Walters turns up the hype

In advance of ABC’s 20/20 move to Wednesday night next week, Barbara Walters has been campaigning strenuously to call viewers’ attention to the move. In an interview with Gail Shister, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s TV columnist, Walters employed the same sort of hyperbole that she effectively uses during on-air billboards for the show: Her interview with actress Anne Heche, she told Shister, “will shock the pants off everybody…. It will be a long time before people forget this one…. We will have some bombshells in this interview that not even some of my own people know about yet.” Asked whether she was bitter about losing her regular Friday-night slot, Walters replied, “I was never bitter…. I was upset we were being moved. The way I am built, I’m handling it by trying to make 20/20 as successful and dynamic on Wednesdays as it’s always been on Fridays.”