So was it worth it to TV Guide Channel to shell out beaucoup bucks to Joan and Melissa Rivers to steal ’em away from E!?
Well, judge for yourself: Joan and Melissa’s red-carpet coverage at last Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards helped TV Guide Channel snare a 1.03 rating – up 164 percent in households over the same timeslot in ’04, when Ken Taylor and others hosted. It’s also interesting to note that Sunday’s 1.03 set a TV Guide Channel ratings record.
Mean while, Lisa Ling, who covered the Golden Globes pre- show for NBC, says she can see herself – perhaps one day – hosting her own talk show.
“I can definitely tell you that I don’t see myself doing a show devoted entirely to en tertainment, but I do see my self doing an interview- type show where entertainment is incorporated,” Ling told me while discussing the new sea son of National Geographic’s “Explorer” (Sundays on MSNBC).
“I just finished a really fas cinating piece inside a prison in Northern California. We’re trying to investigate the cul ture-within-a-culture that prison has become,” she said. “It’s a fascinating world that inmates don’t talk about.”
Ling also said she’s just fin ished an “Explorer” piece air ing next month that probes the mindset of female suicide bombers. “We’re seeing this more and more and we try to understand what would make these providers of life to want to take life instead,” she said. “The reasons aren’t what you think. It’s a story I’m very proud of.”
Last, but not least:
* Paul Shaffer subs for David Letterman on tonight’s “Late Show.” Letterman will be in Michigan with Buddy Rice, who won the 2004 Indianapolis 500 and is receiving the Borg Warner Championship Driv er’s Trophy. Dave’s an owner of the team for which Rice drives.
* Annie Parisse debuts on tonight’s “Law & Order” (10 p.m./Ch. 4).
* Heather Cabot has been named an anchor of ABC’s “World News Now” and “World News This Morning.” * Marcia Wallace (“The Bob Newhart Show”) signs copies of her new book, “Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way,” next Wednesday at the Barnes & Noble Lincoln Center (7:30 p.m.). She’ll be introduced by her pal Brett Somers.