Cats newest stars of reality TV
The fur really could fly on TV’s newest reality entry: It stars cats.
Ten felines, picked from animal shelters nationwide, will live in a New York house to vie – a la “Big Brother” or “Survivor” – for a grand prize, in this instance an executive-level job with Meow Mix cat food.
“This thing is very tongue-in-cheek,” says Ira Cohen, the company’s director of advertising and marketing.
The project will be shown in three-minute segments during the 9 p.m. hour on Animal Planet for 10 consecutive Fridays, starting tonight.
The “Meow Mix House” cats, from shelters or rescue groups, will be put through their weekly paces in contests including best purr and top post-climber. A panel of judges will decide who stays and who goes; when a cat is voted out, it will move to a permanent home and get a year’s supply of Meow Mix as a consolation prize.
The judges’ eventual winner will get a new family and the title of Meow Mix’s “feline vice president of research and development.” Another corporate position, as yet unspecified, will go to the cat picked as most popular by viewers on online voting.
As well as being a marketing tool for Meow Mix, the spots also are aimed at increasing awareness of the importance of pet adoptions, Cohen says.
June represents a key adoption period for kittens born in the spring. There also is an ongoing need for homes for older cats, he says.
Rather’s time up?
Dan Rather, who has been working at “60 Minutes” since leaving as “CBS Evening News” anchor last year, apparently is in his final days at CBS News.
CBS executives and Rather’s representatives appear close to a deal that will end his association with CBS News after more than 40 years, according to an executive knowledgeable about the situation.
Rather stepped down in March 2005 after 24 years as CBS’ anchorman. He took much of the public blame for a discredited 2004 story that questioned President Bush’s military service, an episode that clouded his final months on the job.
No more Maury, Connie
Connie Chung and Maury Povich will have a little more free time after this weekend.
The married couple’s short-lived half-hour talk show, “Weekends with Maury & Connie,” will air its final edition Saturday night on MSNBC.
The weekly program, which premiered in January, returned Chung to the airwaves after her weeknight CNN series was canceled in 2003, but never found an audience.
Povich continues as host of the long-running syndicated talk show, “Maury.”