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Saunders: 'Traveler' bucks the trend

Published May 10, 2007 at midnight

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ABC is breaking some time-honored rules.

The broadcasting networks, in the midst of the key May sweeps periods, are featuring specials and cliffhanger episodes for series returning in the fall.

So didn't anyone tell ABC it was the wrong time to introduce an eight-week, action-oriented serialized drama?

That's right: a serial, the type of failed programming ABC and its rival networks jammed into the schedule last fall with mostly disastrous results.

Anyone remember The Nine and Six Degrees on ABC? Also failing to find viewers: Kidnapped (NBC); Runaway (The CW); Vanished (Fox), and Smith (CBS).

More recently, Drive, a Fox series about a group of characters putting pedal to the metal down the highway toward various destinies, was pulled off the programming road after four episodes.

One new series, NBC's Heroes, not only survived but thrived. CBS' Jericho, which ended its freshman season Wednesday night, might return for a sophomore season.

But overall, serials on television didn't appeal to viewers' appetites.

Premiering tonight (9 on Denver's 7) is Traveler, an edgy, well-produced look at the adventures of a pair of college pals, Jay (Matthew Bomer) and Tyler (Logan Marshall-Green) who go the fugitive route after they are linked to the bombing of a New York City museum.

Of course they're innocent.

So who set them up? And why?

Possibly a missing "friend," Will Traveler (Aaron Stanford), a mysterious college roommate Jay and Tyler admit they never really knew.

This fugitive story line is much more complicated than when Richard Kimble, (aka David Janssen, Tim Daly and Harrison Ford) unjustly accused of killing his wife, was on the run looking for the one-armed man who did kill her.

Jay and Tyler are fugitives in an era when urban terror, double-dealing politicians and FBI agents with various agendas have more than a passing interest in these sometimes-confused fugitives.

In many ways, Traveler is so familiar viewers may think they are watching a rerun of a current serial with new characters.

Still, there's something intriguing about Traveler, mainly because of its pulse-pounding production and paranoid theme that seems to say Americans should brace for some sort of disaster every morning.

Where will Traveler takes us?

Based on tonight's premiere, it's difficult to tell.

But the journey could be intriguing.

If Traveler doesn't find an audience, producers can't blame the network schedule-makers since the new show follows the widely watched Grey's Anatomy.Saunders:

Still surviving

With only two installments left of Survivor: Fiji, Boulder's Stacy Kimball is still contending for the $1 million prize. One more contestant will be voted off the island tonight (7 p.m. CBS 4) before Sunday's three-hour finale.

During the first two Sunday hours, two more will be voted off before the jury votes for the winner among the final three.

The traditional reunion show makes up the final hour with all 19 contestants on hand in New York's Ed Sullivan Theater.

What are Kimball's chances for becoming the ultimate survivor?

In a TV Guide interview, host Jeff Probst says: "Stacy is in a good position because, for whatever reason, she is one of the least liked and everybody believes they could beat her in a final vote.

"The truth hurts, but it's a brutal game."

Kiddie viewing

A survey to be published in Pediatrics magazine shows that 20 percent of U.S. toddlers under age 3 have TV sets in their bedrooms, while 43 percent of kids 3 and 4 years old have their own bedroom TVs.

Scary stuff.

Maybe they're watching Barney or Sesame Street.

I don't know which would be worse - channels tuned to wretched crime shows like Criminal Minds or the early "singing" contestants performing on American Idol.

Today's nostalgia

On May 10, 1982, ABC aired the third and final segment of a six-hour miniseries, Inside the Third Reich, a docudrama based on Albert Speer's memoirs. Rutger Hauer played Speer and Derek Jacoby portrayed Hitler. The project was written and produced by the late E. Jack Newman, a native Denverite.