Barry Nolan

I n all-upper-case letters, the advertisements announce: "THE NEW SPIRIT OF 'HARD COPY' ISN'T JUST BASED ON WHAT WE'VE TAKEN OUT, IT'S BASED ON WHAT WE'VE ADDED." And "OUR NEW EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS WANT US TO BE VERY GOOD, BUT NOT SENSATIONAL." The death of sleaze? The taming of television's turgid tabloids? Now in its fifth season, the half-hour, syndicated "Hard Copy" is vigorously advertising change.

I n all-upper-case letters, the advertisements announce: "THE NEW SPIRIT OF 'HARD COPY' ISN'T JUST BASED ON WHAT WE'VE TAKEN OUT, IT'S BASED ON WHAT WE'VE ADDED." And "OUR NEW EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS WANT US TO BE VERY GOOD, BUT NOT SENSATIONAL." The death of sleaze? The taming of television's turgid tabloids? Now in its fifth season, the half-hour, syndicated "Hard Copy" is vigorously advertising change.

THE SHOW: "Hard Copy," 7:30 weeknights on NBC, Channel 4. THE SETUP: This TV tabloid, hosted by Barry Nolan and Terry Murphy, features such pearls of journalistic excellence as a three-part series recreating the life and death (mostly death) of Elvis Presley. THE GUY: Barry Nolan wears sharp clothes. Well, banker sharp. The man's no hipster, but his outfits are well put together.

THE SHOW: "Hard Copy," 7:30 weeknights on NBC, Channel 4. THE SETUP: This TV tabloid, hosted by Barry Nolan and Terry Murphy, features such pearls of journalistic excellence as a three-part series recreating the life and death (mostly death) of Elvis Presley. THE GUY: Barry Nolan wears sharp clothes. Well, banker sharp. The man's no hipster, but his outfits are well put together.

Aides to Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) say her husband has died on a mountain climbing expedition in the Himalayas. Congressional aide Barry Nolan said that Clifton Maloney, 71, was resting in a high-altitude camp after a successful ascent to the summit of the world's sixth-highest mountain when he died. Arrangements are still being made to recover the body from the slopes of Cho Oyu, a 26,906-foot peak straddling Nepal and Tibet.

The Series: "Hard Copy"; airs weeknights at 7:30 on NBC. The Setup: The personal woes of America's favorite tabloid fodder--Tonya, Michael, Burt and Loni--vie with celebrity romances and movie-of-the-week crime news for air time on the magazine-format series.

Michael Gartner vividly recalls when, in 1989, as president of NBC News, he sat down for a meeting with Alfred Geller, the agent renegotiating Connie Chung's contract. "Geller plopped down and put his feet on the table," Gartner says. "He had a few buttons of his shirt open with his rather large stomach sticking out. He proceeded to tell me he wanted $3 million a year for Connie, her own prime-time show, she got to pick the producer and . . . he wanted a quick answer.

When Comcast Corp. assumes control of NBC Universal, the company will inherit a portfolio of news organizations, including a top-shelf network news division that dominates the competition. Powered by the "Today" show in the morning and "NBC Nightly News" in the evening, NBC News is one of the few bright spots at the broadcast network. It's also one of the few aspects of the venture that will be largely new terrain for Comcast. Until now, the Philadelphia-based cable television operator's experience in news has been limited to running a handful of local television channels that produce newscasts, including the East Coast regional network CN8 until it shut down at the end of last year.

When you consider that it's been more than 60 years since Harold Lloyd exploited our fear of heights in "Safety Last"--and nearly 30 since Alfred Hitchcock did the same in "Vertigo"--it's amazing that it can still be done on the screen at all. Yet Stephen King's "Cat's Eye" (citywide) contains a man on-the-ledge sequence that's an edge-of-the-seat classic.

The La Habra Community Theatre's "Fiddler on the Roof," while clumsy at times, does manage to evoke the cultural flavor and homey good spirits of this popular show. Director Phyllis B. Gitlin knows something about the importance of atmosphere, especially to a musical, and her staging has nicely visual stretches.

Dearly beloved. Today, we come to bury "Hard Copy," not to praise it. And while it's never polite to speak ill of the dead--even those we really dislike--in its passing we feel obligated to point out what the show and its ilk have wrought. Historians will note that "Hard Copy" and other tabloid TV newsmagazines flourished in the O.J.-crazed latter half of the 1990s--a period that has been to journalism what the reign of the emperor Caligula was to government. Beyond practicing checkbook journalism by paying interview subjects, the show's low-lights included being sued by Michael Jackson (the gloved one)

CHEECH MARIN, who plays Joe Dominguez on Don Johnson's CBS crime drama "Nash Bridges," and his wife, artist Patti Heid, have decided to lease out one of the houses in their beachfront Malibu compound. Marin was in three 1996 movies: "From Dusk Till Dawn," "The Great White Hype" and "Tin Cup," in which he sang "Estoy Sentado Aqui."