Quibbles & Bits

. . . Minutes after a salute to Muppets creator Jim Henson on its “TV Academy Hall of Fame” show Monday during the 8-8:30 p.m. kiddie period, KTTV ran a lurid promo for an upcoming documentary about a mass murderer, complete with shots of caskets and a description of gruesome killing methods.

. . . KABC TalkRadio’s Michael Jackson managed to keep a straight voice during a segment in which guesting “trans-channels” became on-the-air mediums for teachers from “the spirit world.” Ever cooperative, they suspended their “trances” for commercial interruptions.

. . . Did you catch the “Disney Sunday Movie’s” rip-off of a key “Breaking Away” scene in the first part of Disney’s “Student Exchange”? It had an American student, masquerading as an Italian lothario, serenading a co-ed below her window. Or maybe this represented an “homage”?

. . . How about that camera work on Ann Wilson in Heart’s new video for “There’s the Girl”? She’s the, um, bigger of the two Wilson sisters (Nancy’s the svelte one), who’s this time seen only in scenes that look, says an Outtakes spy, “like one of those Cinemascope pictures squeezed onto a TV frame where the people are incredibly thin.” Those scenes, incidentally, aren’t in proportion to the rest of the video.

. . . No, there are no boom mikes in heaven. This from Robert Jackson, production sound technician on Alan Rudolph’s “Made in Heaven.” We quibbled after spying a mike in a scene with Timothy Hutton. According to Jackson, poor projection facilities, not poor production values, resulted in that exposed mike. In fact, said Jackson, “we went to a great deal of trouble so there wouldn’t be any technical flaws--after all, we were creating the illusion of heaven.”

. . . “This year’s ‘Blue Velvet’ . . . ultra hip, surreal, violent and sexy,” says the blurb from American Film’s Susan Linfield in the ad for Lorimar’s “Siesta.” But, hey, she’s the mag’s acting editor, not a critic. She wrote those words in a piece about director Mary Lambert.