`The Producers' is the 800-pound gorilla of this year's Tony Awards.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

On the boulevard they call Broadway, Jeff Folmsbee is like Santa Claus with a camera crew: He shows up once a year, people are happy to see him and he knows who's been bad or good.

Or at least he has an educated guess. As executive producer of the first hour of the Tony Awards telecast, Folmsbee needs to get started long before the nominees are chosen. Between the live awards presentations, his segment shows directors, designers and choreographers at work, footage that must be shot and edited in advance.

"We start thinking about the Tonys in January," says Folmsbee, who is in his fifth season of producing the broadcast. "We start shooting as early as late March, and we're shooting heavily in April, anticipating who the nominees will be."

When this year's nominees were announced May 7, Folmsbee didn't have to play a lot of catch-up.

"We certainly had our suspicions that `Proof' would be nominated" as best play, Folmsbee says, and as soon as they read February's Chicago reviews of "The Producers," he and his colleagues realized Mel Brooks' musical would be a big contender.

No question about that: A record-breaking 15 nominations make "The Producers" the 800-pound gorilla of this year's Tonys. Its stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick _ both nominated as leading actor in a musical _ are hosting the 3-hour awards show; in the first hour alone, "The Producers" is contending for eight of the nine awards to be presented.

Over five seasons of calculated guesses for the broadcast, says Folmsbee, "our batting average is pretty good."