TELEVISION - June 24, 1993

Making Entertainment News: “Entertainment Tonight” will have stiff competition in the fall of 1994 when Time Inc. and Warner Bros. plan to premiere “Entertainment News Television.” KNBC-TV in Los Angeles has already agreed to drop “E.T.” to air the new syndicated show, created by former “E.T.” executive producer David Nuell and former “20/20” and “Inside Edition” executive producer Av Westin. As the first major programming alliance between the merged Time Warner divisions, “Entertainment News Television” will have access to Time Inc.’s vast publishing resources, such as People and Entertainment Weekly.

* Picking Quality: “Picket Fences,” the CBS series whose current ad campaign touts it as “The best show you’ve never seen,” has picked up six nominations, including best drama, best actress (Kathy Baker) and best actor (Tom Skerritt), in the Viewers for Quality Television’s 9th Annual Quality Awards. NBC’s “Seinfeld,” ABC’s “Roseanne” and CBS’ “Northern Exposure” were close behind with five nominations each; CBS’ “Murphy Brown” and NBC’s “Reasonable Doubts” each had four. Only “Reasonable Doubts” was left out of the top series nods, which also included “I’ll Fly Away,” “Law & Order” and “Life Goes On” for best drama, and “Brooklyn Bridge” and “Mad About You” for best comedy. The awards will be presented in October.

* Newsworthy Changes: KABC Channel 7 weekend anchor Joanne Ishimine, who has been with the station for 20 years, will leave KABC in late July or early August. Ishimine, whose replacement has not been chosen, will relocate to Chicago with her new husband, a high-level stockbroker. She does not yet have a job lined up. . . . Forty-three-year NBC News veteran John Chancellor will do his last “Nightly News” commentary next Thursday. Chancellor, 65, said last year that he would retire sometime in 1993. He was known to be bitterly unhappy with network changes in recent years. . . . Not leaving his post, however, is veteran newsman Ed Bradley, who has signed a new multi-year contract with CBS News to continue as a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” ABC News recently had courted Bradley to host a new newsmagazine show. His “Street Stories” on CBS was recently put on hiatus.

THE ARTS

* To San Francisco: Los Angeles native Michael Tilson Thomas will succeed Herbert Blomstedt as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, effective September, 1995. Tilson Thomas, 48, will retain his professional relationships with the London Symphony Orchestra (where he is principal conductor) and the Florida-based New World Symphony (which he founded), as he devotes 17 weeks each season to the San Francisco company. Tilson Thomas, a frequent guest conductor with San Francisco for two decades, has also been a principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

* Happy Anniversary: Materials for the Arts, a recycling program set up by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department that provides donated props, furniture, lumber and other goods to theater groups and arts organizations, celebrates its one-year anniversary today. “We’ve given away more than $2.5-million worth of goods and kept 800 tons out of the landfills,” says director Bert Ball. “We’ve become the largest single donor to the theater community in L.A.”

PEOPLE WATCH

* Cutting It Short: Telling the audience he wasn’t feeling well and that the “years are catching up to me,” 55-year-old country singer Hoyt Axton on Tuesday prematurely ended his early show and canceled his late show at Santa Ana’s Crazy Horse Steak House. Axton’s management firm said Wednesday that Axton had “suffered from heat exhaustion” on the Crazy Horse stage, where the temperature was “like 120 degrees,” and had not had anything to eat or drink all day Tuesday. A spokeswoman said Axton was “fine” and was expected to complete the three-city tour--his first of 1993--launched by Tuesday’s show.

* Suit Filed: Kathie Lee Gifford and her sportscaster husband Frank Gifford have filed a $45-million lawsuit against the National Enquirer over a story saying the talk-show host got pregnant by artificial insemination in a procedure that would also ensure that she would have a girl. The suit, which calls the story a “complete fabrication,” seeks $15 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages.

QUICK TAKES

Burt Reynolds’ filing for divorce came as “a total surprise” to wife Loni Anderson, the actress told Variety columnist Army Archerd. “It’s the weirdest,” she said, noting that she had not talked to Reynolds since he surprised her with the proceedings at their home in Florida last week. “There had never been any discussion (of a divorce) before that.” . . . Kim Basinger tells Connie Chung on tonight’s “Eye to Eye” that her “Boxing Helena” trial, in which a jury ordered her to pay $8.9 million for allegedly backing out of the film, was “all about a lie, a gigantic lie. . . . There was . . . no oral contract or any kind of agreement whatsoever in this case.”