Specials Galore Await Viewers in February

TV or not TV. . . .

A WINTER’S TALE: Cold weather across the nation, combined with hot TV programming for folks who stay at home, usually makes February’s audiences the biggest of the year.

And the February ratings sweeps, which begin Thursday, are loaded with specials for viewers who come in from the cold--from a miniseries about the Kennedys to a TV launching of “Rain Man” to a male pregnancy and birth on Fox’s “Alien Nation.”

Herewith a rundown for your calendar:

“Rain Man” arrives on HBO Saturday. And “Murder in Mississippi,” about three young civil-rights workers killed in 1964, airs on NBC Monday.

Next Tuesday, “Elvis,” about Himself, debuts as an ABC series. On Feb. 12, a male becomes pregnant on “Alien Nation,” and gives birth Feb. 19.

And Kareem Abdul-Jabbar makes his post-NBA acting debut Feb. 12 as a college athletic director on the Fox series “21 Jump Street.”

“The Kennedys of Massachusetts,” a three-part miniseries history of the political clan, bows Feb. 18 on ABC. Same night, “The Color Purple” finally makes it to CBS for the three people who haven’t yet seen it in theaters or on cable or video.

“Challenger,” a docudrama about the seven astronauts killed in the space-shuttle explosion, is set for ABC Feb. 25.

And on Feb. 27, Valerie Harper--star of the new sitcom “City”--plays a wife whose spouse, Elliott Gould, has the 25-year itch in CBS’ TV movie “Stolen: One Husband.”

In the daytime sweeps, meanwhile, Sally Jessy Raphael has Arsenio Hall as her guest for an hour Feb. 12. Raphael’s ratings skyrocketed 24% from November, 1988, to November, 1989. And surely all shut-ins will be watching the week of Feb. 19, when her subjects include “Outlaw Bikers and the Women Who Love Them.”

REPORT CARD: President Bush delivers his first State of the Union address Wednesday, and you can catch it at 6 p.m. on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and C-SPAN.

IN A NUTSHELL: Keith Olbermann said it best in his post-Super Bowl roundup on KCBS Channel 2: By the time the score was 20-3, “the Broncos were little more than a rumor.”

DEAD GIVEAWAY: If you looked at the faces of Joe Montana and John Elway on TV before the game and still thought Elway had a chance to win in the big-money showdown, then there’s this bridge I’d like to sell you. It just looked like man against boy.

THE SCORE: Frank Zappa is doing the music for The Cousteau Society’s TV account of last March’s Exxon oil spill in Alaska, “Outrage at Valdez.” The documentary airs March 25 on Ted Turner’s TBS, a leader in environmental programming, and Zappa is donating his composition fee to the Cousteau organization.

MAN ALIVE: Turner, the active and activist pacesetter from Atlanta, must also have the established networks talking to themselves after his deal with Steven Spielberg to produce half a dozen two-hour movies for the hot new TNT cable channel. TNT stands for Turner Network Television.

MODERN TIMES: And don’t ABC, CBS and NBC--and their local stations--realize their news “teases” for upcoming major stories are stupid and outdated in the era of CNN? Who wants to wait for the story? As soon as you hear about it on, say, KABC Channel 7, you just flip immediately to Mr. Turner’s CNN and--if it’s a really big event--you get it right away.

NO JOKE: Several readers also didn’t think it was very bright of KCBS to run that printed news “tease”--or “crawl”--about last week’s Long Island plane crash during “The Dave Thomas Comedy Show.” The broadcast featured an airliner sketch with Thomas, Chevy Chase and Martin Short as three brothers frightened of flying.

THE NIGHT BELONGS TO MOLLY: So there’s Blair Brown looking at the New York skyline at night with a guy in “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” on Lifetime cable. And the guy think’s the night is just beautiful. “Yeah,” said Molly, “and all this time I thought it belonged to Michelob.” Fade-out. . . . “Molly,” by the way, launches this year’s new episodes April 6, but the reruns are still better than almost anything on network TV.

VOID: I don’t know about you, but I miss the Z Channel terribly. It was killed last year to make way for SportsChannel, and no station--not even the superb Bravo, TNT or American Movie Classics--even comes close to the thrilling originality in film thinking that Z, the best of all pay-TV services, provided.

WORDS TO LIVE BY: The film was Orson Welles’ brooding “Touch of Evil,” and Marlene Dietrich was speaking her classic lines in a cable rerun. “He was some kind of man,” she said. “What does it matter what you say about someone?”

GROWING UP: Six youngsters discuss the deaths of close friends this Saturday at 7:30 a.m. on “Teen Talk,” the notable weekly series that airs on KCAL Channel 9.

NO COMMENT: ABC’s “Good Morning America” beat NBC’s “Today” show three consecutive weeks in the ratings this month. The slide took place immediately after Jane Pauley was forced off “Today.”

CRAYONS R US: Looks like we’ll be getting touched-up reruns of “Peter Gunn”--in short, colorized. Which kind of defeats the whole atmosphere of the stylized, period detective series with Craig Stevens, Lola Albright and Herschel Bernardi. Still, what a cast.

BEING THERE: “Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?” Who said it? Mork (Robin Williams) in “Mork & Mindy.”

Say good night, Gracie. . . .