THE BUZZ : TODAY’S NEWS, TOMORROW’S TELEVISION : SERIES

Showtime will present a new cable family series, “Kids-TV,” in conjunction with the national classroom newspaper for children, Weekly Reader. Emmy Award-winning puppeteers will bring to life the cartoon characters featured in the popular children’s newspaper. The half-hour series will premiere in the spring.

CBS’ 9-year-old series “Falcon Crest” is undergoing a face lift. In March, the show will take on femme fatales Susan Blakely and Broadway star Sheryl Lee Ralph as cast members. And Jane W Wman, who created the character of Angela for the show’s premiere in 1981, will return for the final three episodes of the season.

Alexis Smith, who played Clayton Farlow’s diabolical sister Lady Jessica Montfort on “Dallas” in the 1983-84 television ssason, will reprise her evil role in the series just in time for the May sweeps. Smith’s character will return to the long-running CBS drama from a sanitarium for the criminally insane, where she was sent after a failed kidnap attempt of Miss Ellie (Barbara Bel Geddes).

Next fall, the hot teen musical group The New Kids on the Block will star in a live-action/animation series for ABC. Each week, the half-hour show will open with the New Kids playing a song in concert and then whisk them away to Toon Town as “regular kids” who just happen to be rock stars.

MINISERIES

“Icebreaker: Life in the Soviet Union,” six one-hour programs produced by a Western film crew independent of any official government restrictions, will examine Soviet life on the Learning Channel beginning March 27. Traveling for six months from one end of the country to the other, the crew tried to capture the vast land and its diverse people--the farmers, the professionals, the performers, the mountain people, the pioneers and the reindeer people.

KCOP has acquired the epic six-hour miniseries “Tanamera Lion of Singapore” to air this spring and summer. The romantic World War II drama follows two aristocratic families, the English Dexters and the Chinese Soongs, through three decades of love, war and intrigue.

MOVIES

Production begins this month in Vancouver, Canada, on the ABC movie “Burning Beds,” which stars Meredith Baxter-Birney as a married woman whose refusal to give up her passionate love affair with a married man tears apart Baxter-Birney and her family.

An ominous car becomes a steel beast come-to-life in “Terror in Copper Valley,” a USA Network movie now in production. Joanna Cassidy and Marcie Leeds star as the mother and daughter who are stalked by the demonic car and its shadowy occupants, who kidnap and molest young girls.

NEWSCASTS

On March 5 at 8 p.m., KCAL will premiere its new three-hour nightly news format. Newcomer Jane Velez-Mitchell, former weekend anchor for WCBS in New York, will team up with Jerry Dunphy as anchor and reporter for “Prime 9” news. Also joining the news team will be weathercaster Leigh Glaser, formerly with KOMO in Seattle.

The Arts & Entertainment Network and King World Productions entered into an agreement to produce a new weekly news magazine to cover arts and entertainment across the globe. The one-hour series, yet to be named, is set to premiere on April 6 at 8 p.m. The emphasis of the reports will be on events of interest to discriminating, educated audiences.

SPECIALS

Showtime will celebrate Britain’s most famous comedy troupe with “Monty Python: 20 Odd Years,” two exclusive one-hour specials premiering consecutive evenings on March 16 and 17. The first special, “Life of Python,” will offer a personal, behind-the-scenes look at the troupe’s members; the second, “Twenty Years of Monty Python (Parrot Sketch Not Included),” will present clips of favorite and rare Python moments.

In observance of Earth Day 1990, cable music channel VH-1 will present a weekend of environmental and ecological programming from April 20-22. The lineup will include a round-table discussion featuring political humorists and activists, documentaries examining global and environmental issues and a prime-time special featuring celebrity interviews, political commentary and socially responsible music.

Kevin Costner, Bette Midler, Ted Danson, Michael Keaton, Meryl Streep, Robin Williams, Barbra Streisand and Bruce Willis are among the headliners who will appear in ABC’s “The Earth Day Special” on April 22. Through comedy, drama and music, the two-hour special will attempt to illustrate how the Earth’s environment has reached a state of crisis and explore solutions to conserve the planet’s remaining resources.

CABLE

Rainbow Programming Holdings Inc. is planning a new cable television service for September called In Court. The channel will provide live coverage of judicial proceedings from both the United States and abroad. Legal experts will comment on cases in civil and criminal court, night court, traffic court, family court and small-claims court. In Court will be offered to cable operators at minimal cost with other Rainbow channels, which include American Movie Classics, Bravo, SportsChannel America and CNBC.

SPORTS

Former tennis star Chris Evert, who retired from the pro circuit after last year’s U.S. Open, will make her NBC sportscasting debut in April at the Family Circle Cup women’s tennis event in Hilton Head, S.C. Jimmy Connors will commentate for NBC at the French Open in June and Wimbledon this summer and will not compete in either event.