TELEVISIONCarroll to Return to Anchoring: In another...

TELEVISION

Carroll to Return to Anchoring: In another move to populate its local newscasts with familiar faces, KCBS-TV Channel 2 said Tuesday it has hired Larry Carroll, formerly of KCAL-TV Channel 9 and KABC-TV Channel 7, as a reporter and weekend anchor. Beginning next week, Carroll will be teamed with Linda Alvarez on the Saturday and Sunday evening newscasts, replacing Michael Scott, who has left the stations “to pursue other opportunities.” Carroll, who left KCAL in 1993 after four years, most recently had been a Los Angeles-based reporter for NBC News.

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Recognizing Achievements: An awards program designed to recognize the contributions of Hispanic/Latino leaders nationwide was announced Tuesday by KNBC-TV Channel 4 and other NBC stations. “The VIDA Awards” will be taped at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington on June 20 for broadcast on all six NBC owned and operated stations (July 8 at 7 p.m. on Channel 4). Performers will include “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz, “King of Tex Mex” Emilio, comedian John Mendoza and singer Jose Feliciano. Liz Torres of “The John Larroquette Show” will be among the presenters. Winners in eight fields of endeavor will be chosen by a panel of judges, including Alfredo Estrada, an Austin, Tex., publisher whose magazine Hispanic is a co-sponsor of the program.

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Waiting to Call You: Two new services wanting to ring you up are being offered this week. As the TV show “Due South” is being shifted from Thursday to Friday nights (9 p.m.) for three weeks starting Friday, the show will telephone viewers one hour before broadcast to be sure fans don’t forget to watch. Register at (212) 260-3744, Ext. 17 to be called. . . . And, starting Thursday, pre-recorded celebrity voices offering hotel-style wake-up calls will be available from the L.A.-based Telephone Entertainment Network. Among stars participating are Eddie Van Halen, Helen Mirren, John Goodman, Tone Loc, Ed Asner, Jennifer Tilly, Elliott Gould, Steve Garvey and others. The Wake-Up America service, which can be ordered via (800) 524-WAKE, costs $8 to $11 a month; proceeds go to a variety of charitable organizations.

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Povich Suit Reinstated: A St. Paul, Minn., appeals court has cleared the way for a man and woman to sue the producer of “The Maury Povich Show,” which mistakenly broadcast their pictures during a segment on sex abuse. The Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned a lower court that dismissed lawsuits filed by James Richie and Karen Gerten against the show’s producer, Paramount Pictures Corp., and a Minnesota attorney. “Here, appellants were wrongly and publicly labeled as a father who committed incest and a mother who stood by and let it happen,” the appeals court said in a 2-1 decision. “At least ‘some’ actual injury to their reputations can be assumed. . . . “ Photos of Richie and Gerten were supplied to the show in 1992 by an attorney whose client had won a large award against her father for sexually abusing her and against her mother for failing to intervene. The attorney, Kathy Tatone, was under the mistaken impression Richie and Gerten were the parents when actually they are the godparents. About a month after the show aired, Povich aired a retraction.

MOVIES

A Way With Will: A new film version of “Othello,” to star Laurence Fishburne as the betrayed Moor of Venice who kills his wife, will offer more “conversational” dialogue than Shakespeare imagined, the Times of London reported. The film will also star Kenneth Branagh as Iago, Othello’s evil confidant, and Irene Jacob as the doomed Desdemona. First-time director Oliver Parker said the play’s dialogue, which gave the English language the phrases “green-eyed monster” and “One that loved not wisely, but too well,” needed updating to keep the movie moving. “Where I feel verse is not necessarily contributing to the emotion of a scene, I make the dialogue more conversational,” he said.

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Directors in Spotlight: Robert Wise, best known as the director of “The Sound of Music” and “West Side Story,” will receive the annual Hal Roach Entertainment Award for his achievements from Loyola Marymount University tonight at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. . . . Director Wayne Wang will discuss writing and directing after his new film, “Smoke,” is screened at the Pacific Design Center’s Green Room Theatre on Friday at 7:30 p.m. The evening is sponsored by IFP/West, the group devoted to fostering independent films.

STAGE

Simon Seeks Singers: Paul Simon is holding a contest at a New York theater today in a search for street-corner doo-wop singers to perform in a Broadway show about street gangs in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. Simon plans to open the show, “The Capeman,” next year, according to the New York Daily News. The three winning groups of teen-age a cappella singers will split $10,000 and some may be invited to join the cast.

QUOTABLE

“I could only keep the [40-pound Batman] suit on for an hour at a time, and then I had to get out of it because it would get too hot and I would get dehydrated. The suit’s all latex and it’s not ventilated, either, so I’d start sweating immediately, especially when I was under the lights.”

--Val Kilmer, on playing the lead in “Batman Forever,” quoted in Nickelodeon magazine.