THIS WEEK IN XENA  NEWS...  
TWXN 114
10/04/97

The advance sheet of XENA MEDIA REVIEW (XMR):
http://xenafan.com/xmr

Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future
issues of XMR.

From the editor:

1. Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday,
Kathy!

2. Hey! I am going to be a guest on a syndicated PBS
Internet review tv show called "Internet Cafe" (check
out its site at http://www.pctv.com) to talk with them
about WHOOSH and Xenafandom on the internet. The taping
will be at the CyberSmith internet cafe in Palo Alto,
CA (on University Avenue) on October 13, 1997. The
taping begins at 4pm. Guests are encouraged and if
anyone in the SF area wants to come down and watch the
taping, I would appreciate it. Afterwards, if there is
any interest, we can have one of those ritual Xena Mass
Meals. 

3. The commentary will be non-existent today because
NOT ONLY have I been sluffing off in my TWXN duties (in
honor of the apparent breakdown of the infrastructure
of the IRS), but I am going to hang out at the beach in
San Luis Obisbo County this weekend while the REST OF
XENAFANDOM is at Valley Forge. And the car leaves in
ten minutes!!!!

Here's THE NEWS:


[    ] 05-12-97
   PEOPLE. Page 158. 162 words. "The 50 Most Beautiful
People in the World 1997/special Double Issue. The 50
Most Beautiful People in the World. Lucy Lawless"
   REPRINT:
   Hey, it's not like Amazon goddesses fall out of the
trees every day. She's armed, charmed and as sexy as
she is testy.  We lesser mortals have no choice but to
bow down before the camp vamp that is Xena: Warrior
Princess. "I'm not an intimidating beauty," insists
29-year-old Lucy Lawless, the 5'11" New Zealander who
fills Xena's micro-mini armor in the syndicated TV
adventure. "Half my hair's not even mine. They import a
heap from Spain for me. The extensions are ghastly. No
one can run their fingers through my hair." The assets
that do belong to the divorced mother of Daisy, 8, are
"magnificent shoulders, beautiful arms, lovely cleavage
and a beautiful face," says Xena costume designer Ngila
Dickson. But ask Lawless what she likes best about
herself, and you'll get a surprising reply. "I have
nice feet," she says. "Long and skinny, with long toes.
I wear my dark silk lingerie and paint my toenails and
I feel like a kept woman." Don't tell Hercules.
   GRAPHIC: [Lucy Lawless]


[    ] 05-12-97
   PEOPLE. Page 57. 1973 words. "The 50 Most Beautiful
People in the World. With a Wink at Harrison Ford's
Weathered Ruggedness and a Bow to The Fresh Radiance of
Winona Ryder (Right), this Eighth Edition of Our Annual
Tribute Proves Beauty Knows No Bounds of Time Our
Fabulous 50 1997"
   EXCERPT:
   ...GRAPHIC...
   ...COLOR PHOTO: She calls her beauty habits
"unremarkable, so middle-of-the-road," but Lucy Lawless
stops traffic....


[    ] 05-12-97
   THE NEW YORK TIMES. Monday. 931 words. "Reporter's
Notebook; The Clintons' Caribbean: TV, a Pool and Time
Off"
   EXCERPT:
   For Bill Clinton, one of his closest aides once
explained,
"words are actions."
   That, as much as his crutches and a sore back, may
explain why
Mr. Clinton was so exhausted by his talk-filled Latin
American tour, before he finally got a day off today
with his wife, Hillary, on this prim little island. 
    All the extravagant toasts and polite speeches, all
the summit palaver and the pauses for interpretation,
and all the joint agreements frosted with sugary items
about protecting tiny dolphins and providing advice on
electric vehicles, had clearly worn down even this
notoriously loquacious President. Twice in recent days
he has felt uncharacteristically compelled to say,
"Most of what needs to be said has been said" -- and
then to say less himself than anyone expected...
   ...At a news conference on Thursday in Costa Rica, a
Central American journalist asked if Mr. Clinton's
summit meetings, apart from discussion of trade issues,
"should not be considered as social events with
rhetorical results that have nothing to do with
reality"...
   ... Here, in paradise, the press scrutiny has
subsided somewhat, though. Outside the camera frame,
some network correspondents are wearing shorts with
their shirts and ties; during a briefing by high-level
Administration officials on Saturday evening, the
television sets flanking the podium showed not CNN but
"Xena: Warrior Princess."...


[   i] 05-12-97
   THE GAZETTE (Montreal). Monday. Page E2. 619 words.
"Blockbusters battle in air, under sea: Studio gets
flak from  Harrison Ford over plans to release Titanic,
Air Force One the same day" By Doug Camilli; the
Gazette
   EXCERPT:
   ...Fashion notes: Did you hear about Lucy Lawless,
who stars in this syndicated TV show Xena, Warrior
Princess? Lucy was doing the American national anthem
at the Red Wings-Mighty Ducks game in Detroit the other
night, wearing a tight, red, white and blue costume she
described as "Uncle Sam meets Hugh Hefner."
   And just as she was singing those last impossible
notes ("ho-o-o-o-me of the braaaave") her left breast
popped free, right there on TV.
   Detroit's Channel 50 fielded about a dozen calls -
one complaining, all the others demanding a replay.
(They didn't rerun it.)
   Lawless just laughed it off as "quite a bit more
exposure than
I wanted."...


[    ]  05-12-97
   FORTUNE. Page 32. 936 words. "the Universal Appeal
of Schlock; Great U.s. Exports: the 747, the Pc, and
... Xena: Warrior Princess" By Henry Goldblatt
   REPRINT:
   The last time an action show was atop the Nielsens,
America swooned over scruffy, sockless Don Johnson,
patrolling Miami's streets. Judging by the crop of fall
pilots and the breakout success of shows like Xena:
Warrior Princess, the top-rated syndicated action hour
in the U.S. (which depicts the trials of a strapping,
leather-clad heroine who kicks ancient Greek butt), the
genre's making a comeback. Foreign audiences can't get
enough of it; Xena-philia is rampant in Europe. "Action
hours were a dying breed until the international market
just asked for more," says Christine Amdur of
Baskerville Communications in London.
   Production companies used to make a ton of money
creating action dramas for U.S. networks and selling
them into syndication after 100 or so episodes--what
they made overseas was gravy. Now, domestic revenues
alone are not enough to make a network show profitable.
When Hollywood heads to Europe and Asia to sell its
programming, about 50% of a show's potential revenues
are at stake. Action hours, depending on their quality
and U.S. performance, can grab as much as $ 150,000 per
episode in Europe. 
   The chairman of International Television Trading
Corp., Klaus Hallig, calls this trend "a Marshall Plan
in reverse."
   With the burgeoning foreign market, studios have
found an afterlife for a genre that was presumed dead.
While sitcoms have become the profitable darlings of
U.S. network syndication, drama reruns, other than the
most successful, have ended up on cable, if anywhere.
"The domestic revenue stream is nowhere near where it
was. Basic cable doesn't pay what free syndication used
to pay ... You're not getting that pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow, which was syndication," says
veteran drama producer Dick Wolf, creator of NBC's Law
& Order and Fox's New York Undercover.
   Xena is not the first action show to conquer the
overseas market: Baywatch is the show that proved the
international appeal of high-action dramas with simple
plots (and buff cast members who don't wear much
clothing). When NBC canceled the show in 1990, the
show's producers, eager to keep it afloat, solicited
foreign partners to finance it. Since then it's become
a phenomenal hit in Europe and has demonstrated how
lucrative foreign markets can be. Universal Studios,
one of the largest providers of American programming
abroad, capitalized on this trend early by signing
deals with European networks to ensure that its
programming has foreign outlets. Over the past year,
Universal signed several lucrative deals to package
older shows like Columbo and Miami Vice (which might
otherwise collect dust in its library) along with fresh
schlock like Xena.
   Seeing that Xena has done so well abroad and in the
U.S., studios are working on a slew of action-adventure
pilots for the fall TV season. Network press kits are
packed with pilots like Players, a police drama
starring rapper Ice-T, and Timecop, based on the
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Universal is developing
Team Knight Rider, a syndicated version updating the
1980s hit.
   For all the studios' eagerness, however, they may be
too late. Europeans' television habits are as fickle as
Americans'. Comedies, once duds overseas because of
translation difficulties, are becoming more popular.
Kirch Group, a German media company, may launch a
comedy channel that will incorporate NBC's Friends and
Seinfeld as well as some German sitcoms. This new
channel also exemplifies the largest problem American
studios will face, namely that European viewers--and
European governments--want more locally produced fare.
"You don't need a quota to tell people that they want
to watch local shows. To fight for ratings, [European
broadcasters] need their own homegrown stuff," says
Amdur. "I think [American] studios should enjoy the
windfall, because they are not going to get it again."
This makes sense in theory, but ... German sitcoms?    
   GRAPHIC: Action shows like Xena are a hit in the U.S
and--especially-- overseas. [Lucy Lawless as Xena:
Warrior
Princess]


[   b] 05-04-97
   SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, FL). Sunday. TV BOOK.
Page 83. 397 words. "Rating the Jock Schools; Is Snow a
Man or Mouse?" By Jim Sarni. Staff Writer
   COMMENTARY:
   EXCERPT:
   ... Lucy Lawless told Playboy she imagined Xena, the
popular warrior princess she plays on TV, as "sexy and
dark" ... something Gabriela Sabatini-esque, but with
brains."...



NOTICES:

All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at
(http://xenafan.com/xmr). We herein give praise and
thanks to Tom Simpson for the space he has graciously
donated from his spectacular, TOM'S XENA PAGE
(http://xenafan.com). If you have never been there, you
are **not** a xenafan! 

TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR, an annotated world
press review of reports regarding the internationally
syndicated television show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995
- 2000) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee
O'Connor. TWXN is not available for subscription,
however it is posted regularly on the XenaVerse,
Hercules-Xena, and Chakram Mailing Lists (thank you
Lucia! I am greatly indebted to you); the forums: MCA
NetForum and the Xenite Message Center (thanks Angela);
and alt.tv.xena (thanks Tim). I also would like to
thank sirvin@law.wfu.edu for assistance in collecting
the newstories. For a free e-mail subscription to XMR
subscribe by e-mail to ktaborn@lightspeed.net by
stating somewhere in the subject or text "sub xmr". 






