
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 12, 1993                   TAG: 9306120325
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`JOHN & LEEZA' PROMISES TO BE LIGHT AND LIVELY

If John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons can't make a celebrity talk show interesting, nobody can. They have both made careers out of hobnobbing with actors, directors and producers.

So if that kind of fare turns you on, tune in Monday through Friday (at 10 a.m. on WSLS-Channel 10) for NBC's "John & Leeza From Hollywood."

The show, taped the day before airing, is derived from Tesh's and Gibbons's other outings on "Entertainment This Week," which they co-hosted, and "Entertainment Tonight," which he hosts with Mary Hart, and for which she was a reporter. All three come from Paramount Domestic Productions.

NBC, having won a bidding war with ABC, will carry a year of "John & Leeza," Tesh said. "We didn't even have a pilot. They both needed product in the daytime."

"John & Leeza" originates from what Gibbons calls "our playground" and is intended to be light and fun. "We want to keep the show loose and spontaneous," she said. "We want to use the fact that Hollywood is our playground. We want it to feel very inside and exclusive and not off-putting."

Practice shows enabled them to "try out all our technical whiz-bang stuff," she said. "We're as jazzed as we can be."

She and Tesh said they may be compared with Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, whose syndicated "Regis & Kathie Lee" also runs weekdays. "We're fans of what they do, but it's not what we're going to do," she said.

She said "John & Leeza" will have "a Letterman-esque edge," partly because Tesh is a David Letterman fan. But he also said that through focus groups, "we kept finding out that the audience wants more information. They want to learn stuff, and they want to be entertained. If there's a midpoint between the `Home Show' and `David Letterman,' we're it."

Gibbons and Tesh may be ideally paired. Both went to schools in the Carolinas (he to North Carolina State, she to the University of South Carolina), both worked for WCBS in New York, both have an abundance of energy.

Tesh, who arranged the "ET" theme and composed the "John & Leeza" theme, has won four Emmys for composing music for NBC sportscasts. His "Monterey Nights" album is a collection of romantic instrumentals that are "a tribute to the night I proposed to Connie (Sellecca)," he said. He also wrote the music for Howie Mandel's animated "Bobby's World."

Tesh joined Gibbons in 1989 to co-host "Entertainment This Week." She also does two nationally syndicated radio programs, "Country Line USA" and "Entertainment Tonight on the Radio With Leeza Gibbons," and hosts and co-produces Lifetime's "Growing Up Together."

Gibbons and her husband, actor Stephen Meadows, are the parents of Alexandra, nearly 4, and Troy, 15 months.

by CNB