes were made and the shift to entertaining bite-sized pieces of local lifestyle information quickly caught on. A recent survey showed 62 per cent of Videotron subscribers were regular Edge viewers. "The CRTC requires you to spend a certain amount of your cable revenues on creating community programming," Belland notes.

"We're pretty adamant that (it) can be high-viewership programming, programming that is meaningful to the subscribers." The renovations continue. Seen on channel 10, The Edge will be offering new segments on travel, business, cooking, home and garden, arts and the Internet Three new hosts, Chris Durham, ex of ITV; Seanna Collins and local actress Barbara Schmid, have been hired as new show hosts, joining Ian Leonard, Bryn Griffiths and Janice Ryan. "I'm talking about the aggressiveness of these people," she said. "They follow you home. They will not leave you alone.

They dont take no for an answer." Actress Rita Wilson, at right with husband Tom Hanks same money to purchase videos of us for Hard Copy." Other stars including Steven Spielberg, Madonna and Whoopi Goldberg have joined the boycott. Goldberg fired off her own letter to Entertainment Tonight's producers: "Much as I love you guys, I don't think I will be doing any more interviews with ET until somebody does something about Hard Copy." Both Dean Cain of TV's Lois And Clark and talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell cancelled scheduled ET interviews. O'Donnell's complaints aren't confined to Hard Copy. She's also furious at ET a show that considers itself to be a responsible practitioner of celebrity journalism for what she considers to be tasteless coverage of Madonna and her baby. All this is bad news for Entertainment Tonight because celebrity reporting is the lifeblood shrugged.

The A-Channel will be on the air by September 1997, with a hip and highly visual news style, 30 hours a week of local programming, and an emphasis on big-ticket Hollywood movies. It will provide a local feed for shows from Toronto's Citytv while also offering Alberta-specific programs like Wired Edmonton, a Meet the A-team, Edmonton's new kids on the tube Edmonton Variety is the spice of life, so they say, and for that reason alone the approval of a new Edmonton television station should be welcomed by all local viewers. Even if the prospect of a fourth supperhour newscast is a little hard to stomach. Alberta's newest media mogul, Drew Craig, slipped into Edmonton and Calgary Monday to ballyhoo the latest triumph by Craig Broadcast Systems the Brandon-based TV and radio chain founded by his grandfather. In case you missed it and Craig's remarks Monday weren't deigned worthy of coverage by most of Edmonton's established broadcasters there's a new player in town.

Thanks to the CRTC, Craig Broadcasting has been granted broadcasting licences for TV stations in Edmonton and Calgary, with repeater stations in Red Deer and Lethbridge. About time, too, says Craig, the company's executive vice-president. "It's been over 23 years since ITV was licensed in Edmonton," he said. "A new player will certainly shake things up." When the Craig family received its licence for MTN in 1986, Mani- i.