TELEVISIONNew KABC Anchor: ABC News anchor and...

TELEVISION

New KABC Anchor: ABC News anchor and correspondent Lisa McRee will replace former anchor Ann Martin on the Channel 7 Eyewitness News team starting in July. McRee will co-anchor the 5 and 11 p.m. newscasts with Harold Greene. McRee has been an anchor for “World News Now” and a correspondent for “Day One.” Veteran broadcaster Martin left KABC last month to become an anchor at KCBS Channel 2.

* Field’s ‘Woman’: Two-time Oscar-winning actress Sally Field will star in and co-executive produce an upcoming six-hour NBC miniseries, “A Woman of Independent Means,” based on the best-selling novel by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey. Production begins this summer in Texas, with broadcast planned for the coming season.

STAGE

Going to Israel: Actress Vanessa Redgrave, whose outspoken support for the Palestine Liberation Organization has incensed many Israelis, will make her stage debut in Israel next month. She will appear at Jerusalem’s Haifa Theatre in “Brecht in Exile,” a selection of works written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht while he was in exile from Nazi Germany. Oded Kutler, the theater’s director, said the Academy Award-winning actress agreed to the visit as a result of the Israel-PLO peace accords. Redgrave’s statements, including a call on her show-business colleagues in the 1980s to boycott Israel and a picture of her toting an assault rifle and dancing with Palestinians, are notorious in Israel.

* ‘Perestroika’ Wins in N.Y.: “Angels in America: Perestroika,” the second half of playwright Tony Kushner’s epic about AIDS in the 1980s, was named best play of the New York theater season by the theater critics’ group Drama Desk. Last year, Kushner won the same prize for the first half of the drama, “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.” Stephen Spinella, who plays a man living with AIDS in “Perestroika,” won for best actor. He also won the featured-actor prize last year for “Millennium Approaches.” The top winner in Sunday night’s ceremonies, however, was the new Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical “Passion,” which won six awards including best musical, lyrics, music and book.

* It’s a Wrap: The Spoleto Festival U.S.A. wrapped up its first season without founder Gian Carlo Menotti on Sunday, with the critical consensus being that the festival was none the worse for the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s absence. With a shortened 12-day run, the Charleston, S.C., festival ended up on solid financial ground, with organizers estimating final ticket sales would come in near their goal of $1.6 million. The festival’s total fund-raising ended about $150,000 shy of its $3.2-million goal, but a spokeswoman said that gap should be closed by the end of the fiscal year in August. The debt at the end of last season was almost $1 million; organizers hope to lower that to $600,000 by year’s end.

ART

Museum Funding at Stake: An attempt to secure major public funding for Los Angeles’ planned Museum of Latino History, Art and Culture will be at stake in today’s primary election. Proposition 180, a $2-billion statewide parks and wildlife bond act known as CALPAW, includes a $10-million grant to “a qualified nonprofit organization” that would operate the fledgling institution. The Latino Museum was founded in 1989 when the California Legislature voted to grant it $300,000 in seed money.

* Murals Completed: “Solo Unido, Un Mundo Vencera / Only United, Will One World Be Victorious,” the last of five soccer murals marking the route between Los Angeles International Airport and the site of the final World Cup game at the Rose Bowl, will be installed today at LAX. The mural, by noted artist Willie Herron, depicts humanity reaching up to the globe, surrounded by symbols of Los Angeles and the World Cup. Herron said the mural aims to express “the importance of respect for one another and the unity we must strive for.”

QUICK TAKES

The start date for Howard Stern’s new show on cable’s E! Entertainment is June 20. The program, presenting daily videotaped highlights from Stern’s radio show, will air Monday through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. A “sneak preview” of the show will air June 18 at 8 p.m. . . . Actress Michelle Pfeiffer will narrate “Discovering Women,” a six-hour public TV series on notable women scientists, scheduled for broadcast next spring. . . . HBO has renewed “Dennis Miller,” the comedian’s half-hour late-night cable commentary program, which recently completed a six-week run. The show returns for 13 weeks in September.

Can We Hold Him to It?”This is the last time I am going to talk about my marriage in public, I promise.”--Comedian Tom Arnold, on Friday’s “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”