NOW IF AWARDS WOULD GO ON A DIET, MAYBE . . .

The big loser was Moammar Kadafi as the United States bombed Libya on Monday, nearly overshadowing the 58th annual Academy Awards on ABC.

Just kidding. Actually, it would have taken a lot less firepower to overshadow most of the three hour-plus Oscar telecast, whose highlight came when Don Ameche was nearly impaled on Cher’s headdress.

Most of the telecast blew in like a breath of stale air.

A suggestion for future Oscar shows: Drop the mini-major awards and the nominated songs, and we can keep this sucker to 45 minutes. Instead, tradition was served Monday night, as nearly an hour separated the first major award, to Anjelica Huston as best supporting actress at 6:17 p.m., and the second honoring Ameche as best supporting actor. In between were Oscars for makeup, sound and so on and so on.

Two major awards in two major hours, stringing viewers along until the real show was uncorked? No wonder Oscar ratings have been fading in recent years.

Hosts Alan Alda and Jane Fonda were almost unnoticeable. And what was with co-host Robin Williams? He opens the show in Orson Welles’ tuxedo, then apparently gets locked in the men’s room and doesn’t reappear for two hours. When the brilliant Williams finally did get some sustained stage time, he brought some of the inertia to a screeching halt.

The show included a nice ode to past losing nominees, and likable Teri Garr got the evening off to a kicky start with a campy airplane-riding tribute to earlier Hollywood. A number of people have insisted to me that the number, rather than being camp, was merely bad. I don’t know about that, but we all agreed that if a brick could sing, it would sound like Teri Garr.

Later, oodles of movie stars arrived, from times when movie stars were really movie stars. Whoopi Goldberg defined a film editor and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, made his inevitable appearance as the Loch Ness Monster. The man is electrifying.

Earlier in the evening, KABC-TV presented its traditional pre-Oscar bash, but it wasn’t like those goofy old times when viewers could count on Channel 7 being, well, Channel 7.

Most of the parade-of-star interviews were delegated to distressingly professional co-hosts Steve Edwards and Patty Duke, and Cynthia Allison was benignly deployed at Swifty Lazar’s star-smashed party at Spago.

You could cut the sincerity with a sponge, but Edwards and Duke didn’t match Regis Philbin’s modern Oscar-night record for asking, “How do you feel tonight?”

Nominee Meg Tilly disclosed to Edwards that she was getting “nervouser and nervouser,” and Duke did tell Audrey Hepburn, “In another life, I’m going to come back and have your neck.”

Nice. But it fell far short of earlier times when then Tawny Little was KABC’s whoopee cushion at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, excitedly dropping several gallons of drool on passing stars.

Maybe next year.

You can just bet that at least some of the movies showcased in Monday night’s Academy Awards will be adapted for TV as prime-time series.

--”The Color Purple”: Steven Spielberg’s version of Alice Walker’s novel would be an interesting challenge in light of TV’s past reluctance to center dramatic series on black characters.

The easiest way out would be to make the black characters white, but that would destroy the integrity of the story. Despite what you may have heard, network programmers are not animals. They would never consider making fundamental changes in such a heartbreaking and sentimental drama.

However, “The Color Purple” might work as a sitcom.

We meet Celie after she divorces her husband and gets a flat in the city. But they still remain friends, and darn that big lug, he still likes to drop by for coffee when Celie least expects him.

Celie is an independent woman who opens her own cosmetics business, and she just loves to wear eye shadow the color of purple. Her husband’s former lover, Shug Avery, is now her wacky next-door neighbor who drops by when Celie least expects her. On one of those occasions, Shug bolts through the front door, gets a load of Celie’s purple eye shadow and exclaims, “You sho is ugly!”

The laughs would just build from there. Viewers also would get a big hoot from Celie’s “Dear God” monologues which, because this is TV, after all, would be retitled “Dear Gosh.”

--”Out of Africa”: Seldom has there been an Oscar-nominated movie that so cried out for adaptation to TV, even though the cast would have to be changed. Meryl Streep is a good actress, but she doesn’t really have the snap to carry a prime-time serial.

Instead, it’s Morgan Fairchild who stars as hot-blooded Karen Blixen, a game warden who never met a poacher she didn’t like. Divorced from her husband, Karen roams Kenya (actually, a studio back lot to hold down costs) in hot leotards, telling dirty stories to anyone who will listen.

The sultry Karen’s nemesis is Denys Finch-Hatton, who falls asleep during her stories. Are they lovers as well as rivals? Is Denys really a CIA agent? Will Karen become a private detective? These are the intriguing questions behind the torrid “Out of Africa.”

--”Prizzi’s Honor”: This was pleasant enough movie but would need energizing as an adventure/comedy series and a new title along the lines of “Izzi Loves Prizzi.”

On the surface, he’s a cop and she’s a killer. What he doesn’t know is that she’s really a cop. And she doesn’t know that he’s really a killer. On the surface, that is, for in truth, he’s really a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and she a member of Eaters Anonymous. Dig still deeper, though, and you’ll discover that he’s really a KGB agent and she’s a travel agent. That is, when he’s not taking up with the Ku Klux Klan and she’s not speaking up for Jesse Jackson. Yet despite their differences, these two kooks are very much in love.

When he tries to murder her, though, the fun begins.

--”Witness”: A sure bet as cops-and-robbers series. Meet Amish detective Mike Mash, on loan to the New York City Police Department. The Amish Mash’s superiors pull out their hair over his eccentric habits, such as wearing a broad-brimmed Amish hat and chasing suspects down Manhattan streets in his black carriage.

To make things even worse, Mash is teamed with a street-wise, wise-cracking, wise-acre policewoman, who thinks this guy should wise up. That is, until she really gets to know him and taste his fresh-baked bread.

--”Kiss of the Spider Woman”: A homosexual and a political revolutionary in the same prison cell? On TV? It’s true, there would have to be slight shifts, such as changing the title and turning the story into a slapstick comedy. Plus, instead of a gay man, one of the characters would be a straight man named Guy, but with the same qualities that William Hurt gave the character in the movie. The other male character would be a political science major named Gray.

As you can imagine, these cell mates just don’t get along. They don’t know how good they have it, however, until midway through the first episode when they are paroled on the condition that they live in a halfway house run by a dictatorial member of the Gray Panthers named Gay.

The sparks fly in “Guy & Gray & Gay,” but they always do in TV.