ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

TELEVISION

Advocacy Effort Ends: The Virginia-based Viewers for Quality Television, a viewer-advocacy group that has presented annual “quality” awards and spearheaded grass-roots campaigns to keep critically respected but little-watched shows on the air, is disbanding. The organization, formed in 1984, is “out of money,” founder Dorothy Swanson said in what the group calls its final newsletter. “With no realistic source of funding and a dwindling participation base, VQT cannot continue. There are too few of us to continue the fight,” she wrote to members, adding that organizers “did our job--we educated. Viewers now know how to make their voices heard. . . . We taught them how.”

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Hope’s Float: Next week’s Tournament of Roses Parade will feature Bob Hope--in a new 35-foot-tall incarnation. The Veterans of Foreign Wars group has incorporated the 97-year-old entertainer’s likeness into its float for Monday’s event. The group said it wanted to honor the comedian for nearly 60 years of entertaining troops abroad, Hope’s publicist said, noting that the comedian, who recovered from an illness earlier this year, won’t attend the parade in person but plans to watch it on television from his Palm Springs home. . . . Among the outlets televising the parade will be cable’s Home & Garden Television, which is calling itself the “only network airing the parade in its entirety without commercial interruption.” Its live coverage of the 112th Tournament of Roses Parade begins Monday at 8 a.m.

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Competing Anne Frank Projects: ABC is moving ahead with its production of “Anne Frank” for the May ratings sweeps--even though Steven Spielberg pulled out as producer after the Anne Frank Foundation gave its support to a different biography, over which it has some editorial control. The competing project, a feature film, is being produced at Fox and is based on the actual Anne Frank diaries. The ABC miniseries is based on the Melissa Muller biography of Frank. It begins before young Anne’s family was forced into hiding in Amsterdam, dramatizes the betrayal of the family to the Nazis, and follows Frank up to her transport to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus.

MOVIES

Rooney Home for Holidays: Mickey Rooney made it home for Christmas, leaving the hospital as expected Monday after undergoing heart bypass surgery last Wednesday. “He’s more than happy to be out,” the 80-year-old actor’s manager, Kevin Pawley, said, adding that Rooney left Los Robles Regional Medical Center about noon and had Christmas dinner at his mother-in-law’s house. A blockage was discovered a week ago when Rooney was trying out a heart imaging machine that a new company wants him to promote. He’ll now undergo cardiovascular rehabilitation three times a week and do “a lot of walking,” Pawley said. The actor has also vowed to be back on the road in February with his wife, Jan, in their “One Man--One Wife” stage show.

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Pilot Error?: The Federal Aviation Administration said a preliminary investigation into Sandra Bullock’s plane mishap in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week showed no mechanical problems with the jet, and that pilot error might have been to blame. Bullock and three others aboard the plane walked away with no serious injuries Wednesday after the plane crash-landed between a runway and a taxiway during a snowstorm. An FAA spokesman said that the investigation is continuing into why the plane touched down in deep snow to the left of the plowed runway. Bullock, currently starring in “Miss Congeniality,” was en route from her home in Austin, Texas, when the incident occurred; the aircraft sustained heavy damage to its nose, wings and landing gear.

RADIO

Local Focus: In an effort to emphasize “programming that better serves the local community,” public radio station KCSN-FM (88.5) will stop airing “Marketplace,” replacing it starting Monday with a different show each weeknight under the umbrella of “California Focus.” The half-hour 6:30 p.m. programs will include three shows created at the Northridge-based KCSN: Monday night’s “QuintesseniaLA,” described as “an offbeat . . . look at life and culture in Southern California” by KCSN program director Freddie Johnson; Tuesday’s “On the Town,” a local architecture survey hosted by Mary-Margaret Stratton (pioneer of the “How Modern Was My Valley” self-driving architectural tour); and Wednesday’s “Local Flavor,” a local food news show hosted by Patricia Greenberg (“The Fitness Gourmet”). The remaining “California Focus” programs will come from San Francisco public radio outlet KQED-FM: “Pacific Time,” hosted by Nguyen Qui Duc (“All Things Considered”), will explore “life on the edge of the Pacific Rim” on Thursday nights, and “California Report,” featuring news from around the state, will continue to air Friday nights.

QUICK TAKES

Madonna and new husband Guy Ritchie are reported to be honeymooning with rock star Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, at Sting’s estate in Wiltshire, England. It was Sting and Styler who first introduced the newlyweds, who were married Friday in Scotland. . . . “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” has been named best film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Assn. . . . In light of its four Golden Globe nominations last week, Paramount has pushed back the video and DVD release date of “Wonder Boys.” The movie, starring Michael Douglas, was supposed to hit the home video market on Jan. 9 but is now scheduled for release in February.