Television Programs

South Africa's despicable apartheid is becoming less of an abstraction here and more of a horrifying reality. The new theatrical movie "Cry Freedom" is partly responsible, but more of the recent credit goes to TV, despite its record of seldom matching the South Africa reporting found in good newspapers. TV is making up ground in huge chunks this month.

Mr. Danza was having a bad day. The laptop acted up. Few students were ready to present their projects, and the group was restless, giggly, distracted. A few snickers erupted when the new reading assignment, the classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," was passed out. "Turn around. Turn around . Put your feet this way," the first-year teacher urged one of his sophomore English students, motioning to the front of the room. Last year, actor Tony Danza arrived in Philadelphia with Hollywood credentials and a long-ago college education degree but no teaching certificate.

Plunk the kids down in the den and turn on the tube. Hello, "WWF Smackdown," and goodbye juvenile delinquency! That, anyway, is the marvelously counterintuitive notion of Jib Fowles, a communications professor at the University of Houston's Clear Lake campus.

Move over, Martha. British home-decorating phenomenon Anne McKevitt is launching an invasion on U.S. soil. McKevitt hosts the BBC's "Home Front," a weekly half-hour TV show devoted to home decor, crafts and gardening, some segments of which have aired on HGTV. She also has five home design books to her credit, published by Quadrille Publishing Ltd. and BBC Worldwide Ltd.

Rustling through his Hollywood office, Nelson Davis finds the three-ring binder that holds a typewritten list of his dreams. Davis has always kept such a list of goals and aspirations, just like the business heroes he admired as a youth growing up poor in Niagara Falls, N.Y. He was fascinated by success stories such as those of Aristotle Onassis and John Johnson, founder of Ebony magazine. He sought out people who knew about these entrepreneurs and read about their careers.

When Warner Bros. Television International President Jeffrey Schlesinger checked into London's Metropole Hotel two weeks ago, he expected to spend a day in the city before visiting Italy and continuing on to the large international television market held in this French resort each April. The Metropole Hotel, however, became the Warner Bros.

It is cruel but fair to say that Salman Rushdie's career owes much to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It was not "The Satanic Verses" but the death sentence imposed by Khomeini that boosted Rushdie's book sales, made the author a living martyr for free expression and--because he was forced into hiding, where he remains--made him a mystery man as well.

When David Stollery's old pal Tim Considine called to ask if he'd like to appear with him at a Holly wood memorabilia collectors show to sign autographs last fall, Stollery agreed it sounded like fun. But he wondered: "Is anyone going to remember us?" Stollery, a Laguna Beach resident, needn't have worried. No one who grew up watching television in the 1950s could forget Considine and Stollery.

I remember the show ran on Monday nights and I remember my father loved it. He was the family's biggest fan of "Dragnet." My mother refused to watch, probably on religious grounds, but the rest of us did, every week. "Dragnet" was part of our routine. That took place in Memphis, Tenn., 1953 or '54. We had one of the first TV sets on the block and "Dragnet" was our introduction to California. We saw palm trees growing out of the sidewalks and crooks wearing Hawaiian shirts.