Television

Verizon Communications Inc. plans to start television channels that will show news and sports in Washington and selected additional markets. Michelle Webb, a former news producer for Walt Disney Co.'s ABC TV network, will head the project, Verizon said. Verizon, based in New York, said the Washington channel would start operating in the first quarter. Verizon plans to spend $22.

Zach Braff made a declaration Wednesday afternoon about his NBC comedy: " 'Scrubs' can go on with or without me." Say, \o7que\f7? "Scrubs" creator Bill Lawrence, Braff and costar Sarah Chalke appeared on a panel to discuss the future of the series. If it has one, is the key question, as Braff weighs whether to renew his contract at the end of this season and Lawrence decides whether he would return without the show's narrator and star.

CHRISTINE Campbell (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the attractive but bumbling title character of CBS' "The New Adventures of Old Christine," and Daniel Harris (Blair Underwood), who teaches a predominantly white fourth grade, eye each other hungrily when they meet at the posh private school. But the two divorces fear that just going out on a date will invite disapproval and scorn and may even cause Daniel to lose his job.

An Internet television service backed by one of Hollywood's best-known deal makers launches today. After a year and a half of public testing, Veoh formally opens for business stocked with more than 100,000 videos by amateurs and professionals. San Diego-based Veoh Networks Inc. is one of an emerging group of video websites seeking to move beyond pratfalls and karaoke. To that end, the company has found an investor with a distinguished Hollywood pedigree: former Walt Disney Co.

Apple Inc. said it delayed the launch of its Apple TV video-streaming product until March, but the company would not explain why. The Cupertino, Calif., company had said in January that the $299 set-top box would be available this month. Apple TV is designed to move digital content from a user's computer to their TV set and is anticipated to be a highly competitive product in the growing crop of offerings that deliver Internet-based videos to the television.

NBC Universal Television on Monday agreed to a three-year deal to finance the newly formed boutique production studio headed by veteran TV executives Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun. The pair -- former top programmers for Fox Broadcasting and ABC -- had initially sought to create an independent production company that would own the programming it produced. The arrangement with NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.

The U.S. government will offer households as much as $80 each to convert televisions to receive digital broadcasts under a $1.5-billion program. Households with one or more TV sets can ask for as many as two $40 coupons as long as the first $990 million lasts, the Commerce Department said Monday. An additional $510 million in coupons may be offered if the initial amount is insufficient. The subsidies are designed to help consumers prepare for the end of analog TV broadcasts in February 2009.

Any hope of Major League Baseball's Extra Innings out-of-market package staying on cable may have disappeared Wednesday with baseball's rejection of the latest offer from In Demand. "This offer meets all the conditions set forth by MLB," said Robert Jacobson, president and chief executive of In Demand, which represents a consortium of cable companies, including Time Warner and Cox. Jacobson also called it an offer that matches DirecTV's.

THE images in "Blades of Glory" are provocative: Will Ferrell, as a rough-and-tumble macho, and Jon Heder, as the pastel-wearing girlie man, feign romance on the ice as a figure skating pair. They lock legs and hold hands, bump and grind and plant their faces in each other's crotch. It's hilarious and unsettling: The joke, which deftly avoids gay baiting, is on straight men. Straight men and male bonding, it turns out, make for far richer comic ground these days.

THE voice came from the middle of Row F in the orchestra section at Sacramento's Community Center Theater during a recent matinee performance of "Twelve Angry Men" -- rather loudly, in fact: "Can you look at him and \o7not\f7 think of 'Cheers' "? This unscripted line accompanied the stage entrance of actor George Wendt, who portrays Juror One in the Reginald Rose drama. Those seated near the woman could only be grateful that the speaker had not jumped to her feet and shouted: "Norm!"