TODAY’S NEWS, TOMORROW’S TELEVISION : Jackie Collins gets ‘Lucky’ on NBC, Anthony Perkins scares up 2 new teleflicks and who’s TV’s top mom?

SERIES

Johnny Carson, TV’s late-night guru for 28 years, has signed a new contract to continue as the host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Carson’s new contract will begin after his current pact expires at the end of September. The contract means Ed McMahon will stay around a while longer, too. He said in a recent interview with Bob Costas that when Johnny leaves, he leaves.

The “Arsenio Hall Show,” trying to stay on the cutting edge, recently began broadcasting in Dolby Surround sound stereo-a high-tech sound system that splits signals into four channels to create a concert-like ambiance. “Television viewers whose homes are equipped with Surround sound receivers will feel as if they are part of the audience,” producer Marla Kell Brown said.

Executive producer Vin Di Bona, the inspiration behind “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” is teaming up with Allen Funt to revive the classic “Candid Camera” TV show for syndication. The two plan to shoot a half-hour pilot by late summer and begin marketing the new show immediately.

Maury Povich, anchor of the tabloid news show “A Current Affair,” will team up with Paramount Domestic Television to produce a new one-hour afternoon talk show hosted by Povich. Paramount will distribute the syndicatee show in the fall of 1991 as a lead-in or lead-out for other talk shows.

MINISERIES

Production just began in Los Angeles on the six-hour NBC miniseries “Jackie Collins’ Lucky,” starring Nicollette Sheridan and Vince Irizarry in a sweeping story of passion, power and greed. The miniseries will be telecast in October as part of NBC’s strategy for counter-programming the 1990 baseball playoffs. Anne-Marie Johnson, Michael Nader, Stephanie Beacham, Leann Hunley and Eric Braeden also star.

MOVIES

Joanna Kerns has been cast as a housewife who is emotionally and sexually abused by her psychiatrist in the ABC movie “Nowhere Safe.” The project, which does not have an air date, is a fictional account based on real-life facts extracted from a number of litigations that have taken place across the country.

Anthony Perkins is an archeology professor who inadvertently winds up with a demonic Aztec cloth that induces women to commit heinous acts in the USA thriller, “I’m Dangerous Tonight,” which just finished shooting in Los Angeles for an Aug. 8 debut. Madchen Amick plays a college drama student who buys the cloth for a theatrical costume and falls under its weird spell. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meister Tobe Hooper directs.

“Psycho IV: The Beginning,” actually the prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller “Psycho,” begins production this week as a cable-TV movie for Showtime. Written by Joseph Stefano and starring Anthony Perkins, both from the original film, “Psycho IV” also stars Henry Thomas, Olivia Hussey, C.C.H. Pounder, Warren Frost, Donna Mitchell and John Landis.

Lifetime has acquired broadcast rights to a package of 20 Warner Bros. films. Among the titles: “The Accidental Tourist,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “The Color Purple,” “Empire offthe Sun,” “Crossing Delancy,” “Clean and Sober,” “A Cry in the Dark,” “Imagine: John Lennon” and “In Country.”

SPECIALS

Bob Newhart has been signed to host “Just for Laughs: The Montreal International Comedy Festival,” a live 90-minute comedy special on Showtime. The July 21 special caps off the final weekend of the two-week festival, held every July in Montreal and expected to drawabout 250 performers and 500,000 fans.

Peter Marshall has joined join Florence Henderson as co-host of the sixth annual “Mrs. World Pageant,” a syndicated two-hour TV special taping August 11 at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.

PROMOS

The Temptations, fresh off an appearance on the season finale of “Murphy Brown,” will hook up with CBS once again when they perform a revamped version of their classic Motown hit “Get Ready,” to be used in the network’s new fall promotional campaign. The tune will be featured in both TV and radio spots beginning this summer.

TV SURVEYS

ABC’s “Roseanne” was selected as the least-favorite TV mom in America today in a recent national survey of 600 parents of school-age children in California, Michigan and Louisiana. Roseanne was selected by 34% of the respondents as their least favorite and Peg Bundy finished next with 28%. The favorite TV mom? Clair Huxtable of “The Cosby Show” with 49%.