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TODAY’S NEWS. TOMORROW’S TELEVISION

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SERIES

Jane Curtin will headline her own NBC sitcom, “The Jane Curtin Show,” for the September television season, according to an NBC source. The show will explore the evolution of a romance between two divorced parents in the pressure-cooker of life in the ‘90s. Curtin was last seen on CBS’ “Kate & Allie.”

For the record:

12:00 a.m. May 6, 1990 The Buzz FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Sunday May 6, 1990 Orange County Edition TV Times Page 12 Television Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Column; Correction
Shelley Duvall is developing three half-hour pilots for Nickelodeon called, “Stories From Growing Up.” The April 15 edition of TV Times incorrectly reported that Shelley Long was developing the programs.

USA Network has acquired broadcast rights to 201 episodes of “Scooby-Doo,” the popular children’s animated series from Hanna-Barbera, starring a mumbling Great Dane. The series, which premiered in 1969, has been hailed as the longest-running animated series in television history. USA will air the cartoons on weekdays and Sunday, beginning September.

MINISERIES

Jackie Collins, the author of “Hollywood Wives,” has written the screen adaptation of her best-selling novels “Chances” and “Lucky,” combining them into a three-part, six-hour saga for NBC. The story is about the life of gangster Gino Santangelo and his strong-willed daughter Lucky. Production for the miniseries is getting under way now for broadcast in the 1990-91 season.

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Joanna Kerns from “Growing Pains” will star as a young seismologist who finds herself at odds with a city and her family when she comes to believe that a cataclysmic earthquake will strike Los Angeles within 10 days in “The Great Los Angeles Earthquake.” In the four-hour NBC miniseries, scheduled to air in 1990-91, the city’s leaders fail to take action, Los Angeles is reduced to rubble and its population is decimated.

MOVIES

Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, creators of “thirtysomething,” are the executive producers of the NBC movie “Home Video,” a drama about a 15-year-old boy who, devastated by the accidental death of his mother, tries to make sense of his life by reviewing his childhood through home videos. The task brings him to the realization that his mother may have committed suicide. The movie, written by Herskovitz from a story he created with Zwick, is scheduled for the 1990-91 season.

In the CBS movie “Sail Away,” Mark Linn-Baker and Lisa Hartman, a fast-track New York couple on vacation in the South Pacific, get shipwrecked on an idyllic island and encounter two other American castaways, played by Gregory Harrison and Charlotte Lewis. A romantic quadrangle develops, and the couples are forced to re-examine their relationships. The movie is now filming in the Virgin Islands for broadcast in the 1990-91 season.

Anson Williams is the director and Mark Stein the writer of the NBC movie, “Honey, Let’s Kill the Neighbors.” Now in production, the film is a suburban comedy about a young couple who buy a kiddie-com for the baby’s room. When the device picks up the neighbors’ conversation about plotting a murder, the couple gets involved in an unexpected adventure.

The story of Jimmy Capone, long-lost brother of infamous Al, is the subject of the TNT movie, “The Lost Capone,” starring Eric Roberts, Ally Sheedy and Adrian Pasdar. The movie, scheduled to air sometime this year, is a fictionalized account of the Capone brother who left home at an early age to escape “the family business” and then emerged 10 years later as a self-styled marshal, who unknowingly disrupted Al’s bootleg liquor business.

SPECIALS

Shelly Long is developing a project with Nickelodeon called “Stories From Growing Up,” in which celebrities will discuss and dramatize their personal childhood experiences. Three half-hour pilots, aimed to help boost children’s self-esteem, are scheduled for taping in the spring to air on Nickelodeon in the fall.

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Peter Billingsley is a small but bright 16-year-old whose father, a strapping ex-football player, just doesn’t understand him in “The Fourth Man,” a “CBS Schoolbreak Special” now in production. Billingsley knocks himself out physically to impress his dad, played by Tim Rossovich, who ignores his son’s more subtle accomplishments. Lyle Alzado, Adrienne Barbeau and Nicole Eggert co-star.

NEWS

From Sept. 3 to 7, CBS News will focus on America’s growing education needs in a weeklong campaign titled, “Project: Education.” The programming includes a two-hour documentary hosted by Charles Kuralt, a national education conference in Washington, D.C., a nationwide forum and ongoing news broadcasts focusing on education.

CABLE

Israel recently became the 21st country to get its MTV, as the cable music channel’s global network makes an attempt to expand into the Middle East. The move includes an initial distribution to 5,000 cable homes in three Israeli towns, and MTV projects 200,000 more households within the next two years.

SOAPS

“Guiding Light” is losing actor Carl Williams, who has decided to leave the show when his contract is up this month, but the part will be re-cast. Also the character of Justin Marler is set to return. A young protege of Justin’s, a surgeon named Daniel, will also be cast.

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