The 'Sopranos' Factor

Hoping he had found the perfect analogy to describe the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's global terror network, President Bush declared in his Sept. 20 speech to Congress: "Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world — and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere."

According to The Washington Post, in its recently concluded eight-part series on the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and its preparation for the war in Afghanistan, Bush's reference to the Mafia was an unpopular move with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell, an apparent Home Box Office fan, failed to have the comment stricken from the speech after White House communications czarina Karen Hughes decided she liked the ring of it.

Powell also told Hughes he was concerned about a line in the text equating the Taliban to the Mafia. It will needlessly offend 'the anti- 'Soprano' crowd,' he argued, a reference to the popular HBO series about a Mafia family. Hughes was insistent. It will work, she said, and the phrase stayed in.

Oxygen-Free Bowl

Readers of The New York Times Magazine
on Super Bowl Sunday were tipped off about a splashy new commercial for Oxygen, a parody of beauty pageants, that was planned for the sporting event.

But the spot never ran, despite what was said in the Times' valentine to "hot" commercial director Bryan Buckley, who did the $1 million 30-second ad and is also responsible for the ESPN This is SportsCenter ads. What happened, The Wire wondered?

An Oxygen spokeswoman said the women's network was in negotiations until the last minute with Fox to buy a Bowl spot. Executives hoped the cost would go down but the price tag leveled at $1.9 million. Oxygen decided its money would be better spent running a frequent flight of the ad, starting later this month through the second quarter, rather than getting one big exposure.

Oxygen is also considering other major events for its ad, like the Academy Awards, the spokeswoman said. When it launched two years ago, Oxygen made a splash with a Super Bowl spot that showed female newborns in a hospital nursery defiantly throwing off their pink nightcaps.
Meanwhile, Oxygen has gone through yet another round of layoffs, sacking roughly 5 percent of its staff. It pink-slipped 24 employees producing Pure Oxygen.
That flagship show is now airing one hour a day, five days per week, from its former schedule of 90-minutes a show, four days a week.

Real African Survivor

Black Entertainment Television has long held AIDS awareness as its major public-affairs initiative, with efforts ranging from public service announcements to local market tours informing teens on the importance of being tested.

But now BET senior vice president of affiliate sales Lee Chaffin is taking the cause a step further — actually many steps further — by committing himself to a weeklong hike through the South African wilderness on the first annual AIDStrek in early April.

Chaffin must raise $10,000 for the cause by March 1 to participate. He'll handle his own travel expenses, including airfare and the first night's hotel fee. For the following seven nights, Chaffin will be roughing it: hiking 75 miles in seven days, and camping overnight with no access to indoor plumbing. Chaffin said he's been in training recently, walking eight miles a day to ready himself for the trek.

For more information on the cause, visit www.aidstrek.com.

Fly Air Mayor

After the National Show in New Orleans in 2000, some executives grumbled that the entertainment and gustatory benefits of that city were outweighed by hassles of commuting in and out via Louis Armstrong International Airport. (We hate to raise this point, for it will remind two Wire colleagues of their four-day trip home via delayed planes.)

If you still dread the thought of travelling through the facility, have we got a mayoral candidate for you. Cox Communications Inc. executive Ray Nagin has apparently tapped into the anti-airport sentiment of the locals, too, for he's the front-runner to be the next mayor of The Big Easy.

One of his major campaign planks: sell or lease that airport to a sub-contractor, in the hopes a private company will increase access by building at least one new runway and adding more direct flights, lessening the chance of being marooned after missing a connection.

The campaign contribution is in the mail….

Red Faced

So why has Charlie Rose's face been turning weird shades of red on TVs hooked up to DirecTV Inc. in the New York area for the last two months?

Digital clarity, it turns out, was also a victim of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, where local PBS affiliate WNET had its antenna. The station's replacement antenna on the Empire State Building "wasn't tall enough," DirecTV said, and when the satellite service went to a local feed at the beginning of the year, transmission problems resulted.

For its part, Channel 13 said the problem is on "DirecTV's end." Both sides agree that getting the local feed via fiber will restore Roses' flesh tone and vow that they're "working on it."