Caught in the Act

Barbara Walters is stepping down from her gig as host of ABC's 20/20 after 25 years. She'll continue to tape about six interviews a year for ABC News, including her annual Oscar preview, and remains executive producer and co-host of The View.

Regis Philbin is returning for a special one-week Who Wants to Be a Millionaire event February 22 with a $10 million grand prize.

Debbie Rowe, the mother of Michael Jackson's two older children, claims the kids aren't biologically his and that she was artificially inseminated with anonymous donor sperm.

Drowning Pool has announced that Jason "Gong" Jones will be their new frontman. The quartet has already begun recording a follow-up to their platinum debut, Sinner. Set Up will be the lead single and will appear on the Punisher soundtrack.

On of the funniest of sitcoms ever to grace the tube comes to DVD in Barney Miller: Complete First Season, a two-disc set with 13 episodes, from Columbia TriStar.

3 Doors Down have chosen Away From the Sun as the next single from their triple-platinum 2002 CD of the same name. They hope to shoot a video for the tune in March. Meanwhile, work already is under way on 3DD's next full-length release.

Kid Rock and ex-girlfriend Sheryl Crow plan to build on the momentum generated by their Picture collaboration by recording an entire album of duets.

An FBI notice similar to the ones that warn home-video viewers not to make or distribute illegal copies is headed for CDs. The recording industry and the FBI have struck a deal that allows CD packaging to include the FBI's logo on labels warning consumers about the illegality of file-sharing.

Disturbed have announced plans that they will be playing this years Rolling Rock Town Fair Festival in Pittsburgh, PA this Summer. This could possibly indicate no Ozzfest 2004.

AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson says the band will definitely come out with a new studio album in 2004 and that guitarist Angus Young has written harder riffs than the ones that appeared on their last studio CD, Stiff Upper Lip.

The judge on the Robert Blake case has ruled that she will allow cameras in the courtroom for opening statements, closing arguments and the verdict. However, the rest of the trial will be closed to prying lenses.

Bob Keeshan, who achieved television immortality as beloved children's show host Captain Kangaroo, has died. He was 76.

Martin Scorsese is developing the project, The Heart of the Matter, to which he may also have an eye to direct. The project is based on a novel by Graham Greene and will have its screenplay written by Don MacPherson.

Hoping to capitalize on the tremendous buzz Johnny Depp's received since the blockbuster success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Sony Pictures Entertainment is rushing the release of the actor's latest flick, a thriller called Secret Window, to March 12 from its original April 23 launch.

In the first night of head-to-head competition between NBC's hit reality series The Apprentice, and Fox's ratings powerhouse American Idol, Idol handily sent The Donald back to the boardroom by drawing more than twice the number of viewers as The Apprentice. Idol's showing had such an impact that NBC has announced it will switch The Apprentice back to the original Thursday night at 9 p.m. time slot that garnered high ratings for the show's first two episodes.

Just 10 days after bootlegged copies of Something's Gotta Give, Mystic River and The Last Samurai surfaced on the Internet, the FBI has arrested an Illinois man for illegally pirating Oscar screeners and distributing them online.

The high-tech thriller Primer, about two get-rich-quick inventors whose time-travel device complicates their lives, won the top dramatic honor at the Sundance Film Festival.

A revival of Jumpers, Tom Stoppard's metaphysical murder mystery with laughs, is bouncing back to Broadway.

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records label will celebrate its 10th birthday with the CD/DVD Bad Boy 10.

Mike Newell expects Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire to be the most expensive movie ever made, with an anticipated budget of $308 million - $10 million more than that of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Nicole Kidman will join the big screen version of The Producers with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, where she will play Max's (Lane's) secretary Ulla.

Britney Spears is set to produce and star in Door to Door. It's the story of an ambitious teenage girl who moves from Michigan to L.A. in hopes of becoming a famous movie star. She begins to date one of Hollywood's hottest actors who helps her get a job working the door at Hollywood's hottest nightclub. This, in turn, leads to other doors for her.

In what might be the hottest ticket of the year for fans of hip hop and R&B divas, Beyonce, Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys are reportedly in negotiations to team up for a package tour this spring.

The release of Tantric's new album, After We Go, has been pushed back two weeks to February 24th.

Metallica, Godsmack, Saliva, Theory of a Dead Man, Stone Sour and Ill Nino are among the acts that have signed a T-shirt that's been auctioned off on E-Bay. The shirt is being sold by Metal-Charity-dot-com, a German organization that is donating the proceeds from the shirt to UNICEF.