Monty Brinton/CBS Dolly Neely tends sheep on family farm. Click photo for larger image.

Shouldn't there be a moratorium on the number of "Survivor" contestants from a single geographic region? Just asking.

Following in the $1 million footsteps of past "Survivor" players (and winners) Jenna Morasca and Amber Brkich, the ninth edition of the CBS reality show will feature Dolly Neely of Mercer.

Neely, 25, was born in Clarion and currently lives on her family's 90-acre farm near Lake Latonka, where she's a shepherdess to 40 sheep.

According to CBS's Neely biography. she is a member of the National Rifle Association, likes to mountain bike, water ski and trap muskrats and beavers and says "The Seven Year Itch" is her favorite film. Neely, who looks a bit like Britney Spears circa "Oops, I Did It Again" in her publicity photo, claims Jesus Christ as her "ultimate hero."

"Survivor: Vanuatu -- Islands of Fire" was filmed last month in the South Pacific near Fiji. This edition, like "Survivor: Amazon," will feature separate tribes pitting men against women, the Yasur Tribe vs. the Lopevi Tribe. The show premieres Sept. 16.

(Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV editor)

Playing with Olympics ratings

Even as the XXVIII Olympiad in Athens was getting under way, NBC had already won a gold medal in the Phonus Bolonus competition.

Team NBC put out a press release declaring ratings victory for Friday's Opening Ceremonies, which, the network declared, attracted 56 million viewers.

This is what is called a reach number. This number includes anyone who happened to be flipping through the TV universe Friday night, hoping to catch footage of news correspondents facing certain death in the eye of Hurricane Charley, and paused on NBC's coverage of the Olympics ceremonies just long enough to contemplate whether that pretty young chick standing in a shallow pool of water while carrying a fluorescent light strapped to her belly to simulate New Age Pregnancy posed an even more interesting risk: death by Olympics electrocution.

The number that goes into the record books, however, is the average audience. This indicates how many people actually watched the Opening Ceremonies on NBC, including Glowing Pregnant Chick, Pythagorean Man, that ancient fertility goddess who got away with twice as much as Janet Jackson, that new song from Bjork, the Big Giant Exploding Head, and the parade of nations.

Turns out, 25.4 million people did. As non-U.S. Summer Games Opening Ceremonies go, that's fewer than the 27.3 million folks who watched the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, but more than the 22 million who watched the opener of the '92 Summer Games in Barcelona. (The 1996 Summer Games were held in Atlanta, and were therefore non non-U.S.).

Among viewers of all ages, this year's Opening Ceremonies were down about 7 percent compared with the same night of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. But among younger viewers, ages 18 to 49, that drop grew to 16 percent.

By Monday, NBC's Phonus Bolonus had broken all previous Olympics records, with its viewer total growing to 126 million people who had stumbled across as little as six minutes of Games coverage on any day on any of the seven networks now employed by NBC to amortize the gazillion dollars it's paying for the telecast rights. (Those networks include NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, USA and that high-def channel.) Which, NBC assures us, is a lot more viewers than stumbled across Sydney. We should hope so.

Far more interesting than NBC's King of the Universe press release re: the Opening Ceremonies was the analysis put out by New York ad-buying firm Magna Global USA, which concluded that Friday's coverage siphoned off significantly more viewers from cable networks than from the other broadcast networks. About half of NBC's ratings gain Friday night came from homes that had not been watching TV the week before; about one-third came from ad-supported cable networks and only 15 percent from the other broadcast networks, even though all of those other networks rolled over and played dead with reruns that night.

And, despite all of NBC's efforts to market the Games to younger viewers, the median age of the Opening Ceremonies audience was 48.6 years.

(Lisa de Moraes, The Washington Post)

Perrine to weekends

Channel 4 reporter Shannon Perrine, a frequent substitute anchor on weekend mornings, has been promoted to regular weekend anchor, taking over the spot vacated by Susan Koeppen, who was hired as a consumer reporter for CBS's "The Early Show."

In addition to anchoring weekend mornings, Perrine, who joined WTAE in 1999, will continue reporting three nights a week.

(R.O.)

Channel surfing

Jennifer Lopez returns to guest-star a second time on NBC's "Will & Grace" in the show's Sept. 16 season premiere. ... The WB has renewed "Blue Collar TV" for the entire 2004-05 season, ordering an additional 22 episodes of the sketch comedy. ... WQED will remember the late Julia Child by airing "American Masters: Julia! America's Favorite Chef" tomorrow at 10:30 p.m.

(R.O.)