SOUND OF 'WEDDING BELLS': BLING, BLING.

Byline: -- David Kronke

In order to promote Fox's upcoming series "The Wedding Bells," about three sisters 7/8 no doubt one too hot, one too cold and one just right 7/8 who run a wedding-planning company, the cast will judge a contest in which prospective bridezillas-to-be negotiate an obstacle course before tearing into wedding cakes in search of rings (one 3-carat rock; three 1-carat consolation prizes).

Talk about conflict diamonds.

Teri Polo, KaDee Strickland and Sarah Jones portray the sisters on the show; other cast members attending include the rather cute but also ickily monikered Missi Pyle (the first name, so perky and feminine, yet mispronounce it in full just a smidgen and the result sounds like you've been tromping through a poorly managed dog park).

The "obstacle course" will culminate in the savage pulping of perfectly innocent wedding cakes, recalling the Monty Python sketch about the "Upper Class Twit of the Year" competition in which posh boors circled a track engaging in all manner of rude behavior.

Yet, instead of waking the neighbors with car doors and wrenching bras off mannequins, contestants here will rummage through clothing racks in search of the ugliest bridesmaid dress imaginable and scream at their mothers until they reduce them to tears.

Because, after all, the race to the altar is nothing if not strewn with obstacles, and few things shout enduring love more than shedding one's dignity for some bling.

If such spectacle appeals to you, and you have too much free time on your hands, the festivities begin 11 a.m. March 2 at The Grove.

HONESTY BEST POLICY?: Apparently not, so it's come to this: A media analyst is criticizing former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber for not being glib and superficial at a press conference introducing him as "Today's" new correspondent.

"Barber looked inelegant when he criticized his former football coach at NBC's welcoming press conference," groused MarketWatch's Jon Friedman. "Barber should've stuck to the platitudes that Matt Lauer was a role model and that he always wanted to be on the 'Today' show and left it at that."

So, what Friedman is saying is that Barber -- who's aspiring to raise the bar on the typical ex-jock's career by doing something more substantive than offer color commentary on his previous job's current employees -- shouldn't be honest when it comes to addressing the media's questions. That, if Barber wants to establish journalistic credibility, he should lie or obfuscate.

When a media analyst like Friedman automatically expects someone in the spotlight to be shallow and unforthcoming and even chides them when they're not, you know we've stepped through the looking glass in the infotainment world. Perhaps those kinds of expectations are what accounts for the generally watery nature of TV news in the first place.

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Sarah Jones, left, Teri Polo and KaDee Strickland play three sisters in Fox's upcoming "The Wedding Bells."