Under Review Making Waves--Lone Malone

--The real suspense in Mark Burnett's compulsively watchable new
reality series Boarding House: North Shore, airing Wednesdays at
8 p.m. on the WB, isn't whether one of the seven world-class
surfers will win the $750,000 triple crown, but rather when
former world champ Sunny Garcia will blow his stack. In last
week's debut of the six-week Real World-ish series in which the
surfers (four men, three women) live together in an Oahu beach
house, the notoriously short-fused Garcia ordered a rider who'd
cut him off during a practice session to get out of the water; he
also nearly pummeled a guy he thought was ogling his wife. On a
teaser showing scenes from an upcoming show, Garcia, 33, who has
been fined more than any pro surfer, whacks a fellow rider on the
head. "With strong enough characters, you remove the need to vote
people off," says Burnett, the reality raja who developed
Survivor. "Sunny is perfect."

--With Pat Summerall's retirement from Fox, ESPN's Mark Malone is
the last big-time athlete-turned-network-play-by-play man. Lots
of ex-jocks end up as analysts, but few have the skills and
patience for play-by-play, which takes years to master. Malone,
44, a Tom Selleck look-alike who played 10 NFL seasons at
quarterback, cut his teeth at Pittsburgh's WPXI-TV before joining
ESPN in '93. "I saw that former athletes would spend five or 10
years as an analyst and then the next Hall of Famer would retire
and become the hot new asset," says Malone who is leaving as host
of NFL 2Night to focus on play-by-play. "I wanted to grow." ...
The NFL Network, which may be on the air by November, has signed
former ESPN anchor Rich Eisen. Once a stand-up comic, Eisen, 34,
will host a show that could mix NFL players with movie stars and
musical acts. --John O'Keefe