“Christopher Columbus,” the next big miniseries from...

“Christopher Columbus,” the next big miniseries from CBS (following this week’s “Space”), has been given new air dates. The two-part biography of the famed explorer was to have been broadcast May 5-6, but CBS decided to move it after ABC scheduled “Lace II,” the two-part sequel to last season’s big ratings success, on the same nights. “Christopher Columbus” is now due to be shown May 19-20.

Frederic Forrest will play an ex-convict who runs a cattle ranch for juvenile delinquents in “North Beach and Rawhide.” The TV movie for CBS also stars Christopher Penn and Tate Donovan as young brothers who are sent to the rehabilitation facility.

Placido Domingo, a regular on public television, will turn up on ABC May 14 as the star of his own hourlong variety special. His musical selections will range from Broadway show tunes to popular music and what ABC terms “the classics.”

NBC has set April 22 as the air date for “The Television Academy Hall of Fame” special. Being honored this year are Walter Cronkite, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Rod Serling, Ed Sullivan, former NBC executive Sylvester (Pat) Weaver and Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards and the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.”

ABC plans to preempt all three hours of prime time on June 6 for a report on nuclear issues: nuclear power, nuclear waste and nuclear weapons. Peter Jennings and Marshall Frady, who anchored last fall’s three-hour documentary on education, will anchor this program too. . . . Also in the works at ABC for airing this fall is a three-hour documentary on the history of the United States from the end of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War. Ted Koppel and Jennings will host the broadcast.

“Adam,” the TV movie that has been credited with helping authorities find 32 missing children, will be broadcast again April 29 on NBC. A new set of photographs of missing youngsters will be added to the end of the film, which stars Daniel J. Travanti and JoBeth Williams as the parents of a boy who was abducted and murdered. Following the movie, NBC will air a documentary on the subject, entitled “Missing . . . Have You Seen This Person?”