What’s a TV Lawyer to Do Without O.J.? (Some TV, Perhaps)

What a downer. You return to the job after taking two weeks off, and nothing’s resolved. The O.J. Simpson trial drags on. No changes.

Well, just one.

Those tuning in KTTV-TV Channel 11 at 9 a.m. hoping to catch more live coverage of the trial--surprise! Instead of I Love Luke, they get “I Love Lucy.”

Luke is Luke McKissack, the likable, glib, quick-witted, veteran Los Angeles criminal attorney who, at least temporarily, lost his trial pundit job on Channel 11 when the Fox station decided Friday to end five months of extended live coverage of the Simpson proceedings and resume its regular daytime schedule. That trims TV’s Simpson “regulars” to KTLA-TV Channel 5, KCAL-TV Channel 9, CNN, Court TV and E! Entertainment.

From a legal perspective, the trial is now in a critical phase regarding the validity of tests that allegedly show the presence of Simpson’s blood at the site of the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman. From a spectator’s perspective, the trial is now in the tedious DNA doldrums, what McKissack calls a “scientific bog.”

He and his TV partner, retired Deputy Dist. Atty. Maurice Oppenheim, will surely be recalled to the camera should the trial take a dramatic turn or should Simpson himself testify. As for now . . .

“I’m sitting here watching Channel 5 coverage of the Simpson trial,” McKissack said Monday afternoon.

McKissack said that Channel 11 had never planned to carry the trial throughout the summer. He said he was told that the decision to cease live coverage was a “business proposition”--that with schools letting out for summer vacation, the station wanted to run “kiddie programming.”

So no more 9-to-5 on the Simpson beat these days for McKissack, who practices law now only part time. Actually, he said, “I was hoping that something like this would happen, in a way, because it was so fatiguing.” And perhaps less rewarding, given the newer, sterner Judge Lance Ito’s decision to accelerate the trial, in part by severely curtailing the frequent sidebars that had provided time for TV commentators like McKissack to weigh in on every minuscule microdot of testimony.

McKissack has a charming way of mingling self-effacing humor with self-promotion, and he readily acknowledges mining Simpson turf to personal advantage. He said he has discussed with Fox officials the possibility of a daily noon program with Channel 11 anchor John Beard on which they initially would hash over the Simpson case and ultimately a broad spectrum of legal issues. On the literary front, he has partially completed a screenplay about jurors who boycott a trial. He said he began writing it prior to the recent actual boycott by members of the Simpson jury.

In addition, McKissack is hoping that his TV exposure will net him “a nifty amount of money” for a two-volume autobiography encompassing his legal career that is now in the hands of a New York agent. In that regard, he’s prepared a video of his TV appearances to show potential publishers how well he’d do on the talk-show circuit. Very well, based on his work for Channel 11, and his swift recall of anecdotes concerning his new fame a la Simpson.

Just recently, for example, he was in a bathroom at a movie theater. “So I’m at the urinal, and this guy I never saw before comes in, takes a look at me and says, ‘It’s you!’ Then he sticks out his hand.”

Bring on Larry King. McKissack is ready.

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COMBAT ZONE. How often does the Los Angeles Times do a profile of a reporter, say, for the Orange County Register or the Washington Post? About as often as the Register or the Post prints a profile of a reporter for The Times.

“Never” comes to mind.

Thus, there was something highly admirable about “60 Minutes,” the enduring CBS News super-series, devoting its second segment Sunday to CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Her sober war reporting from Bosnia and other hot spots arguably has made Amanpour CNN’s best-known field reporter, someone whose services have been sought by the three major commercial networks. Instead, she rejected “the big leagues,” as Mike Wallace anointed ABC, NBC and CBS Sunday, and re-signed with CNN.

Although the big three networks’ news divisions have dramatically slashed their foreign staffs, CBS News remains a competitor of Amanpour abroad, making her prominence on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” all the more remarkable. Although ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” recently did a segment on “60 Minutes” curmudgeon Andy Rooney in conjunction with his latest book, TV news competitors rarely even acknowledge each other. And the kind of exposure “60 Minutes” gave competing field reporter Amanpour, to say nothing of throwing bouquets, is almost unheard of.

Because Amanpour’s record and toughness speak for themselves, the “60 Minutes” piece, with Wallace, was largely favorable, replete with footage of her in action under life-risking duress. Yet there appeared to be a condescending subtext to Wallace’s sometimes testy questioning of Amanpour in her Paris apartment. And you grimaced when he asked this serious reporter, who does nothing to glamorize herself or call attention to her gender: “Do you think the fact that you’re good-looking has nothing to do with your success?”

Yikes! Would Wallace ask ABC’s Peter Jennings that? Would he ask any attractive male journalist that?

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HOLY HAIR. Why do so many male TV preachers have major hair? Is it written in the Scriptures that thou shalt tease and spray?

Some of the women are memorable, too, witness the cascading leafy ringlets of gray head foliage worn by the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Jan Crouch, making Louis XIV look like a skinhead.

But it’s the preacher men whose hair most often stands tallest or is so exotic that what they’re saying is constantly in danger of being eclipsed by what’s atop their heads. We’re talking here about Titanic perms, top-heavy plumes of white, black-dyed inverted pyramids and extravagant yogurt swirls.

None of today’s TV preachers has a coif more momentous or creative than Benny Hinn, the engaging healer whose gray hair at times sweeps across his head in a panoramic wave that you could surf on. If there’s a bald spot beneath that thick-sprayed swell, only a Geiger counter could find it.

Just as hair-raising, though, is Jack Van Impe, who links topical events to biblical prophecy on his weekly paid program with the assistance of his wife, Rexella. Van Impe’s revelations are plenty provocative (“God showed me this about seven weeks ago, but I have to repeat it because it’s so exciting”), but not as provocative as his stiff brick of gray hair that an ice pick couldn’t crack.

Praise the Lord and pass the gel.

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HE TAKES A PUNCH. Few programs in television are as adept as the syndicated “Geraldo” when it comes to tailoring sleaze and violence to ratings sweeps months. And even Don King doesn’t promote more fights.

Just last week, Geraldo Rivera’s nose was broken when fisticuffs erupted during a taping of an episode on domestic violence, just as it was broken in 1988 during a brawl triggered by a clash on the set between white supremacists and a black civil rights leader.

And Monday’s “Geraldo” hour of bleeped expletives turned especially nasty when two teen-age criminals angrily charged the studio audience to confront their shouting critics, only to be intercepted by Rivera and his security force.

Yes, great stuff. But even greater stuff was arriving Tuesday: “They’re ruthless and ready to rumble,” trumpeted the promo. “Drag queen gangsters, tomorrow on ‘Geraldo.’ ”