TV Bulletin Board (Feb. 13)
02/13/07 12:42
By ED BARK
***A day after officially retiring from the New York Giants, former running back Tiki Barber has joined NBC's Today as a featured correspondent.
Barber also will be an analyst on next season's Football Night in America, which precedes NBC's Sunday night package of NFL games.
NBC News president Steve Capus said Barber has "that natural curiosity that makes a journalist tick. He personifies the fresh perspective and creative sensibility that the audience at Today expects."
Telegenic Tiki, a sought-after hot property, worked periodically for Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends during his NFL career. He's scheduled to join Today in April.
***Funnyman Bill Engvall, who cut his comedy teeth in North Texas clubs, is getting his own sitcom on TBS cable. He'll play suburban Denver family counselor Will Pearson, who of course could use a little counseling himself. Engvall, also a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, has signed to do eight episodes, with the premiere of The Bill Engvall Show set for this summer.
***The Sci Fi Channel will bring Battlestar Galactica back for a fourth season tentatively scheduled to start in January of next year. And Comedy Central already has renewed The Sarah Silverman Program for a second season after strong ratings for last month's premiere.
***ABC's World News with Charles Gibson inched into first place last week ahead of the longtime frontrunning NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. For the week of Feb. 5-9, World News averaged 9.7 million viewers nationally compared to 9.52 million viewers for Nightly. The ABC program also narrowly won among 25-to-54-year-olds, the key advertiser target audience for news programming.
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric placed third in both measurements, drawing 7.99 million homes.