‘Dancing with Stars’ will step around ‘American Idol’

“American Idol” won’t be the only highly rated talent competition on the air this spring.

ABC is bringing back “Dancing with the Stars” for a second run this season, starting in March. So as not to compete directly with “Idol,” the show will shift from Tuesday and Wednesday nights to Mondays and Tuesdays.

The new season will debut with a two-hour show at 8 p.m. March 19, followed by another two-hour show on the 26th. The first results show will air at 9 p.m. March 27 – most likely staying out of “Idol’s” way, unless the Fox show starts running for more than one hour on Tuesdays.

“Dancing with the Stars” ranks as the No. 2 (Tuesday) and No. 4 (Wednesday) show of the 2006-07 season in total viewers. Both editions are also in the top 15 in the coveted adults 18-49 demographic.

Paula gets real

Bravo has ordered up an unscripted program about “American Idol” judge Paula Abdul.

The series, tentatively titled “Hey Paula!,” is expected to debut later this year.

“It’s a hectic time in my life right now with several projects in television, film and fashion,” says Abdul. “I’m excited to open the doors to Bravo and have all my fans see the other sides to me, beyond what they see on ‘American Idol.’ “

Bye-bye, ‘Queer Eye’

In other Bravo news, the cable network is bidding farewell to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” the groundbreaking, Emmy-winning reality series that introduced America to the Fab Five: Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley and Jai Rodriguez.

The fifth and final season will air this summer.

Ratings gold for ‘Globes’

The Golden Globes telecast got the best of Jack Bauer on Monday night in the ratings race.

The Globes, on NBC, grabbed 20 million viewers, while Fox’s “24” pulled in 15.7 million. It was the second year in a row the awards show came out on top.

It also was the second straight year the Golden Globes has drawn a bigger audience than the year before, Nielsen Media Research said. After bottoming out at 16.8 million viewers in 2005, the Globes reached 18.8 million last year.

The awards show’s biggest audience ever was 24.5 million viewers who watched in 1998, the year of “Titanic,” Nielsen said.

More Moyers

Bill Moyers is returning to PBS in April with a weekly public affairs series, “Bill Moyers Journal,” that resurrects the name of his first public television series for a new century.

Moyers, 72, did two specials for PBS last year, and both the work and response “whetted my appetite for more,” he says.

“People keep writing or stopping me on the street to suggest stories that are not being reported and voices that are not being heard,” says the former press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. “A lot of Americans long for more than conventional wisdom, celebrity pundits, predictable opinions and safe analysis of the obvious.”

The first episode on April 25 discusses the role of the press before the invasion of Iraq.