TV and RADIO

Say It Again, Don: C-SPAN said Friday that the cable outlet had received a call from White House spokesman Mike McCurry asking the station to refrain from re-airing a broadcast of Thursday night’s 52nd annual Radio & Television Correspondents’ Assn. Dinner in which radio shock jock Don Imus lambasted the president and first lady with jokes about Clinton’s alleged extramarital affairs and his wife’s alleged financial misdeeds. However, C-SPAN, which had broadcast the Washington dinner live Thursday night, said it would stand by its scheduled rebroadcasts at 6 and 9 p.m. today, noting that Imus’ remarks, which will re-air in their entirety “were the kind of commentary he regularly makes on his nationwide radio program.” Imus, keynote speaker at the dinner which was attended by both Clintons, also made raunchy jokes about Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey’s “wooden leg,” television appeals for starving children, people who suffer from obesity and the homosexuality of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s sister. His comments reportedly left the 3,000-member audience in silence at times, save for a few halfhearted boos and whimpers.

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Uniting for Voters: Six Southland media outlets--including KTTV-TV Channel 11, KCET-TV Channel 28, National Public Radio stations KCRW-FM (89.9) and KPCC-FM (89.3), as well as the Orange County Register and La Opinion newspapers--have announced a joint project, called “Voices of the Voters” aiming to “put the voters at the center of election coverage.” The new coalition’s first effort, a half-hour broadcast of three community discussions, including one with a group of Latinos who recently became U.S. citizens and will be voting for the first time this year, will air Sunday at 10:30 p.m. on both channels 11 and 28. KPCC will also air audio of the program on Monday at 5 p.m.

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Preserving ‘Legends’ ’ Words: The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation has allocated $50,000 to start an Archive of American Television that would house taped video conversations with “industry legends” talking about their lives and careers. The initial funding will allow the immediate taping of four or five prototype conversations, though the first subjects have not yet been selected. The archive, inspired by the Shoah Visual History Foundation’s ambitious project taping interviews with thousands of Holocaust survivors, aims to eventually record conversations with all 46 living inductees of the TV Academy Hall of Fame, including Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, Carol Burnett, Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Bill Cosby and others. Plans call for the archive to be housed at the academy’s North Hollywood headquarters, and made public through schools, libraries, CD-ROMs and the Internet. Noted television producers Grant Tinker and David L. Wolper, honorary chairs of the new archive, aim to raise $1 million to take the project beyond the current pilot stage.

Hear ’60 Minutes’ Without TV: CBS-owned KNX-AM (1070) will simulcast CBS News’ hourlong newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” this Sunday and next Sunday at 7 p.m. The two-week experiment will mark the first simulcast anywhere of the granddaddy of newsmags, and could become a permanent fixture if it’s successful.