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- THE WEEK, Page 25ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTMurphy to Dan: Read My Ratings
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- The latest round in the Brown-Quayle feud kicks off a CBS rout
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- The ultimate irony of the sparring between fictional journalist
- Murphy Brown and real-life Vice President Dan Quayle is that it
- serves the purposes of one of America's greatest entrepreneurs:
- Murphy Brown TV series creator Diane English. Last week's
- season opener, pumped up by weeks of publicity, drew an enormous
- 44 million viewers to a special hour-long episode. Quayle's
- rebuke of the sitcom for supposedly glamourizing single moms was
- challenged by such scripted scolding from star Candice Bergen
- as, "Perhaps it's time for the Vice President to recognize that
- families come in all shapes and sizes."
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- Murphy Brown, along with the stellar perform ance of new
- Monday-night romantic comedies Hearts Afire (courtesy of
- Designing Women and Evening Shade creator Linda
- Bloodworth-Thomason) and Love and War (the latest from English
- herself), seems likely once again to nail down the evening as
- a wholly owned subsidiary of CBS. And the strong Friday night
- figures for the new Golden Palace (a spin-off of the successful
- Golden Girls) and Picket Fences (a reworking of the rural-gothic
- themes of Emmy-winning Northern Exposure) may create a new
- bridgehead for the Tiffany Network.
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