The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Posted: 05 Sep 2011 12:23 AM PDT

Spot the Runaway DJ and win great prizes.

RED FM will hit the road all this month and if you can spot Red FM's Runaway DJs, you will be in the running to win cash, gadgets and even a car.

Starting from today till Sept 30, the deejays will take turns to go out to secret destinations every Monday to Friday. Driving a red Proton Inspira, they will appear in various locations three times a day. Get clues to their whereabouts which will be given out every hour on-air and through the station's Facebook page as well as Twitter.

Be the first listener to turn up at the correct location and identify the Runaway DJ to win a cash prize.

Each winner will receive a key to be in the running to win a car at the finale. Only one key will unlock the car and you could be the grand prize winner to drive home the brand new Proton Inspira.

Be sure to keep your senses alert to your surroundings whether you are on your own or with a group of friends in tracking them down. With different stops being mapped out, you never know when and where the deejays may just pop up. They could appear at a mall, a petrol station, a car showroom or even at a mamak stall!

To make the search even more rewarding, bonus prizes such as iPad 2s and iPod Nanos will be given out at designated times. There's never been a better time to get up close with them as you have the opportunity now to win cash or gadgets as well as driving off with a Proton Inspira.

Check out www.red.fm for the terms and conditions of the contest. Join the Red FM Malaysia Facebook fan page (www.facebook.com/redfm.my) and follow them on Twitter (@iloveredfm) for the latest updates of the contest.

Red FM is owned and operated by The Star.

> Red FM's station frequencies: Taiping, Kedah, Perlis and Pulau Langkawi: 98.1 FM; George Town and Seberang Prai: 107.6 FM; Ipoh, Perak: 106.4 FM; Klang Valley, Negri Sembilan and Tapah: 104.9 FM; Kuantan, Pahang: 91.6 FM; Batu Pahat and Malacca: 98.9 FM; Johor Baru and Singapore: 92.8 FM.

Walters' 'View' primed for run at top of ratings

Posted: 04 Sep 2011 05:45 PM PDT

NEW YORK (AP) - With Oprah Winfrey gone, daytime television is ready for a new monarch.

Barbara Walters and the show she invented 15 years ago, "The View," pronounce themselves ready to step up. She may be past 80 now, but would YOU bet against her?

The show begins its new season Tuesday, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as guest. In a muddled daytime picture, "The View" plans to compete aggressively for displaced Winfrey viewers with a more topical feel, aggressive booking of guests and a few pages ripped from Oprah's playbook.

"Oprah was the only other show that did some of the things that we did," said Bill Geddie, executive producer. "Quite honestly, some of the people that we might have gotten second, we'll be getting first now."

"The View" has just as much chance as any to become the daytime talk leader. Late afternoon, where Winfrey's show ran across most of the country, is considered a more desired time slot than the 11 a.m. home of "The View." But a big mixture of personalities like Dr. Phil, Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper and Dr. Oz will now be competing in the afternoon, some of them new to their time slots or new to the business, and none goes in with a huge advantage in the ratings, said Bill Carroll, an expert in the daytime market for Katz Media.

Meanwhile, "The View" is a fixture at its time of day.

"Consistency always works in your favor," Carroll said.

Geddie noted that no 11 a.m. show has ever been the top daytime talk program, and he seems eager for the challenge of changing that.

The time slot was no real prize back in 1996. ABC had a string of failures there before asking Walters to come up with an idea for a show. She thought of presenting a handful of women with diverse backgrounds and opinions, primarily an entertainment show. Still busy at ABC News, Walters appeared only two days a week and asked Meredith Vieira to be moderator, a role now held by Whoopi Goldberg.

Only 60 percent of ABC viewers could see the show at first, and Walters remembers spending much of her first year cajoling station managers across the country to carry it. Now "The View" is seen virtually everywhere on ABC.

"The View" evolved to become more topical and opinionated as the years went on, a progression that is continuing. The Sept. 9 show will feature former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and focus on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman are each scheduled to appear in the first month.

Such guests co-exist with the popular "hot topics" opening segment, where Goldberg, Walters, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd kick around the day's water-cooler subjects.

Still, Walters cautioned, "We are not 'Meet the Press."' Not when Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian are booked for Wednesday. Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Alicia Keys are among other first-month guests.

Behar and Shepherd will talk about what it was like for each of them to get married this summer, and the show plans to candidly follow Shepherd's effort to have another child.

"We still do loving interviews," Walters said. "We're not Bill O'Reilly." Fox News' O'Reilly, who's had some memorable tangles with the ladies of "The View," is also booked for the first month.

"Authors, actors, celebrities and so forth need a place to go," she said. "And we're a very good place to go. We're an intelligent show, we are a stable show, we like each other. ... It's a fun show, and I think they will feel all the more comfortable with us."

Sound like a pitch? Walters has made a few in her day. Much of the energy she brought to finding big interview "gets" for ABC News is now focused on "The View," where she usually appears three or four days a week. Firmly establishing the topical niche is a pre-emptive strike against CNN's Cooper, who premieres his show this fall, and Walters' ABC colleague Katie Couric. Couric, who was a guest host on "The View" for a week this summer, begins her own daytime talk show next year.

Geddie also talks about more frequently using panels of expert contributors - doctors, lawyers and such - to answer questions. That also sounds very Oprah-like, given the satellite system of contributors she developed through the years.

The competitive approach also extends to cosmetics. Instead of slapping a fresh coat of paint on an old set, "The View" completed a sleek redesign. Gone is the uncomfortable couch where Walters joked some guests nearly toppled over and off the set.

"We've always thought of ourself as the little engine that could, and now we're practically the railroad," Geddie said. "The landscape is changing, and it's not just Oprah. The soap operas are going away. At ABC, we were always the third or fourth show behind the soaps and now we're the No. 1 show. We felt that if we were a big show, we ought to look like it and act like it."

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 4 September 2011