TELEVISION - Oct. 2, 1993

Make Room for Woody: Woody Allen, an unlikely candidate to work in television, will write, direct and star in an ABC movie remake of “Don’t Drink the Water,” the play with which he made his Broadway debut in 1966 and was later turned into a feature film about an American family held captive in an Iron Curtain country. “Don’t Drink the Water” will be the first in a three-picture deal ABC has with Jean Doumanian, a former “Saturday Night Live” producer and longtime friend of Allen.

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Rather Interesting: CBS anchorman Dan Rather denounced TV news for supplanting foreign reports and in-depth analysis with gossip and puff. At a news directors convention in Miami Wednesday, Rather said the transformation is “the Hollywood-ization of news.” A “climate of fear” that ratings will slide pervades many television newsrooms, he added, urging news directors to stop letting market researchers dictate decisions. “We trivialize important subjects,” he said. “We put videotape through a Cuisinart trying to come up with high-speed, MTV-style cross-cuts. And just to cover ourselves, we give the best slots to gossip and prurience. . . . We all should be ashamed of what we have done.”

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Costas Says ‘Later’: Bob Costas will leave NBC’s “Later” interview show in December after more than five years to concentrate on NBC’s 1994 baseball coverage. Costas also will anchor the network’s telecasts of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. None of this means he’s through hosting entertainment programs, since NBC is developing another Costas project. Meantime, NBC is looking for another host for “Later.”

Day and Night: Geraldo Rivera, already the host of a weekday talk show, will oversee a live, prime-time program for cable’s CNBC channel. The program will cover issues “that are serious in nature.”

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Serious Subject: “Baywatch,” the series set on the beaches of Southern California, will present an episode Monday at 8 p.m. on KCOP dealing with retinitis pigmentosa, the degenerative eye disease. The series is produced by Douglas Schwartz, who has the disease.

MOVIES

New Date for ‘Anything’: James L. Brooks’ “I’ll Do Anything,” a musical comedy about Hollywood, has been removed from Columbia Pictures’ Christmas schedule and now will be released Feb. 4. “I would have had to start mixing this picture next week, and I’m not finished,” Brooks said. The $40-million film, starring Nick Nolte as a struggling actor and Albert Brooks as a producer, ran into problems in its initial test screening when audiences complained about some of the songs. Brooks said he is trying to determine how many songs should remain in the movie.

DANCE

Dance With a Difference: La La La Human Steps, the Montreal-based dance company last seen on the West Coast during the 1987 Los Angeles Festival, returns to Los Angeles Oct. 28 and 29 for performances at the Wiltern Theatre. The company, which travels with a live rock band, has enjoyed crossover success working with the likes of rock stars David Bowie and Frank Zappa, as well as the Berlin Philharmonic.

RADIO

Coming ‘Home’: Garrison Keillor returns with the first of 32 live broadcasts of “A Prairie Home Companion” starting tonight at 6 on KUSC-FM (91.5). Guitarist Leo Kottke and songwriter Tish Hinojosa will join the humorist for the season premiere of his weekly musical variety show from the World Theatre in St. Paul, Minn.

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AIDS Talk: “Aware: HIV Talk Radio,” a syndicated half-hour program devoted to providing information about AIDS, will be carried on KPWR-FM (106) starting at midnight on Oct. 10. The series, which began its weekly broadcasts in Chicago on Aug. 2, 1992, also is heard in Philadelphia, St. Louis and Cleveland. The hosts are Chris DeChant, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in the fall of 1991, and Sondra Roberts.

PEOPLE WATCH

In Good Company: The humor magazine Harvard Lampoon has given Mr. T its Humanitas Award--a gold spray-painted trophy made of balsa wood--for the socially conscious message of his “Mr. T and the T-Force” comic book, in which his crime-fighting character carries a video camera instead of a gun. Lampoon president Brian Kelly said the magazine gives out the award sporadically and only to the most deserving candidates. The previous recipients were Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer. “Mr. T completes the triad,” Kelly said.

QUICK TAKES

Hoping to broaden the audience for late night’s newest host, NBC will televise “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” tonight at 1 a.m. after “Saturday Night Live.” . . . Former TV and movie studio executive Brandon Tartikoff introduces Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film “Network” Oct. 21 on TNT’s “Our Favorite Movies.” Tartikoff says Chayefsky’s movie was ahead of its time on “the blurring of the line between news and entertainment” and “the corporate effect on networks and, in particular, network news divisions--10 years ahead of GE buying NBC and the Loews Corp. buying CBS.”