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By ANN DONAHUE

Staff Reporter

Some might call Webcasting celebrity facelifts vulgar or shameless.

But to Michael Sands, chief executive of Sands Digital Media in Beverly Hills and a media consultant who represents the doctors performing the surgeries, it’s nothing more than a great business opportunity.

“It’s raw!” he exclaimed.

In the past six months, Sands Digital Media has broadcast two celebrity facelifts live, unedited, for up to six hours straight on its Web site, www.celebritydoctor.com.

For celebrities who are well no longer in the spotlight or in fairly minor TV roles, it’s a great deal. The celebrity patients don’t have to pay for the surgery. And they get to be the subject of worldwide media attention even if that consists of people gawking at them online as their faces are sliced open.

It’s also not a bad deal for the plastic surgeons. Though they are not paid for their work, they benefit from the resulting publicity and yes, they report being inundated with thousands of e-mails from potential customers.

The concept is taking off at least one other company, adoctorinyourhouse.com, also located in Beverly Hills, has appeared in recent months with a nearly identical business model. A few weeks ago, 2.5 million people downloaded the gastric bypass surgery of former Wilson Phillips lead singer Carnie Wilson at adoctorinyourhouse.

While the surgeries shown at celebritydoctor.com are performed for free, the celebrity and the doctor at adoctorinyourhouse.com receive compensation “under the six-figure mark,” according to CEO Michael Shapiro.

“Carnie was my client when I managed Wilson Phillips,” Shapiro said. “In front of millions of people around the world, she could bond with people who share her problem. Obesity is a major health issue and the Internet lets you engage the world community. We’re very interested in the drama of human beings in crisis.”

Both companies support their Web sites mainly through advertising. Sponsors include businesses that make lotions and other products for people who have undergone plastic surgery. Adoctorinyourhouse.com is a spin-off of a video distribution business, while Sands Digital Media is a spin-off of Sands’ public relations agency for plastic surgeons.

Why do people watch?

“It’s voyeurism,” said Dave Restrepo, an analyst with Internet think tank Jupiter Communications. “It’s something that you and I and the public have never really had the chance to see before. Sometimes, online, the rules of good taste get thrown out the window.”

Celebrities who go under the knife for celebritydoctor.com offer pretty pragmatic reasons for showing their surgeries online. They wanted to get that nip and tuck anyway, so why not get it done for free, get some publicity and show the world how it’s done?

“It was something I looked into six or eight years back,” said John Byner, 61, who played Detective Donahue in “Soap” and starred as Ed Sullivan in UPN’s “The Virtual Ed Sullivan Show.” “I wasn’t happy with the way I looked, especially in candid pictures and at photos taken at parties.”

On March 8 at 8 a.m., he had a facelift done in front of an audience of 7,000 people worldwide.

“I had the full deal,” Byner said. “The lifting of the brows, and at the temple, the neck and the eyelids. Then they took some fat out of my stomach and put it in my cheeks and my chin.”

Mark Politi, chief technical officer at Sands Digital Media, said the surgery done on Byner would typically cost $35,000. Besides the thousands who watched the procedure as it happened, another 20,000 downloaded it in the first eight hours after the surgery was completed, Politi said.

Word of Byner’s surgery traveled fast. Christopher Templeton, who played Carol Robbins on “The Young and the Restless” for 11 years, heard about the procedure and called Sands to offer her face.

“I said ‘OK, here I am, if you want me, I’m yours,’ ” Templeton said. “I always had an interest in it. I’ve been really blessed with good genes, but as I was getting older I noticed the neck thing starts to happen. I was getting a little poochy down by the chin. My mother’s face basically slid down to her neck, and I thought, that’s going to happen to me.”

The value of her facelift? $45,000. On June 7, 11,000 people tuned in to watch the procedure.

Templeton said it’s still too soon to say if the work she had done will positively impact her career. She is currently starring in an independent film in which she stars as a wheelchair-bound CIA operative.

Soon after Templeton’s surgery was broadcast, Sands received a letter from a descendant of one of history’s most august statesman: Arabella Churchill, the granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill.

In her letter, Churchill, who is the director of the Children’s Charity, an organization that provides education programs for learning-disabled children, said she would like a facelift to celebrate her 50th birthday.

“I am a bit baggy under the eyes, my chin is pretty double-chinny and I could benefit from a nip and a tuck and a lift and I don’t know what else,” Churchill wrote. “I know a lot of my friends and other people see facelifts as wrong and vain, etc., but I can see no harm in them. It’s no big thing, just a little help to make you look more like you used to.”

The total price tag for the anticipated work Churchill will have done? $75,000. The surgery is scheduled for some time in November, and Politi estimates that 150,000 people will tune in to watch.

The doctors who perform the surgeries are equally enthusiastic about going live on the Net.

“It’s a good marketing technique, especially in this time of people being interested in plastic surgery,” said Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. “We can really educate people.”

Dr. John Shamoun of Newport Beach, who did the operation on Templeton, said the intensity of showing the procedure live on the Internet is comparable to “flying an F-16.”

“This is real surgery people think it’s like getting your hair done,” Shamoun said. “Some people disregard that (it is a serious procedure) and end up getting burned. Look at some of the anchorwomen locally, and it’s very obvious to critical observers that (their surgery was) not very favorable.”

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