A network conference call is an interesting beast. It's not like a conference call at work, where everyone talks over each other and the meeting moves with a glacial pace. No, network conference calls are orderly, polite affairs, where you get in line to ask a question of the star and/or producer by pressing *1 and giving your name and affiliation, and the questions are nicely asked and at times, border on the obsequios. I guess the theory is that the network's PR people were nice enough to invite you to this, so it's best that you not piss off the people who were gracious enough to make themselves available to you.

I was thinking all this when I was on a call last week promoting the upcoming movie Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Diff'rent Strokes, which airs Monday, 9/4, at 8 PM ET on NBC. The call was attended by Todd Bridges, who was interviewed for the film (as was Gary Coleman, who is pictured with Todd above), and by producer Stan Brooks. Not that the questions being asked were awful; in fact, they yielded a lot of information. But I was surprised that they didn't touch on a couple of topics.