Court Tv

It is a 21st century courtroom, almost intimate in scale, that looks as if it were made for TV. Its walls are a neutral gray and the desktops a cool off-white, each with a recessed video monitor. The chairs are bright blue, echoed in an accent panel behind the bench. In this quiet, human-scale room in The Hague, trial began Tuesday for Dusan Tadic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. And cable's Court TV is there to cover it.

The sensational result in the O.J. Simpson murder case notwithstanding, it's an article of faith among criminal defense attorneys that sequestered jurors are more prone to convict than those who go home when the trial recesses for the day. That's why more notice should have been paid this week when J. Michael Flanagan, who is defending Conrad Murray — the physician charged with causing the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson — asked Superior...

After a year of research, Court TV has settled on its new name: truTV. The fresh moniker will be adopted Jan. 1 when the Turner cable network relaunches with a new brand, shucking off its identity as a criminal justice channel to focus on reality TV. Executives hope the new approach will appeal to what they call the "real engagers" demographic -- men and women who seek dramatic stories about real people.

I am a fan of that other college team in town, UCLA. I will be driving to games in an Avis rental car, quenching my thirst with Sam's Cola, checking the time on my Rolex replica, enjoying the companionship of my girlfriend, Ugly Betty, and tracking the Trojans on Court TV. Wes Wellman Santa Monica :: Featuring an almost identical photo of its bemused football coach brashly pointing a finger across town in the general direction of those...

Nancy Grace is ending her justice-themed interview and debate show, "Nancy Grace: Closing Arguments," on Court TV after 10 years with the network. Grace said Wednesday that she was leaving Court TV to focus on her legal analysis program, "Nancy Grace," on CNN Headline News and on her charitable endeavors.

Re "Terror Trial Judge Wary of TV, Won't Rule It Out," Jan. 10: The very fact that Zacarias Moussaoui has asked for his terrorism trial to be televised is good enough reason to see that it doesn't happen. Doubtless he wants to be seen by his fellow cult members around the world as a martyr so that he may incite them to further acts of murder. And Court TV stands to make a fortune in the process, so of course they think it's a great idea. The lawyers for both parties are asking Judge Leonie Brinkema to overturn a ban on cameras in federal courtrooms so that their agendas may be met, regardless of the platform it provides for terrorists and the danger it brings to testifying witnesses.

Star Jones Reynolds is returning to her roots. The onetime prosecutor and talk show host, whose acrimonious departure from ABC's "The View" last year made headlines, has landed a new gig at Court TV, the cable channel that helped launch her TV career. The former Brooklyn district attorney, who first joined Court TV as a legal commentator in 1991, is getting her own one-hour daytime talk show, the network announced Wednesday.

Court TV is asking a federal judge for permission to broadcast the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person indicted in the Sept. 11 attacks. Federal rules explicitly prohibit TV cameras in courtrooms, but lawyers for Court TV say that prohibition is unconstitutional. "Through television, the means exist for all Americans to exercise their constitutional right to observe this trial," wrote Court TV attorney Lee Levine, in a motion filed Friday in federal court in Alexandria.

Members of the electronic media covering the O.J. Simpson murder trial are criticizing Court TV because of a snafu this week that resulted in an alternate juror being shown, and may ask for another operator to take over the pool camera. Sylvia Teague, president of the Radio & Television News Assn., a professional organization coordinating media pool coverage in the courtroom, said electronic media representatives have raised concerns about Court TV's ability to handle the pool camera.

NBC plans to sell its one-third stake in the Court TV cable network to partners Time Warner Inc. and Liberty Media Corp. for about $70 million in cash, according to one person familiar with the agreement. The companies declined to disclose financial terms. New York-based Time Warner and Liberty Media, based in Englewood, Colo., will split the NBC stake to become equal owners of the network, which shows live coverage of prominent trials and other programs about the law.

In 1996, Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter told a congressional committee that "the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body." Fortunately, Souter's impending retirement will spare his colleagues -- if not a television audience -- that spectacle. It also creates the possibility that his successor will join other recent appointees in opening the door wider to televised oral arguments.

A few years ago, it looked like Court TV was all about courtrooms, FX Network was for tough guys, and AMC ran only movies. In the coming months, however, cable TV viewers will start to see things change. Court TV will become TruTV. FX ads will explain "There is no box" its shows fit into. And AMC will launch its third original scripted program.

Star Jones arrived in the ballroom Sunday morning without her husband's last name and without answers to the Most Pressing Question of the day: Star, where is the rest of you? Jones was promoting her new Court TV (which will become TruTV in January) talk show, which begins airing daily at 3 p.m. Aug. 20. She looked happy, her hair in a bob and her new petite bod in a fitted gray dress.

After a year of research, Court TV has settled on its new name: truTV. The fresh moniker will be adopted Jan. 1 when the Turner cable network relaunches with a new brand, shucking off its identity as a criminal justice channel to focus on reality TV. Executives hope the new approach will appeal to what they call the "real engagers" demographic -- men and women who seek dramatic stories about real people.

ON a warm afternoon, deep in a shady, floral-scented section of Beverly Hills, officer Dave Rudy parked his car near a stop sign and lay in wait for someone to run it. Sure enough, within minutes, a mom in a black Range Rover -- who later said she was going to pick up a child at Beverly Hills High School -- cruised through. Compounding the crime, she then ran another one, as she turned from Charleville Boulevard to Linden Drive. A "California roll," Rudy called it.

Nancy Grace is ending her justice-themed interview and debate show, "Nancy Grace: Closing Arguments," on Court TV after 10 years with the network. Grace said Wednesday that she was leaving Court TV to focus on her legal analysis program, "Nancy Grace," on CNN Headline News and on her charitable endeavors.

AFTER winning fans as a director ("Pink Flamingos"), author ("Shock Value"), photographer and actor ("Seed of Chucky" and "The Simpsons"), John Waters said Wednesday he's thrilled to have a new audience on Court TV "without it being my own trial." Looking funereally thin, with thinning hair and a pencil-thin mustache, Waters spoke to members of the Television Critics Assn.

As the entertainment industry grapples with criticism that it markets violence to children, cable channel Court TV said Wednesday it will expand its anti-violence school curriculum, offering up results of a UC Santa Barbara study that it said proved the anti-violence project was effective. The 2-year-old Choices and Consequences curriculum uses real-life court cases to teach middle school students about consequences of their actions, such as a high school prank that turned deadly.

In the latest sign that Internet companies are stepping up their pursuit of traditional TV advertisers, AOL on Tuesday jumped ahead of network prime-time's annual "upfront" advertising sales season by previewing its own "fall" lineup of programs.

TELEVISING ORAL arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court is an idea whose time came, oh, about 20 years ago. But, like a surly adolescent, the court stubbornly refuses all entreaties to be more open. And, like a surly adolescent, it can't be forced to behave -- especially not by Congress. It has to come to its senses all on its own. Legislation forcing the court to televise its proceedings would pit Congress against the court in a needless constitutional confrontation. A proposal from Sen.