Read It in the Tabloids? See It on TV! : Programming: ‘This I’m doing for fun,’ says Brandon Tartikoff, who’s producing ‘Weekly World News on Television’ for CBS. First up: a woman with shoulder implants.

Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid whose staples include tales of encounters with space aliens, Bigfoot and Elvis Presley sightings, is coming to CBS.

But comedy, rather than sensationalism, will be the focus of the program, lessening the chances for another hoax like the recent one on the supposed discovery of Noah’s Ark that embarrassed the network.

CBS has ordered two half-hour episodes of “Weekly World News on Television,” which are currently being shot in Florida. They may air as stand-alone specials early next year but could be held if the network decides to move forward with the project as a weekly series for the 1994-95 season.

“This is another way to entertain and amuse people beyond doing this season’s 111th permutation of the situation-comedy format,” said Brandon Tartikoff, the former NBC Entertainment and Paramount chief who is executive producer of the two programs. “The single reason I am doing this is that there is a mother lode of material that Weekly World News has accumulated in the last decade and we have the method and writing talent that knows how to distill that material and turn it into interesting and fun television. I’m doing other things for Emmys. This I’m doing for fun.”

The first edition of “Weekly World News on Television” will have stories about the discovery and escape of a two-foot-tall boy with pointy ears whom the publication said was found in a West Virginia cave and dubbed the Bat Child, a man who built an entire house with only the use of a Swiss Army Knife, and a woman who had shoulder implants because she was “tired of putting shoulder pads in all of her blouses and dresses,” Tartikoff said.

The programs will not present material “that is potentially damaging or misleading to impressionable minds,” he said.

And they will carry a disclaimer--the writing of which Tartikoff called “probably the most creative thing we are going to have to do”--to instruct viewers that the programs are not a production of CBS’ news division. The disclaimer will probably run twice each episode, he said.

Sal Ivone, the publication’s managing editor, said that although the television and print version of Weekly World News are “different animals” because of the differences in the mediums, he is confident that Tartikoff’s television production will “remain true to the spirit of the Weekly World News--a mix of mysteries, wonder, miracles and the bizarre.”

But not just any bizarre encounter makes it to the Weekly World News pages.

“We get 40 to 50 letters a day from people who have taken rides on UFOs, been examined by aliens or done sightings, but the stories that we deem worthy to get into the paper are these truly unusual encounters,” Ivone said. “For all I know, they could be the product of active imaginations. But because we’re a tabloid, we don’t have to question ourselves out of a story. We can go ahead and publish something that for the most part would be taken for granted or dismissed as silly by another newspaper.”

The Weekly World News even got involved in last year’s presidential campaign when it reported that a space alien, who first backed Ross Perot’s bid, had switched his support to Bill Clinton. The publication sells an average of more than 3 million copies a week, trailing only TV Guide and sister publication National Enquirer among North American weekly periodicals.

“Weekly World News on Television” will resemble a news magazine in its look, with Ivone, editor Eddie Clontz and longtime staffer Jack Alexander serving as the on-air talent.