“Late Night With David Letterman” will switch...

“Late Night With David Letterman” will switch base from New York to Burbank for its May 13-16 programs. It’s the first time the NBC talk show will have originated here. Johnny Carson has agreed to appear on the May 16 installment.

The NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives” has gone on location for the first time in its history. A production crew taped scenes in London involving the characters of Bob Brady (Peter Reckell) and Hope Welch (Kristian Alfonso). They are due to air sometime in May.

Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson are among the performers who will be seen on a May 19 NBC special saluting the famed Apollo Theatre in New York on its 50th anniversary. Others scheduled to appear include Little Richard, Gregory Hines, Debbie Allen, Sarah Vaughan, Cab Calloway, Harry Belafonte, the Four Tops, the Commodores and Patti LaBelle. Bill Cosby will host the three-hour telecast.

Public television’s “Great Performances” series plans to salute the musical during the month of May. On successive Fridays, beginning May 3, the series will present Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn; “Taking My Turn,” featuring Margaret Whiting, Marni Nixon, Cissy Houston and Tiger Haynes; a documentary entitled “Bernstein Conducts ‘West Side Story’ ” and an ensemble program, “Best of Broadway,” in which stars such as Mary Martin and Ethel Merman perform classic songs from the musicals in which they’ve appeared.

Michael Golder, a 31-year-old playwright living in Boston, has won the $10,000 “ABC Theater Award” for 1984. His play, “The Square Root of Three,” will be produced as a TV movie for the network. It’s a comedy about three generations of a family, and was developed at the New Drama for Television Project at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Conn.

The critically acclaimed miniseries “Brideshead Revisited” is returning to public television May 5. The 11-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel stars Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and Claire Bloom. It’s about a painter (Irons) who becomes involved with a wealthy, aristocratic family.

Reruns of “The Facts of Life” return to NBC’s daytime schedule beginning Monday, replacing the game show “Time Machine,” which has been canceled. The comedy series will be seen at 9 a.m. “Time Machine” had been running since last January, replacing the “Facts of Life” reruns.

The “Today” show recently broadcast from Rome; now the “CBS Morning News” is going to Europe. It will be there May 6-10 to take note of the 40th anniversary of VE-Day. Joining co-anchors Bill Kurtis and Phyllis George will be CBS correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, Charles Collingwood and Richard C. Hottelet.

Speaking of hitting the road, Dan Rather and “The CBS Evening News” will be traveling too. The news show plans to originate from Japan during the week of Aug. 5, pegged to the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II. The programs will report on the state of relations between Japan and the United States, will return to the bombed cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and will examine Japan’s economy, military power and culture.

“The Burning Bed” was a TV movie for NBC that told the story of a woman who killed her abusive husband. Now ABC is preparing a TV movie called “Right to Kill,” about two teen-agers who murdered their abusive father. Frederic Forrest plays the father, Karmin Murcelo is his wife and Christopher Collet and Justine Bateman portray the children.

Tony Danza of “Who’s the Boss?” and Susan Lucci of “All My Children” are the hosts of a comedy special, “99 Ways to Attract the Right Man,” due to air on ABC May 7. It’s billed as a comical look “at the world of the unattached woman.”