Roy E. Disney and Stanley P. Gold, the former Walt Disney Co. directors who sparked a shareholders' rebellion last year, said Tuesday that they will not vote to reelect the current board of directors but are not conducting a campaign to ask other shareholders to do the same. The board is due to meet in Minneapolis on Friday. Analysts observed that big pension funds that are represented on the board and that backed the Disney/Gold initiative last year have largely been mollified by the company's promise to replace Michael Eisner as CEO by next month and by a dramatic rise in box-office profits for its movies and soaring ratings for its television network. Nevertheless, Disney and Gold chastised the board for moving slowly in putting its words about company reform into action. In addition, they said, "The board's credibility is in question due to reports that they have yet to interview a single outside candidate." Several analysts have suggested that the board has all-but-confirmed a decision to install Disney President Robert Iger in Eisner's office. But Disney Chairman George Mitchell has said as recently as last week that the board has made "no prior determination" about Eisner's successor.

FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman, who is one of the few legitimate online investigative reporters covering the entertainment industry, claims he has been accosted by several members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. and berated for writing recent articles exposing their backgrounds and the group's lavish expenses ($77,000 for "meetings and press conferences," $24,000 for "flowers and gifts"). The HFPA, a small group of self-described movie reporters with questionable credentials, is responsible for selecting each year's Golden Globes winners and producing the annual NBC awards show. Friedman said that he had been confronted twice over the weekend by HFPA President Lorenzo Soria, who, he said, "didn't like the fact that I'd found out he'd received a free $3,000 suit and $350 tie from Italian designers to wear to the Globes." Friedman said that the HFPA publicist had complained to Fox News that he'd only spoken to a former HFPA member who had been barred from the organization. "I know of no such person," Friedman said, adding: "What could they [be] barred for?"

Fox Searchlight's Sideways, currently up for five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director, captured four of the five awards at this year's awards ceremonies of the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. The awards included best feature (producer Michael London), best director (Alexander Payne), best performance (Paul Giamatti), and best screenplay (Payne and Jim Taylor). A sixth award went to Zach Braff who received the best first-time director award for Garden State. The festival is due to wind up on Sunday.

The Berlin Film Festival, which ranks only behind its counterparts in Cannes and Venice as prestigious showcases for the world's movies, is due to open Thursday with an impressive list of Hollywood notables on hand. As listed in today's (Wednesday) Daily Variety, they include Joseph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, who are promoting Man to Man; Bill Murray (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), Keanu Reeves (Thumbsucker), Will Smith (Hitch), Kevin Spacey (Beyond the Sea), Ian McKellen (Asylum), Catherine Deneuve (Changing Times), Glenn Close (Heights), Dennis Quaid (In Good Company), Gerard Depardieu (Changing Times), Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (Tickets). In addition, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Christopher Lee are expected at Monday's Cinema for Peace gala.

National Geographic Home Entertainment and CafeDVD.com have launched a DVD Internet rental service called MovieVoyager.com with some 7,000 movies selected for their "historical and cultural significance." Subscribers to the DVD service will be able to receive one title per week for $3; two rentals at a time per month ($12.99); three rentals for $18.99; and $23.99 for four titles at a time per month. As reported by Home Media Retailing magazine, films offered on MovieVoyager must include three criteria: a basis in historical fact, such as Warner Home Video's Gettysburg and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Glory; appreciation of foreign cultures or environments as in Whale Rider (Sony); or a great sense of place, such as Universal Studios Home Entertainment's Lost in Translation.

It was a triumphant week for Fox TV, the usual cellar-dweller among the Big Four TV networks, and it was a depressing week for NBC, which until this season had ranked at the top of the ratings list annually. (The Associated Press observed Tuesday that NBC, in dropping to fourth place among viewers 18-49, had fallen to its lowest level in that demo ever at this point in the season.) Fox overwhelmed its competition not only with its telecast of the Super Bowl, which alone would probably have brought it a win for the week, but also with two episodes of American Idol, a series that, contrary to analysts' warnings, showed no signs of weakening. ABC, NBC and CBS, meanwhile, did little to thwart Fox's success, running mostly repeats running up to the February sweeps, which began on Thursday, Feb. 3. They switched gears on that date, however. ABC kicked off the sweeps with a Happy Days reunion special that walloped the competition on Thursday -- a night that has been completely dominated for years by NBC and CBS. (NBC's Joey, which aired against it, registered its lowest ratings to date.)

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. Super Bowl XXXIX, Fox, 41.1/62; 2. Fox Super Bowl Post Game, Fox, 25.5/40; 3. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 16.1/24; 4. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 15.9/23; 5. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 15.5/24; 6. Simpsons, Fox, 13.0/22; 7. Without a Trace, CBS, 12.6/20; 8. Happy Days: 39th Anniversary Reunion, ABC, 12.5/19; 9. E.R., NBC, 12.2/20; 10. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 11.6/17.

The Walt Disney Co., which, for the first time since 1987, did not air an "I'm going to Disney World!" spot with the MVP player at the Super Bowl, effectively pulled off an end run with a commercial that aired on local stations carrying the game and on the pre- and post-game Fox shows, the Orlando Sentinel observed today (Wednesday). The spot features a luckless pee-wee football player who scores a game-winning touchdown and shouts the famous catchphrase.

In what MediaWeek described as "a sign of almost no confidence for the series," NBC has moved the Mark Burnett/Sylvester Stallone reality series The Contender to a tough Sunday-night period (8:00 p.m. where it will face CBS's Cold Case and ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) from its previously planned berth at 8:00 p.m. Wednesdays, where it would have faced ABC's hit drama Lost. NBC said that it plans to move American Dreams, which currently occupies the Sunday spot, to the Wednesday period. The debut of The Contender is set for March 7. A second episode is due to air on March 10, and a third, in the regular Sunday-night time slot on March 13.

ABC, which received plenty of political flak five years ago when it hired Leonardo DiCaprio to interview President Clinton for an Earth Day special, is getting none of that for hiring Don Cheadle to function tonight (Wednesday) as the principal correspondent on a Nightline feature devoted to the violence in Rwanda. Cheadle, who has received numerous awards for his performance as inn keeper Paul Rusesabagina in last year's Hotel Rwanda, has devoted much of his time since making the movie to raising this country's awareness of the genocidal massacre in Rwanda, where a million people died in just 100 days in 1994, and the continued current crisis in Sudan. (He recently referred to the "tsunamis of violence" taking place in that part of the world.) Today's Los Angeles Times reported that Cheadle will not only narrate the feature, but will be seen interviewing refugees and members of a Congressional delegation that recently visited the country. Rick Wilkinson, who produced the feature for Nightline told the Times that he believed it was the only occasion in which an entertainer played such an active role on Nightline.

A paraplegic lawyer in St. Louis has filed a lawsuit against NBC and the producers of The Apprentice, charging that the audition rules, demanding that contestants be in "excellent physical" health are discriminatory, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday. James W. Schottel Jr., citing sections of the Americans With Disabilities Act, has asked for a preliminary injunction to bar the producers from conducting auditions in St. Louis until his case is heard. Schottel told the St. Louis newspaper that he is a fan of the show and would like to audition. "To be a corporate executive, I don't think you need to be able to run 100 yards or run a flight of steps or anything of that nature," he said. Meanwhile, ABC reportedly has green-lighted an unauthorized movie about Donald Trump. Quinn Taylor, ABC's movies and miniseries chief, told today's (Wednesday) Hollywood Reporter, that although the movie will cover the past 25 years or so of Trump's life, it will "not include details" about The Apprentice, which airs on rival NBC.

Fans of Desperate Housewives who miss an episode will now be able to get an update on America Online, thanks to a new deal announced Tuesday by ABC and the ISP. The two companies said that each Monday throughout the remainder of the season, a three-to-four-minute recap of the previous day's episode will be posted on AOL at: tv.channel.aol.com/housewives.