TV & VIDEO - June 24, 1988

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 Thursday to levy the first fine--the maximum of $2,000--for violation of its new decency standards on a Missouri television station that aired a film featuring partial nudity during prime time. In May, 1987, KZKC-TV broadcast “Private Lessons” at 8 p.m., a time that the FCC has determined children are likely to be in the audience. The decision was not without some internal disagreement, though: FCC Commissioner Patricia Dennis said “parents, not the commission, should bear the primary responsibility of deciding what their children should watch at night.” Attorney Thomas Davidson, who represents the station, said he was “shocked and surprised and outraged by the imposition of the maximum fine in light of the circumstances.”

Move over CNN--you won’t be alone anymore. The Galavision cable TV network plans to unveil the first 24-hour Spanish-language news show on Sept. 1. Dubbed ECO, the weekday program--to be produced in Mexico City by Univisa, a subsidiary of Televisa, the world’s largest Spanish-language programmer--will be carried by Galavision’s 300 U.S. affiliates. Company officials expect ECO to compete with the two other U.S.-based Spanish-language TV networks--Univision and Telemundo, which will itself debut its CNN-produced newscast on July 6. Jacobo Zabludovsky, his son Abraham and other Televisa journalists will anchor ECO’s 20-minute hard news segments to be built from news feeds filed by U.S.-based reporters.

And the inductees are . . . Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Red Skelton, David Susskind and David L. Wolper. All these luminaries will be installed in the Television Academy Hall of Fame, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced Thursday. The gala induction ceremony goes down on Nov. 13 on the 20th Century Fox lot. Among the other Hall-of-Famers: Steve Allen, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs, Edward R. Murrow, Ed Sullivan and Rod Serling.