"Norm" will take a six-week break from ABC's schedule in mid-March to make way for the romantic comedy "Then Came You," premiering March 22nd. Thomas Newton, Susan Floyd and Desmond Askew star. "Norm" will return in time for May sweeps.

Norm with The Great Tom Snyder

We all miss Dave. He's set to return Feb. 21, but in the meantime, Norm (filling in for Richard Simmons) and Don Rickles reflected on their past Late Show appearances. The show was hosted by veteran talker Tom Snyder who came out of retirement to help out Letterman. Unfortunately, we failed to tape the appearance in its entirety -- what we can say is that Norm and Tom got along famously. Tom lighting up when Our Hero would reference Snyder's days on the old "Tomorrow" show. Things got a little tense toward the show's end, when during a mutual riff on the Thighmaster, Norm said he heard Tom was the Assmaster ... to which a somewhat bitter Snyder replied, "This ain't cable, kid."

He's Normeye the Sailor Man ...

Norm relived his 1997 faux pas by once again dropping the F-bomb during a national broadcast. This time, he said it in reaction to a musical miscue during his monologue, instead of flubbing a line, as he did on "Saturday Night Live." Censors were able to mute the verbal slip this time around. Toward the end of the show, they basically held down the mute button during a riff he did on Old Dirty Bastard ... there's no telling where he was headed with that. All in all, he did OK. The crowd didn't get him. The musicians were largely poor sports, except for Melissa Etheridge, who gracefully rolled with Norm's comedic punches. The American Music Awards is basically a bullstuff show that exists mostly to sell records, and cut in on some of the Grammys' action. There's even talk that artists were strong-armed by the latter against performing during the AMA broadcast. That's why you get Brooks & Dunn instead of Garth Brooks and Enrique Iglesias instead of Ricky Martin. And folks like Shania Twain don't even bother to show up. Hell, they could only scare up ONE Backstreet Boy and there's like nine or ten of the little weasels. Mariah Carey was there, though, and she won a prize. During her acceptance speech she thanked the Lord for her "amazing blessings" and the dress she wore exposed most of both. While props are being issued, we'd like to send a very sincere thanks to the designer of Britney Spears' dress ... what there was of it. In between the wanna-be whores and no-talent drips, Norm let fly with a few zingers. Not his best work, but still amusing. He sank during the monologue, but rebounded soon thereafter. His biggest foul up occurred when he began an introduction for Iglesias, only to punctuate it with a hasty throw to the Eurythmics. That was probably a TelePrompter error. The weirdest thing happened about 2 hours into the broadcast: Our Hero's black tie inexplicably turned silver for about five minutes, before returning to black. The mysteries of live television, huh? ABC won big in the Nielsen ratings with an average of about 11.4 million viewers. So, it's pretty clear why networks bother with this nonsense. Check out the audio clips.

Timeslot squatters: Spin City

Despite our pleas, ABC will return "Norm" to death row on Jan. 19. The series will once again air in the half-hour before "The Drew Carey Show," not afterward, where "Norm" shined in the all-important Nielsen ratings. Instead, the suits have opted to give "Spin City" the coveted 9:30 slot. In its freshman season, "The Norm Show" averaged 8.3 million viewers each week. That average fell to 6.6 million when it moved to an earlier time. The show rebounded nicely once returned to 9:30 -- practically equaling its previous performance. We feel it's critical that the show air after ratings power house, "The Drew Carey Show." Not only for the obvious leadin benefit, but for the fact that the same sort of people enjoy "Norm" and "Drew." They're a perfect match, while "Norm" and "Two Guys, a Girl and a Jar of Tomato Paste" ... well, that's "The Odd Couple." The chart below illustrates the Nielsen performance of each "Norm" episode. One ratings point represents 994,000 viewers. The grey portion highlights the show's disastrous move to 8:30.

First, it was "Ballbusted." Then, "Pittsburgh." It was "Foolproof" when Universal delayed its December release date. Now, Norm's next film comedy has pushed been back yet again, for a fall 2000 release, and retitled "Screwed." Pretty apt name, if you're a Norm fan. And there's even rumblings that the movie might be called "Getting Even." One can only wonder if the negative buzz generated from an early screening of the movie in October, has Universal scrambling to fix the picture. Let's not forget that MGM dumped the project before shooting even began (smarting from the failure of "Dirty Work"). So, nothing surprises us anymore.

You can stop crossing your fingers, kids. No People's Choice Award for Our Hero. He lost to "Once and Again" heartthrob Billy Campbell. Norm's in good company, though, with fellow runnerup David Boreanez ("Angel") in the "Male Performer in a New Television Series" category. Somehow we can't imagine he's too torn up about it.

Enjoy the magazine? Please recommend us to a friend!