Dennis Patrick

Cable Questions: Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, said it is time to make cable TV accountable to viewers and municipal authorities and has asked FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick to review the 1984 law that freed the cable industry of federal regulation. Dingell said in a speech to the Assn. of Independent Television Stations that the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 was based on the proposition that competition would be sufficient to protect the public interest.

President Reagan will nominate Bradley Holmes as a member of the Federal Communications Commission to replace Mark Fowler, who retired as chairman of the agency in April, sources said Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Holmes, 33, chief of the policy and rules division of the agency's Mass Media Bureau, would become the third black commissioner in the history of the agency.

President Bush will nominate Commerce Department official Alfred C. Sikes as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to succeed the deregulation-minded Dennis R. Patrick. The White House said Wednesday that Sikes, a former Missouri broadcaster, will fill the seat vacated in December, 1987, by Mimi Weyforth Dawson for the remainder of a five-year term that began July 1, 1988. The commission has had only three of its five-member complement since the 1987 resignations of Dawson and former chairman Mark S. Fowler.

Quirky, affectionate humor keeps "Frogs" hopping at Theatre West. Mary Jane Roberts' agreeable new romantic comedy set in a retirement community provides some welcome three-dimensional roles for mature performers and benefits from a lively cast. Jeanne Bates stars as Dee, a feisty widow whose ongoing battle with frogs in her apartment brings Harry (Dennis Patrick), a crusty, secretive handyman, to the rescue. Well, sort of.

Barbara Cason, known most recently as the comic actress who played Gary Shandling's mother on the offbeat "It's Gary Shandling's Show" on the Fox television network, has died of apparent heart failure, her friend and publicist said Tuesday. She was 61. Larry Frank said she died Monday in her Hollywood Hills home. A veteran of stage and television work, she also was seen on TV from 1977 to 1979 as Cloris Phebus, the man-hungry policewoman in the comedy "Carter Country."

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to levy the first fine for violation of its new decency standards on a Missouri television station that aired a sexy movie during prime time. Commissioners voted 2 to 1 to impose the maximum $2,000 fine against KZKC-TV for its May, 1987, broadcast of "Private Lessons," a movie about a wealthy 15-year-old boy who is seduced by his housekeeper. The 1980 sex comedy includes several scenes in which the housekeeper is shown bare-breasted.

Public universities, state agencies and local governments in Michigan cannot offer health insurance to the partners of gay and lesbian employees, an appeals court ruled Friday. The court found that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage had the effect of outlawing benefits for domestic partners. The amendment, approved by 59% of voters in 2004, states that only "the union of one man and one woman" is valid in Michigan, "as a marriage or ... for any purpose."

The Federal Communications Commission, saying that more competition was needed in the cable television industry, announced Wednesday that it would consider allowing local telephone companies to own cable systems. An 18-year-old FCC rule and a 4-year-old law bar telephone companies from running cable systems in their own service areas, but the FCC indicated by a series of actions Wednesday that it favors lifting those prohibitions.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to scrap a proposal that would substantially increase telephone charges for business and home computer users, sources said Wednesday. FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick has concluded that, based on strong and nearly unanimous opposition to the proposal, the plan should be dropped, according to sources at the commission and on Capitol Hill.