Television Networks

After years of opposition, the nation's television broadcasters are expected to announce today that they have agreed to a government plan requiring them to provide three hours of educational programming for children per week. Sources close to an intense weekend of talks between federal officials and the broadcasters said Sunday that President Clinton will announce the agreement during a White House "summit" on children's television.

It was not too long ago that O.J. Simpson pulled Black Entertainment Television into the television big top. BET, the nation's only black-owned cable network, had been largely unknown to mainstream television audiences outside its core African American viewership until last January, when it scored a live interview with the man who was then the nation's most hotly sought-after celebrity: Simpson, acquitted double-murder suspect. The Jan.

Network television executives were in Las Vegas on Jan. 22 at the industry's annual convention for hawking syndicated programming when they learned that President Clinton intended to take on television that night in his State of the Union address.

The entertainment industry group charged with devising a ratings system for television is planning to create several more age-based categories than the familiar movie ratings code on which it is being modeled, executives involved in the discussions say.

The company that is buying Orange County's cable news channel is planning to expand into Los Angeles, which could create the region's first 24-hour local news network. Century Communications Corp., a Connecticut-based cable firm with about 400,000 subscribers in the Southland, agreed this week to acquire Orange County NewsChannel (OCN) from Freedom Communications Inc. The price was not disclosed.

After years of playing cable's second fiddle--battling rival MTV for access to the hottest music videos and watching its news coverage go unnoticed by the networks--Black Entertainment Television will hit the big time tonight when it is expected to air the first live question-and-answer session with O.J. Simpson since his acquittal on murder charges.

Her two deaf children believed that as adults they would be able to hear. Another child said he didn't like kids who could hear because they were mean. Then there was the deaf girl who thought she would die when she grew up. Her reasoning: She had never seen a deaf adult. Marianne O'Reilly had heard enough.

A familiar controversy blanketed Tuesday night's election coverage. It was that old bugaboo: TV network projections based on exit polls. In past elections, networks used cumulative data from states whose polls had closed to project winners of presidential races before all the ballots in the West had been cast--possibly skewing other elections by influencing some people not to bother voting for significant local and statewide issues and candidates. Tuesday would be no different.

Question: What do the television networks and the Dodgers have in common? * Answer: Both began their seasons with high hopes and suffered from a shortage of hits. That's the early appraisal seven weeks into the 1996-97 television season, which thus far hasn't seen any new shows really catch fire.