Nightline UP CLOSE last broadcasts

For those fans of the limited run post-Nightline broadcast Up Close, this week are the last broadcasts of the show. It is being replaced by what will undoubtedly be a grand addition to america's cultural heritage, an invaluable addition to our great national Dialogue, and undeniable verification of ABC New's respect for the viewer, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. And if you want to see girls in panties, he'll probably have them too.

Below is the daily e-mail from Up Close, concerning the last couple of shows:

Q: How do you squeeze 124 broadcasts into a single half-hour?
A: You don't.

So you do the next best thing: reprise some of the highlights from the
brief, six-month life of UpClose. When ABC gave us this temporary
assignment, Ted Koppel began the first broadcast on July 8th by telling
the viewers UpClose "would be about people. Some of them are well known and in the news, but others fall into neither category. For one reason or another, they are simply interesting. We'd like the program to be unique, but we'll settle for interesting."

Based on your e-mails, we must have done something right. So tonight, a
look back at some of your favorite moments of UpClose, a program you may want to record. Inevitably, we've probably missed someone you've wanted to see again. But we've tried to cover a broad range of the people who really had something unique to say - from the humorists (David Letterman, Nia Vardalos and Garry Trudeau) to those who were willing to look inside themselves (retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, Alexandra Fuller and mountain climber Erik Weinhenmayer, who happens to be blind).

We'll also let you hear again from musicians Bruce Springsteen and Ani
DiFranco. And we'll conclude tonight's next-to-last UpClose with the
person who may have prompted the most response during our series. (You didn't expect us to give it away, did you?)

Tomorrow evening, we're pre-empted for a special NIGHTLINE town meeting from Jasper, Texas, the community made infamous in 1998 by the dragging death of an African-American, James Byrd. On Friday, the final edition of UpClose, a conversation between Ted Koppel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who has devoted much of his life to human rights. It seemed a fitting way to end our series.

UpClose has always been scheduled for a limited run on ABC -- from July 8, 2002 until the start of Jimmy Kimmel Live, which premieres Super Bowl
night on January 26, 2003. We appreciate, more than words can express, the outpouring of support we have received during the brief six-month life of UpClose.

For those of you who have asked about our future, we are
attempting to find a new home for UpClose on one of the cable networks.
When we do, we will announce the details.


In case you missed it, Up Close had interviews over the months with people you don't see profiled very often, Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu, Garry Trudeau, and they did an entire show Monday night on The Onion!