Hearing Beats Seeing the Senate Panel

TV or not TV. . . .

VOICES: I preferred listening to the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill circus on radio to watching it on TV.

Radio blotted out the dangerous image nonsense that distracts from content--and can even elect Presidents.

Who looks more credible? Who’s more warm? Who seems more human? Who photographs with more confidence?

Who cares?

Unfortunately, many viewers.

Radio is more neutral in such an explosive situation. On radio, Charles Kuralt is as handsome as Peter Jennings, and nobody cares either way.

Let me ask you: Have we had a fat, bald President in the age of TV? Could homely Abe Lincoln get elected today?

On TV, some of the senators questioning Hill, Thomas and others seemed straight out of central casting for absurd Washington politicians. But on radio, you could focus with less distraction on the true tragedy--that two people of humble origins had achieved so much and now were at the center of national discord.

KING’S ROW: It’s one project after another for CNN’s Larry King.

On Monday, he moves over to TNT, another cable channel owned by his boss, Ted Turner, to do an hour interview special with Audrey Hepburn, Jerry Lewis and Debbie Reynolds.

He’s also working up his fifth book, “Growing Up in Brooklyn,” and TNT is thinking of doing a TV version of that too. It would look at Brooklyn through the eyes of famous people who grew up there.

King has been in broadcasting about 35 years now.

“I can’t believe it,” he said over breakfast at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “But I’d rather interview people than anything in the world. I ask questions of everybody. I’m the worst person to sit next to on a plane.”

His new multiyear contract with Turner brings him well over $8 million. That’s in addition to his nightly national show for Mutual Radio.

“A lot of people think I’m going to quit radio because I’m doing well financially now,” he said. “But there’s no thought of that.”

Oh yes, another special may well be on tap--about all the guys who’ve played James Bond in the movies.

Can you imagine how smart ABC was a few years ago when it tried to get King to follow Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” in a late-hour talk-show tandem? King turned down the offer to stay with Turner.

ONE MORE TIME: Andy Griffith says he “elected not to raise hell” when NBC dropped his high-rated “Matlock” series this fall because its audience was on the older side.

But, he says: “I was very surprised.”

Not for long, though.

“Matlock,” about a Southern lawyer, returns to NBC Friday with a two-hour special and then settles into its regular slot on that night.

NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield had said that “Matlock”--a steady ratings winner--was his top reliever, and he went to the bullpen quickly last week after “Real Life With Jane Pauley” and “Expose” flopped on Fridays.

Actually, Griffith says, he had really planned to quit the series, which debuted in 1986: “But Brandon Tartikoff (former chairman of NBC Entertainment) and Warren called me in and asked me to do this season.

“One of them--I think Warren--said: ‘We’d like you to have two homes, one in North Carolina (where Griffith has a house) and one here at NBC.’ I felt pretty good about that.”

But then he wasn’t in the starting lineup this fall.

Griffith, who says “Matlock” will have more humor when it returns, is a realist: “I do know the sales department of NBC tried to get (Tartikoff) to dump us for a long time because of demographics or something like that.”

This season, he says, “will be the last year” of his series: “Oh yes. My wife, Cindi, and I own 64 acres on Roanoke Island in North Carolina, and it has a wonderful house and we’ve been planning to move there for years.”

But, adds Griffith, 65: “NBC owes me four TV movies, and not ‘Matlock’ movies, either. I don’t ever want to quit working, as long as I can learn my lines and I can walk.”

CHANGE OF PACE: Smart thinking for Patricia Wettig, who won three Emmys as Nancy Weston in “thirtysomething,” to do something really different Wednesday--playing a screenwriter who’s framed for murder in Lifetime cable’s TV movie “Silent Motive.” The high-profile cast includes Ed Asner as her agent and Mike Farrell as an investigator.

DOUBLE LOSS: Redd Foxx was the second CBS series headliner to die in recent months. Michael Landon was to have starred this fall in a series called “US,” as a wrongly convicted man released from prison after 18 years.

CHOICES: According to the grass-roots organization Viewers for Quality Television, the top two new series are “Brooklyn Bridge,” about a 1950s family, and “Reasonable Doubts,” about a deaf prosecutor (Marlee Matlin) and a tough investigator (Mark Harmon). About 700 members of VQT chose the shows in a poll.

DOC HOLLYWOOD: KTLA Channel 5 has renewed “The Late Mr. Pete Show,” starring the former waiter, public-access star and Emmy-winner Peter Chaconas, through the end of the year. Will this hysteria never end? Of course not. After that, it’s possible syndication for Mr. Pete, whom we first met during his chores as a waiter at the Authentic Cafe on Beverly Boulevard across from CBS.

MEMOIR: Michael Landon’s longtime publicist and friend, Harry Flynn, and his wife, Pamela, have written a book recalling the late star, with the input of the actor’s famous show business friends. It’s called “Michael Landon: Life, Love & Laughter” (Pomegranate Press). The photos are by veteran Hollywood lenser Gene Trindl.

ONE MAN’S OPINION: Our three favorite TV channels are all cable: CNN, C-SPAN and American Movie Classics.

BEING THERE: “Politicians have to fight on those panel shows, or they wouldn’t be funny, and no one would watch the programs.”--Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow) in “Leave It to Beaver.”

Say good night, Gracie. . . .