The Windsor Star from Windsor, Ontario, Canada • 15

The Windsor Star Entertainment FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1999 ASSOCIATE EDITOR: KAREN HALL 255-5741 FAX 255-5515 B3 Synchronized screams INSIDE TELEVISION It's like, you know a pair of ABC series The mid-season'blahs, like lingering winter days in late March, are a fact of life on TV Take a couple of new ABC entries Wednesday nights It's Like, You Know and premiering next week The Norm Show. It's Like, You (Wednesday at on WXYZ, channel 7, cable 8, and OnTV, cable 59) has some decent pedigree. It's from former Seinfeld producer Peter Mehlman and for Lid I TED SHAW ENTERTAINMENT By Ted Shaw star entertainment writer auburn hills, mich. Whatever the generation, girls just want to have fun. And Thursday at The Palace of Auburn Hills about 15,000 of them were deliriously, joyously out of control over five dancin' fools named 'N Sync.

It wasn't just the girls having the fun, either. A few hundred moms and dads and a handful of adolescent boys joined them. For many, it was probably their first concert-going experience. And it was easy to imagine a similar scene more than a generation ago, thousands of adolescents, 90 per cent of them girls, screaming through the hits of a band from Liverpool, England. But The Beatles, in all their commercial glory, were never so hyped.

Brand names of athletic wear and designer clothing manufacturers were worn proudly by the five members and flashed over the giant video screens. And, where stars of an earlier generation are sponsored by beer companies, this 'N Sync show was brought to you by an acne cream. It'd be almost charming if it weren't so audaciously, overtly in-your-face. But, hey, that's nitpicking. For a group that really only has one full album to its credit so far, 'N Sync packed its 90 minutes of showtime with high energy, dazzling choreography, a light show second to none, and camera coverage that made each song look like a music video.

Into hysterics The lighting truss consisted of five 25-metre rays stretching out from the stage, with computer-controlled strobes attached to cables on each end. The strobes moved in and out, panning the audience on the floor and strafing the crowd. The stage featured obligatory runways on each side, a large video screen, and banks of lights flanking the screen, bathing the set in various hues throughout the show. When the lights went out to begin the show just before 8 p.m., thousands of adolescents, an ortho-dondist's fantasy, went into hysterics. Then black light hit the set and a five-metre-high puppet, looking like an alien, lurched across the stage.

The kids got crazier. It was all a buildup for the real show, and when the singers suddenly appeared, the decibel level in the arena hit Metro Airport intensity. Images of the five members flashed on the screen to the delight of the legions of fans for each one. Judging by the response, Justin and Chris are one-two in popularity The guys did most of their hits, beginning with You Got It and running through most of the debut CD, from I Just Wanna Be With You, Crazy For You, I Drive Myself Crazy, and of course, I Want You Back. The best were the uptempo songs, like Tearin' Up My Heart.

The slower stuff, including For The Girl mer ABC programming executive Ted Harbert. Chris Eigeman has several film credits behind him and co-star Steven Eck-holdt transferred over from a featured role on NBC's Friends. Actress Jennifer Grey plays herself in the series. It's like, you know, the bloodlines of a typical Hollywood sitcom, which it aims to satirize. But it only ends up looking and sounding like its target smug, clever at times, and remarkably dumb at others.

Norm Macdonald, meanwhile, was turfed from NBC's Saturday Night Live and winds up on The Norm Show (Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. on WXYZ, channel 7, cable 8, and CKCO, channel 42, cable 13). It's like, you know, a sort-of spinoff of The Drew Carey Show, like. Chris of 'N Sync, foreground, at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Thursday, with the Image of Justin on the big screen. Star photo: Nick Brancaccio Again, you'd think pedigree would favour it.

But The Norm Show, with its cast of idiots in an office setting, in this case a group of social workers (God help is bland and only occa For each decade, the group did covers. The best was The Jackson Five medley including ABC, from the 1970s. The 1980s cover was Kool and the Gang's Celebration, a big hit with kids and their accompanying adults. Curiously, the 1960s cover wasn't a '60s song at all, but a mock song from the era, That Thing That You Do, from the Tom Hanks movie about bub-blegum groups. Who Has Everything, in which members of the audience were brought on stage, was less effective because the screaming fans drowned it out The early part of the show featured a series of popular music tributes, bolstered by five-minute film highlights of each decade since the 1960s.

It was amusing to see who or what got an approval rating from largely youthful audience. Pictures of O. J. Simpson and Bill Clinton were booed, but The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and (not surprisingly) The Beatles were cheered. Norm Macdonald NSync, with TatyanaAli and Divine, performed Thursday at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Don't turn that dial: It's EDtv sionally diverting. Sort of like Norm Macdonald. You know? Canadian he may be, and he even plays an ex-hockey player here. But another Michael J. Fox or Jim Carrey he ain't.

On the lookout Don Mumford, program and promotions manager of Windsor's New WI (CHWI), channel 1660, cable 6, and its sister stations in London and Wing-ham, is on the lookout for new pro EDtv Forest Glade, SllverCKy Adult Accompaniment out of 4 stars gramming ideas. Pogo, that sage of the comic pages four decades ago, often scoffed that news was only what appeared in the pages of Life magazine, not the other way 'round. Now we know better. Now we know that real life is what we see on TV Our existence can only be understandable, at the end of the '90s, so much as it imi CHUM owner of the three sta tions, has earmarked $900,000 through 2002 to seed independent TV produc tion in southwestern Ontario. The same fund spawned Sports Edge, a weekly look at amateur sports pro duced in Windsor.

Six independent producers are al ready working on a variety of pro Hopper does indeed show up. Martin Landau and Sally Kirkland as the parents strike an increasingly off-kilter relationship, with well-timed quips and a background story that's richer than TV dinners and Texas white-trash dimness. Still, McConaughey's video-store clerk enjoys the attention that the cold blue glow of the cameras guarantees. Doesn't everybody want to be on TV? Don't they wave in the ball parks when a lens might turn their way? Don't they buy the goods? Don't they think they are on first-name basis with the guy living next door in their TV set, even when he's doing nothing, just because he's there and he's live? Sure. Plus, there are perks, including Elizabeth Hurley as the most sultry groupie ever.

And yet, playing for an audience also means working for a director, worrying about the ratings and the sponsors. That's not "natural," but it's realistic. So a kiss is not just a kiss with Jenna Elfman. Instead, their new romance constitutes soap opera, where nothing jects, including Life and Faith, an in can escape the self-conscious. McConaughey's good old boy has never suffered a self-conscious appraisal in his life.

He looks like he barely sees himself long enough in the mirror to comb his hair. Measuring every step by how it will look on the screen is the contemporary definition of the loss of innocence. Their love affair raises the movie's central issue, and generates its sus-pence: Can private lives survive publicity? Clever, glib and charming, the romance evolves with touches of the new sexual grossness that still separates the big screen from the tube. Far from contemplative itself, the film's deepest mystery is how McConaughey can maintain a constant week's stubble of beard, never more nor less. Yet he also maintains an underlying niceness beneath the coarse exterior, just like the film.

And the camera really does like his connection to Jenna Elfman, a natural chemistry that defies glamour and suggests they might actually have a good time together with the TV set switched off. A network of college students whose apartments are seen on the tates what we watch on the tube. All else is dead air Movies imitate TV, too, with at least three recent films wondering how the cinema can change channels. Wag the Dog, for the cynics, terdenominational religious show already on the air, a 13-part comedy series aimed at college students, a feature-length TV movie based in Sarnia, I can conquer prime time rather than any deeper question that might generate real static. The set-up for the situation resembles Truman too closely for comfortable sales pitches, although subsequent events go their own way Ellen DeGeneres, cable-TV producer, proposes a 24-hour-a-day watch on an ordinary guy She picks McConaughey for his goofy grin and working-class charm, just the sort of condescension that TV expresses in such things as wrestling and Jerry Springer.

McConaughey and his family are not so ordinary, it turns out in front of the cameras. Big brother Woody Harrel-son is a celebrity-seeking klutz with a dangerous temper just below the surface, suggesting a younger Dennis Hopper. And and an educational program about JOHN LAYCOCK ENTERTAINMENT Each year, a certain amount of mon ey is allocated to develop scripts, assist in financing, and pay for production costs. At least two Windsor companies al considered the political staging of war. The Truman Show, for the pessimists, stared into its own navel and was scared by how convincingly a life could be staged.

And now EDtv wonders whether ro ready are negotiating new projects. If you're interested, call Mumford at 519- 686-8822, ext. 7265. CTV cutbacks CBC isn't Canada's only national mance can withstand ratings. As a romantic comedy, EDtv is the most TV-ish, by definition.

Low-definition, that is, since this Matthew Mc- Conaughey vehicle is directed by TV kid Ron Howard. He is surrounded by TV names and worries most about whether love network feeling the pinch. Internet 24 hours a day already exists. It sounds really boring. But so does golf 24 hours a day Movies imitate art imitating life, and EDtv at least is brave enough to suggest it is possible to get your own life.

Word out of last week's Can Pro Fes tival (Canadian Association of Broadcasters) in Ottawa is CTV is about to slash as much as $20 million fromits annual budget, mostly through layoffs. According to one source, it could mean a reduction of as much as 20 per cent of the workforce at CTV's various regional affiliates. Jenna Elfman and Matthew McConaughey discover The cut would be devastating for there Is something going on between Kitchener's CKCO (channel 42, cable tnemintutv. 13), where staffing levels have dropped from a high of 220 a decade ago to about 90 now. The source said noon-hour news casts will be axed across the CTV chain and the evening regional news will be reduced to 30 minutes from an hour.

CKCO closed its Windsor bureau Li it i three years ago in the wake of earlier cutbacks. CTV spokesman Tom Curzon said Thursday speculation about cutbacks i A 1 1' is premature, ino decisions nave Deen made," he said. Ted Shaw can be reached by e-mail at tshawwin.southam.ca it i.i.nn.