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CBS Plans a Real-Life Version of Its '60s Hick Hit

CBS is bringing back "The Beverly Hillbillies." This time, however, the family members we laugh at won't be played by Hollywood actors; they'll be real live rubes from the South.

After spending decades trying to shed the Bubba image it contracted in the 1960s when its prime-time lineup included a slew of backcountry characters, CBS has decided to embrace once again its biggest hick hit of all. The network already has a crew of casting agents combing "mountainous, rural areas" in Arkansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky in search of a "multi-generational family of five or more -- parents, children and grandparents -- who will be relocated for at least a year" to a mansion in Beverly Hills, said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.

"That is not to say if we discover the perfect family from another area of the country we wouldn't consider them," he added. "We're looking for a family from a very rural area that hasn't been exposed to big-city life or luxuries of life in any way."

The family will be given money -- exactly how much hasn't been determined -- with which to buy expensive cars and designer suits, hire maids and personal assistants, and dine at hot West L.A. eateries.

The head of reality programming for CBS, Ghen Maynard, told the trade paper Variety, which broke word of the remake yesterday, that the network is looking for a family that's very different but "relatable" and whose members love one another.

In other words, the Osbournes.

MTV's reality series about Ozzy Osbourne and his family, who also live in Beverly Hills, became that network's most watched program ever this past television season, generating as many as 8 million viewers and sending network executives scrambling to develop more series in which cameras are focused on wacky real-life people.

"America tuned in to see Ozzy be a freak, but what happened is everybody fell in love with him," said Dub Cornett, who's among those developing CBS's "Beverly Hillbillies" reality remake.

"This guy who ate a bat and was a spawn of Satan turns out to love his kids and is a pretty nice guy. It ended out being 'Ozzie and Harriet' more than anything else," said Cornett, a documentary filmmaker from Appalachia, Va., who refers to himself as an Appalachian American.

"The Beverly Hillbillies" starred well-known character actor Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett, patriarch of an Ozark family that struck it rich when oil began bubbling up on their property.

So he loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.

Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools. Movie stars!

"The Beverly Hillbillies" had only four immediate family members. Besides slow-talking, sensible Jed, there were dumb, buxom, critter-luvin' Elly May; cousin Jethro, who was also stupid but a real hunk; and Daisy Mae Moses, aka Granny, whose mission in life was finding Elly May a husband.

When the sitcom debuted in 1962, it was an immediate hit -- the most watched program on TV its first two seasons, attracting as many as 60 million viewers each week.

It was so successful that a year later, CBS put on a spinoff, "Petticoat Junction," about a widow lady who ran the only hotel in Hooterville with the help of her three beautiful daughters -- Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo -- and Uncle Joe.

When "Petticoat Junction" took off, CBS added "Green Acres," starring Eddie Albert as a Manhattan businessman who gives up big-city life to move to a farm outside Hooterville, dragging with him his city-loving wife, played by Eva Gabor.

All three were still Top 20 programs when CBS dropped them in the early '70s. That was about the time the Nielsen company started providing the networks with information about viewer demographics. Turned out, people who watched these shows were mostly rural, mostly older and lacking much spending power. Advertisers became less interested in the shows.

Ender said CBS isn't worried that the new "Beverly Hillbillies" will suffer the same fate. "We believe this will hit a sweet spot of young adults with its reality base," he said, young viewers being the audience advertisers most want to reach.

"The Real Beverly Hillbillies" would be the latest incarnation in a reality craze that seized the TV industry in the late '90s with the success of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor."

Cornett, whose credits include documentaries about moonshine and hillbilly dancing, insists that America will end up laughing at Beverly Hills, not his Clampett family.

"If you look at the real 'Beverly Hillbillies,' Jed was the one guy you had any respect for, not the banker.

"We will accomplish the most if we cast it well with people who respect themselves but see the humor in themselves. We will end up with a piece that truly has, God forbid, social commentary, and maybe will enlighten, that it's not all barefoot hillbillies," he said.

"Most of America can only imagine what it's like to live in Beverly Hills and live in a multimillion-dollar mansion. We can share this advantage with them, rather than laugh at them." On the other hand, he said, "If somebody is a stereotypical swing-from-the-trees hillbilly who shoots the lights out and parks cars in the front yard -- hey, it happens. I live near that."

CBS has also not decided what to do with its new Clampetts once the network is through with them. Cornett said maybe they could be allowed to take away their various purchases.

News of the "Beverly Hillbillies" redo did not sit well with some southerners who work in Hollywood, who did not wish to be identified for this article.

"They should check on Anna Nicole Smith," said one. "It's like punching a wounded animal on that show. This is going to backfire," added the executive, who predicted the network may have trouble getting some TV stations in Southern markets to air the program.

"This may be what finally galvanizes southerners. We all know that the last bastion of being able to be prejudiced is against southerners."

But Ender said the new program is not intended to be a show about stereotypes or prejudice. "It's fun. The concept is plain fun," he explained.

"It can have humor without being mean. It's a fish-out-of-water experience. Look at 'Pretty Woman' and ' "Crocodile" Dundee.' Audiences have always found fish-out-of-water tales to be very entertaining. This takes a great story and translates it to reality form."

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