TELEVISION’Quality’ TV: NBC has won seven of...

TELEVISION

‘Quality’ TV: NBC has won seven of 13 awards--including the first annual Network Commitment to Quality award--in the 12th annual Quality Awards, voted by members of the Virginia-based advocacy group Viewers for Quality Television. Among NBC’s awards, the viewers’ group named “Homicide: Life on the Street” best drama and “Frasier” best comedy, while picking “ER’s” Sherry Stringfeld as best actress in a drama, Helen Hunt of “Mad About You” as best actress in a comedy and “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer as best actor in a comedy. Among other awards, Dennis Franz of ABC’s “NYPD Blue” was named best actor in a drama. The awards will be handed out Sept. 28 in Los Angeles.

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More Awards Show News: The 48th annual Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on Sept. 8 will be seen in 85 foreign countries, where it is expected to draw more than 600 million viewers, according to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Twenty-nine new countries have signed on to receive the program for the first time, including Denmark, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine and Algeria. . . . Comedian Drew Carey (ABC’s “The Drew Carey Show”) will host the 18th annual National CableACE Awards, honoring cable TV programs, on Nov. 16 at the Wiltern Theatre. The event is carried that same night on TNT. Carey is a previous CableACE winner, for his Showtime special “Drew Carey: Human Cartoon.” . . . Singer Vince Gill will host the 30th annual Country Music Assn. Awards, to be broadcast on CBS Oct. 2 from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House.

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Post-Olympic Performances: While most of the attention on Olympic talk show guests has focused on late night (see F1), “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” has not just the first talk show interview with Michael Johnson but also the first with the Games’ surprise sweetheart: gymnast Kerri Strug. Strug appears with O’Donnell on Thursday, a prelude to her scheduled “Tonight Show” visit Friday. And quadruple gold medalist swimmer Amy Van Dyken sits with Rosie on Tuesday. (O’Donnell’s guests on Monday were track and field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee and gold medal soccer champion Mia Hamm.)

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Changing the Playbook: Fox Broadcasting will call an audible when it televises “The Program” on Sept. 15, excising at least two scenes from the football-themed movie that prompted controversy when it played in theaters. A Fox spokesman confirmed that Fox will cut a sequence in which several high school-age characters--as a sign of their nerve--lie down in the street, with cars rushing by them. Several youths were injured after the movie’s release in 1993, apparently trying to mimic that stunt. Fox will also remove a similar scene where characters walk in front of a train.

MOVIES

Silverstone Weighs In: Vanity Fair has chosen upcoming “Batman and Robin” co-star Alicia Silverstone as the cover girl for its September issue--the biggest issue in the magazine’s history. Silverstone addresses the controversy over her post-”Clueless” weight gain, which rose to fever pitch in the tabloids amid speculation that she’d grown too hefty for her Batgirl spandex. “I do my best,” Silverstone says of her exercise schedule. “But it’s much more important to me that my brain be working in the morning than getting up early and doing exercise. . . . The most important thing for me is that I eat and that I sleep and that I get the work done, but unfortunately . . . it’s the perception that women in film should look a certain way.” Silverstone, interviewed in Vancouver while filming her producing debut, “Excess Baggage,” also said: “I really love what I’m doing on this movie, but, at the same time, I’d rather be married and have beautiful babies and millions of animals and eat delicious food and get as fat as I want. . . . Live! You know?”

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That’s Life: The boy who played the scrawny young Forrest Gump is having trouble being himself. “Even when I’m not running, people will say, ‘Run, Forrest, run!’ ” said Michael Humphreys, now 11, who still gets asked to repeat some of the movie’s more memorable sayings. “They don’t learn my name. They call me Forrest in my regular life.” Humphreys, who lives in rural Mississippi, hopes he’ll get another shot at the movies, but the Southern drawl that helped win him the “Gump” role at age 8 is apparently now working against him. “[Casting agents] say, ‘We really like him, but can he drop the accent?” mother Carol Humphreys noted.

QUICK TAKES

KCOP-TV Channel 13 plans to add a new weekday 3:30 p.m. newscast to its lineup on Sept. 16 with anchors still to be named. Among other additions to Channel 13’s fall weekday schedule will be the syndicated run of “Mad About You” at 11 p.m., back-to-back syndicated episodes of “Martin” at 6 and 6:30 p.m. and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” at 7 p.m. . . . Joe Klein, who resigned from his CBS News post and was put on leave from his Newsweek job after his “anonymous” authorship of “Primary Colors” was revealed, returns to his columnist duties in the magazine’s current issue, writing about the debate over welfare reform. Klein’s column is accompanied by an editor’s note to readers saying that Newsweek “made a serious mistake in going along with the [anonymous] deception” but “we think readers are entitled to hear [Klein’s] superb commentary.”