Monday, April 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHOOTING STARS: Ed McMahon brings three projects; 'CSI' set to return

Hi-yooooo!

From "The Tonight Show" to "Star Search," Ed McMahon has been a familiar, and almost constant, television presence.

McMahon returns to TV -- and to Las Vegas -- this week as the new spokesman for a three-project extravaganza for BestBet Media, which takes place Tuesday and Wednesday at The Orleans.

Project No. 1: an infomercial introducing Ed McMahon's Players Club, a successor to the original Players Club that featured Telly Savalas as spokesman.

Project No. 2: A Miss BestBet pageant, hosted by McMahon, to select a company spokesmodel based on charisma, a fitness routine, a swimsuit competition -- and wit, considering that the 12 contestants must field off-the-wall interview questions from a stand-up comic. (The public is invited to attend the pageant; competition begins 11 a.m. Wednesday poolside at The Orleans.)

And climactic Project No. 3: a TV pilot featuring a million-dollar MegaBingo Championship. (The bingo show, which also is open to the public, begins at 2 p.m. Wednesday in The Orleans showroom.)

McMahon will call the bingo game, which features 72 contestants who won the chance to compete in Las Vegas by winning MegaBingo bonus rounds at participating tribal casinos and bingo halls nationwide.

Six camera crews will be on hand throughout the BestBet extravaganza, according to Steven Meistrich, chief executive officer of BestBet Media Group. (Players Club creator Ed Fishman, Meistrich's partner, is BestBet's chairman.)

The bingo bonanza "is what we see as the ultimate reality show," Meistrich comments, noting that gambling hasn't yet figured in the current reality TV boom.

And McMahon represents an ideal spokesman for BestBet's planned projects, which range from a magazine to Internet programming, Meistrich maintains.

"He appeals to all generations," he comments. "Everyone knows Ed McMahon -- and no one has a negative word to say about him."

Catching up on late-breaking projects that visited last week, Laurelwood Entertainment's "Tattoo You" -- a reality show featured twosomes getting tattoos -- was scheduled to visit, as was another episode of the Learning Channel's "A Wedding Story," from Philadelphia-based Banyan Productions, which was expected to wrap its latest three-day shoot Saturday.

The BBC is expected to begin a two-day shoot Sunday for "Perfect Holiday," focusing on a breast-cancer survivor on a Las Vegas visit that's scheduled to include a stop at the Fremont Street Experience.

And on April 21, camera crews will focus on a fleet of Land Rover Discovery vehicles as the "Land Rover G4 Challenge: The Ultimate Global Adventure" rolls down the Strip en route to a final showdown in Moab, Utah.

The four-stage, three-continent, 4,000-mile challenge -- which features contestants from 16 countries competing in two-nation teams -- began March 30 in New York City on a East Coast run that ran from Manhattan to the Catskill, Adirondack and White mountains.

From the United States, the challenge shifted to South Africa from April 2-12; this week, the contestants (chosen from more than 10,000 applicants) are roughing it in Western Australia.

Also on the late-April schedule is a Bravo documentary te7ntatively titled "Las Vegas Live," from Chicago-based Bellevue Entertainment. It is about "the performances, performers and venues that collectively have made Las Vegas the greatest stage in the world," according to executive producer Janet Russo.

A spinoff from the NBC reality series "Meet My Folks," titled "Who Wants to Marry My Dad," also is expected here in late April or early May.

And, as anticipated, CBS' top-rated "CSI" will cap off its third season with another of its periodic location visits, this one scheduled to begin April 28.

The season's 23rd and final episode, titled "Inside the Box," focuses on a bank robbery mystery that involves "something taken from a bank -- but not money," according to "CSI" creator Anthony Zuiker, who scripted the episode with Carol Mendelsohn, his fellow executive producer.

Zuiker also promises "two gargantuan secrets revealed -- one to a character, one to the audience about one of the characters."

As always, stay tuned to the next Shooting Stars for more details.

And if you're wondering why this Shooting Stars is venturing so far into the future, it's because your humble correspondent will be on vacation for a few days -- and, hence, so will the column, which will return April 28.