CRITICS DEBATE FINAL MOB SCENE

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

CENSORS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL?

Last week’s court ruling that the FCC could not bar the use of “fleeting expletives” during live telecasts may have resulted in a more relaxed atmosphere in the control booth during Sunday night’s CBS coverage of the Tony Awards. The upshot was that when actor John Mahoney departed from the script and used the profanity “goddamn,” it went out over the air, despite a five-second time delay. It was followed by a second or two of dead air, “as though someone were slow on the button,” as Broadcasting & Cableobserved on its website. The offending word was later removed from the West Coast feed. “It was an unwelcomed adlib,” a CBS spokeswoman told the trade publication. The musical Spring Awakeningreceived eight Tony awards, including best musical and best score by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, while the Tom Stoppard drama The Coast of Utopiatook seven awards, the most ever handed out for a drama. Ratings for the awards were down 19 percent from a year ago.

WILL GE TRY TO BUY WALL ST. JOURNAL?

Apparently worried that Rupert Murdoch’s bid to buy Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, could result in strengthening Murdoch’s planned business channel, General Electric, which owns NBC and its affiliated business channel CNBC, discussed joining up with Microsoft to make a competing bid for the company, the Journalreported today (Monday). The newspaper said that GE may yet seek another partner. However, an NBC-Universal spokesman told the newspaper, “These were simply exploratory conversations that ended more than a week ago.”

RATINGS REMAIN HIGH FOR THE VIEW AFTER ROSIE QUITS

The departure of Rosie O’Donnell from The View did not result in plummeting ratings, according to figures released over the weekend. In fact, ratings for the week following her much-publicized spat with Elisabeth Hasselbeck were up 12 percent from the previous week when the blow-up actually occurred and 16 percent over the comparable week last year. Meanwhile, it was reported that Barbara Walters had landed an exclusive telephone interview with Paris Hilton in jail and would provide details today (Monday) on Good Morning Americaand later on The View. The interview was reportedly not recorded.