The drama series which made headlines about its transition from internet to TV, “Quarterlife,” succeeded in being a flop in its NBC debut Tuesday night, having the worst ratings in at least 20 years, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The show designed to address audience between 18 and 49 didn’t succeed to rise to the expectations of NBC.

According to a source at NBC, the series might be canceled before the next episode.

An NBC spokeswoman said that the series will remain in the schedule and that it was moved to Sundays.

“Quarterlife” was created for the internet by producers of “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething,” Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. It’s been around for three months with episodes of seven to nine minutes being transmitted on its own website and My-Space TV.

The broadcast from Tuesday only draw an average of 3.1 million viewers and a rate of 1.3 among the audience from 18-49, being the lowest in NBC history since 1987 when Nielsen began measuring TV viewing by age.

To see the difference take for example the usual Tuesday 10 p.m. show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” which led with over 12 million viewers and a 4.5 rating.  

The show is about six friends in their 20s who are struggling with their lives having at its center Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch), a character who has a video blog and messes everyone’s lives with her “need” of being honest.

Other characters are Danny (David Walton) and Jed (Scott Michael Foster) who are aspiring filmmakers and best friends. Their love interst will be Debra (Michelle Lombardo). The group is completed by Lisa (Maite Schwartz), a bartender and an insecure actress and Andy (Kevin Christy), a computer wizard.

NBC made a fuss about the show which was announced during the writers’ strike and promoted it.

NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman said on Wednesday that the series didn’t live up to expectations, but was “so worth the try.”

He said: “The Web site traffic went up a huge amount, and we continue to try new things and new models. It’s very inexpensive but we hoped for higher ratings,” Reuters reports.

I’ll admit it - I’m one of those people who, while at work or in the computer lab at school, tries to sneak a click at the infamous TMZ Web site just to get caught up on the latest celebrity gossip.

Lately, however, it’s been the same old story. Everyone in Hollywood seems to be getting treated for something in rehab, but maybe it’s just a new publicity stunt used to boost celebrity fame. British pop singer Amy Winehouse has definitely made a profit out of treatment with her 2007 hit song “Rehab.”

Celebrity drug use has always been a problem. Actors are prone to drug addiction because they have the money and the access. Fame opens up a world that could either be dangerous or profitable.

Many celebrities have fallen into the glamorous life and have become spoiled with the ability to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. And when I hear another crazy rehab story it makes me think, how could they let this happen? Are they really doing this just to get attention?

Magazines like People have also reported on celebrity drug use and the many ins and outs of rehab. Over the past two years, many of the most ill-behaved celebrities have been seen on the covers of magazines tying to deal with their struggles to overcome drug and alcohol abuse.

Young celebrities caught up in the Hollywood party scene are surrounded by easy access to many drugs. Even the celebrities who look innocent aren’t.

Eva Mendez and Kirsten Dunst, two celebrities with a clean image and whom I would have never guessed to be addicts, both entered into rehab this past month and suddenly popped up everywhere in entertainment news.

Last summer, Lindsey Lohan gained popularity on many magazine covers when she crashed her black Mercedes and received a DUI in Los Angeles. The next weekend she was on almost every magazine cover and entertainment Web site looking passed-out in the passenger’s seat of a friend’s car with a pale face, her head tilted to the side and her mouth wide open. Also hanging from the rear-view mirror of the car were three sobriety medallions from rehab treatment that each indicated 30 days of sobriety. So much for that.

Then the tabloids went crazy to capture Lohan’s out-of-control party habits that led to her long-needed treatment at a facility in Utah.

Another celebrity who has become the most photographed woman in the world right now, because of poor decisions like shaving her head and smashing cars with an umbrella, would have to be the jaw-dropping life of Britney Spears. Articles on MSNBC, Fox News and E! Online, just to name a few, have all ran stories on Spears’ attempts to find help.

Celebrity rehab has even found its way into the business world. Business Week, a Web site dedicated to getting the latest business news, issued a blog on March 27, 2007, by its columnist John Fine using Spears’ rehab drama to criticize other media companies. “Anyone thinking that the fast-growing site TMZ.com is strictly takedown or gawker central (that’s gawker the concept, not gawker the site) evidently hasn’t seen the valentines they’re sending to the nation’s best- known rehab doll,” he said.

Also, a new reality show called “Celebrity Rehab” has aired this year on VH1. It documents the rehab journey of eight celebrities treated by Dr. Drew Pinsky, who is the medical director of the Department of Chemical Dependency Services at Las Encinas Hospital in Southern California. Drew also had a previous show called Loveline, in which he issued advice to questions dealing with relationships and sex.

With the pressure of the media constantly looking over their shoulders, celebrities face extreme pressure on how to maintain their image. Seeing a celebrity enter rehab because they have been depending on drugs and alcohol to calm their nerves should be seen as a chance for them to turn their life around and not as an opportunity for people to make money.

Some celebrities are lucky enough to hit rock-bottom and come back up again, but then there are cases like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley who leave us as legends. So as the saying “sex, drugs and rock and roll” goes, celebrities these days are surely living up to it.

Anna Torres can be reached at atorres@statehornet.com

His singular mantra to young people: “”Hold onto your dreams.”" Producer. Rapper. Mogul. Designer. Perfumer. Restauranteur. CEO. Marathoner. Actor. Sean Combs, international icon, clearly has the midas touch–shining a bright light on his many endeavors. It’s only fitting that he now lends his talents to a film, aptly entitled A Raisin in the Sun.

Its history is compelling and its legacy hearty. A Raisin in the Sun–a new film made for TV begat from a 2004 Broadway Tony-winning revival–has lived several incarnations before: the 1989 TV-movie, the 1961 award-winning film, and the original 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by African American playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry’s drama was the first play mounted on Broadway by a black woman, and also marked the first play directed by a black director, Lloyd Richards.

Having won skeptical audiences over in his Raisin stage portrayal of Walter Lee, Combs continues to expand his own hearty professional legacy with an unquenchable thirst. As actor/producer, he now offers both older and younger audiences a new cinematic glimpse into a timeless classic about cyclical struggle and hardship that unleashes a vision of boundless hope.

On his love for Lorraine Hansberry’s opus:

Sean Combs: This play is more relatable to young people today because so many of them are living in these situations. First, it was an African American story, now you have white people living in trailer parks, Latinos living in impoverished areas, African Americans–there’s millions of people right now waiting for a check, a check for unemployment–a check for social security. To not be able to accomplish your dreams or feel like there are so many obstacles in your way–these are things that people are going through, and to see this family go through it is really relatable for today.

On how this story relates to his personal life–particularly as a father:

SC: I really related to it–ironically, people think that I can’t relate to losing $10,000–even in my real life, the story relates to me. My father was killed when I was three, so I grew up in a house with three people. When I was chasing the dream of being in the music industry, everyone thought I was crazy. They thought (his character in Raisin) was crazy to have a liquor store. The way I was feeling when I had my first son and I still hadn’t made it yet–seeing his conditions–the way that I wanted it for him. These are the things we’ve all gone through and we can all relate to the characters.

On stepping into Sidney Poitier’s and Danny Glover’s shoes in the lead role of Walter Lee Younger:

SC: I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time–first, it was Monster’s Ball with Halle Berry–I’ve paid a lot of dues to get to this point. Every project I’ve taken on, I’ve gotten better. I’ve never done a leading role, and it really changed my life. You have to expose yourself–it’s the most work I’ve ever done. I’m very proud of it and I look forward to doing more things in the future.

On his secret to staying successful:

SC: My belief in God and I have a great team of people behind me and around me. It helps me to focus on things–like when I did this movie, I was able to shut down everything. I turned off my Blackberry and I just focused on the movie. I have a team of people that run my various companies, so I’m able to go on tour or do artistic things that I like to do.

On why he wants to expose Raisin In the Sun to a younger generation:

SC: This is a timeless story–a story of hope and a story of love. These are the kind of stories we need in the world to balance things out. It will let them know: there are people who have gone through what you’re going through … Sometimes, things are not gonna work out, but never give up your dreams. And whether there’s good times or bad, when the chips are down, your family is going to be there. This is a love story and a story of hope. As long as young people focus on those things, they will have gotten what I want them to get.

A Raisin in the Sun costars: Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, Sanaa Lathan, John Stamos.

It airs on ABC February 25th 8/7c.

The Oscars made history Sunday night. But not the good kind.

The three-hour-plus ABC telecast averaged 32 million viewers, the smallest crowd on record—ever, per Nielsen Media Research estimates.

The show “topped” the 2003 ceremony, which, with 33 million viewers, was Oscar’s previous low.

Even worse, if possible, the show was a shadow of its 2007 self, shedding more than 8 million viewers, or one-fifth of its audience, from last year to this. Even in an age where everything is the lowest rated something ever, that’s a significant blood loss.

Oscar’s main trouble seemed to be female trouble: Based on ratings of the show’s prime-time hours, it struck out with the chicks.

Last year, with host Ellen DeGeneres at the helm, the Oscars was up across the board with women viewers.

This year, with male Jon Stewart dealing, the show looked to be down, a lot, in all the major female demographics.

The show’s disconnect with its target audience might have stemmed not so much from Stewart, who generally won good reviews, but from the top nominees, a pack of films with nary a female touch, led by Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men, that Stewart himself jokingly described as “psychopathic killer movies.”

Another ratings challenge cropped up when Hollywood’s biggest night turned into another continent’s crowning glory.

For the first time since the 1965 Oscar ceremony, all four acting awards went to residents of Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ‘65 show, honoring the international likes of Zorba the Greek, suffered the ceremony’s third smallest audience share of the 1960s.

For whatever reason, this year’s Oscars repelled viewers as it went on. What began as a show that averaged 32.3 million viewers in its first half-hour, devolved into a show that averaged 25.4 million in its final half-hour of prime time.

Stewart, who previously presided over the 2006 Oscars, now goes down as the host of two of the three lowest rated Academy Awards in TV history. And in defense of Steve Martin, who hosted the 2003 misfire, that ceremony competed for attention with the start of the Iraq War. Stewart, thusly, stands alone as the lowest-rated host of relatively peaceful Oscar nights.

ABC did its best to turn its frown upside down, noting that Sunday’s telecast was far bigger than the rest of this year’s crop of low-rated award shows, including NBC’s Golden Globes debacle.

The network said the show rated highest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, Florida, and Oscar’s hometown of Los Angeles.

Stewart’s notices were another bright spot. From Britain (the BBC called him “sparkling”) to Los Angeles (the L.A. Times found the comic “cool and loose”), and back to Missouri (”Second time’s the charm for Stewart,” headlined the Kansas City Star), Stewart won over critics.

Unlike the show.

The telecast, both a celebration of the ceremony’s 80th anniversary and, as the Hollywood Reporter pointed out, a reminder that Stewart’s writing staff was only recently back from the picket lines, was dinged for being clip-heavy.

“This wasn’t an Oscars,” wrote Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke. “This was a slightly longer version of the Golden Globes announcement.”

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales said the show went “clip-clip-clipping along.” “This is not a good thing,” he decided.

Shales chided the telecast for waiting to get to the acting categories, and for waiting to present presenter Miley Cyrus until the unfriendly kid hour of nearly 10 p.m. ET.

Riffing on Oscar’s birthday, Time’s Richard Corliss said the ceremony “had the tone and pace suitable to an octogenarian’s temper.”

Celebrity bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman is set to return to television after his reality TV show was pulled from the air three months ago in a controversy over his use of a racial slur, cable channel A&E said on Tuesday.

A&E took the popular show, “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” off its schedule last November after a private phone call in which Chapman, an ex-con, used an offensive term to describe his son Tucker’s black girlfriend hit the Internet.

It transpired that Tucker sold the tape of the conversation to The National Enquirer, for a reported $15,000.

A teary Chapman apologized repeatedly on television and to the African American community after the tape was made public and promised to make amends.

He acknowledged using the epithet “nigger” on a heated call with his son but admitting he was probably interfering in his son’s life and he still loved his son.

An A&E spokesman said the network had decided to start production again of “Dog The Bounty Hunter” but no airdate has yet been scheduled.

“Over the last few months, Duane “Dog” Chapman has taken and continues to take the appropriate steps in reaching out to several African American organizations in an effort to make amends for his private comments to his son which were released publicly,” said a statement from the network.

“Since the premise of “Dog The Bounty Hunter” is about second chances - we have decided to give him one.”

Honolulu-based Chapman, 55, who has 12 children and has been married five times, rose to fame after his 2003 tracking and capture of Max Factor heir and serial rapist Andrew Luster in Mexico.