[Televisionary]

Wowsers. What a difference a day can make. Just a day after attending the audience run through on FOX's comedy pilot Action News (now being renamed with the less on-the-nose title of Back to You ), I was shocked to learn that not one, but two actors had been replaced in the days leading up to Friday's scheduled taping of the Action News / Back to You pilot. (The series itself already has a 13-episode commitment on FOX for the fall.) Paul Campbell (of Battlestar Galactica and Nobody's Watching ) and Aimee Garcia ( George Lopez ), who played station news director Nate and weatherwoman Montana respectively, are both off the series and are being replaced by Josh Gad and Ayda Field. Gad ( 21 ) will replace Paul Campbell as the young corporate news director; Field ( Studio 60 ), who also appears in the untitled Gabe Sachs/Jeff Judah comedy pilot at ABC this season, will replace Aimee Garcia as the former child beauty pageant winner turned meteorologist. Both Gad and Field wil...

Kelsey Grammer. Patricia Heaton. Two actors on two of the biggest sitcoms from the last ten years. Push them together and you could have a clash of temperaments. Or the expert sparks that come from a perfect pairing of disparate personalities. FOX's new comedy series, Action News , fortunately has the latter effect, pairing the erudite Grammer with the down-to-earth Heaton as two local newscasters with some unresolved history who are forced, once again, to work together delivering some, er, gripping local stories. I had the opportunity to attend the audience run-through on Action News ' pilot yesterday on the FOX lot (though the fate of said pilot is a foregone conclusion, as the comedy has already been ordered to series for the fall ) and am happy to report that the series has more than met my expectations, based on the phenomenal script by series creators Steve Levitan ( Just Shoot Me ) and Christopher Lloyd ( Frasier ) and the always witty direction by legendary comedy direc...