CBS Wises Up in Plugging the Pat Sajak Gap

TV or not TV. . . .

EYE OF THE STORM: Credit CBS with turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse in replacing “The Pat Sajak Show.”

Short of material, CBS on Monday imaginatively began rerunning weeklong (or more) story “arcs” of “Wiseguy.”

It’s a good crime series and a solid stop-gap entry of continuing stories for late-night.

Taking over for the canceled Sajak, “Wiseguy,” which stars Ken Wahl, this week deals with white supremacists. Next week’s arc offers Jerry Lewis and Ron Silver in a garment industry tale. The weeks of April 30 and May 7, it’s Ray Sharkey in a mob story.

And so on. At least until the end of May. A few other shows, including several reruns of Fox’s “21 Jump Street,” will be dropped in, too.

With NBC, ABC and CBS finishing one-two-three again in the ratings season that ended Sunday, the last-place network at least is thinking as it seeks a permanent late-night series.

In fact, the current whirlwind of activity at CBS is eye-popping: Brent Musburger and Sajak both dropped, and 10 films aggressively bought from MCA for next season before cable could get them--including “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Field of Dreams” and “Do the Right Thing.”

Now if someone could only get CBS President Laurence Tisch to do the right thing and stop the cutbacks before the onetime Tiffany network resembles a discount operation.

First order of business: Salvage the “CBS Evening News,” where Dan Rather’s suddenly a steady loser.

Also: Save CBS’ only winning night, Sundays, where former top hit “Murder, She Wrote” has run into the buzz saw of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “The Simpsons.”

By the way, is CBS trying to answer “Videos” with “Small Talk,” which features little kids and their views of the world, and debuts May 4?

And didn’t Art Linkletter do this stuff back in the Middle Ages with “House Party”?

“Kids say the funniest things,” says a “Small Talk” press release from CBS. Linkletter had a book called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

Stick to “Wiseguy” and pray for the rest.

GOING HOME: Dinah Shore has a street named after her in Rancho Mirage, 10 Emmys and a Peabody Award.

And tonight you can catch her in a 90-minute musical where it all began--at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

That is, if you’re home at 6 p.m. and tune in cable’s The Nashville Network. If not, you can catch the rerun at 9 p.m.

“I used to stand backstage at the Opry and hope somebody sprained a tonsil,” Shore, a native of Winchester, Tenn., said on the phone from Nashville.

“The day we announced the show here, 3,000 people called up for tickets in the first hour,” she said enthusiastically.

She also cashed in. WSM, a radio station that helped launch her career, “gave me $5 on the air to pay me for the shows I did when I was in high school.”

It reminded her of when “I was about 15 and was supposed to get $2.50 for singing on WNEW in New York and I don’t think I ever got paid.”

After she landed an NBC variety series, she became a reigning queen of TV. But going live before tonight’s audience stirred up the butterflies again:

“It’s like walking the edge of a cliff. Oh my God, what am I doing here? I hope they don’t cut my ballad--that’s the story of my career.”

The show’s called “Dinah Comes Home Again,” and the guests include Joe Williams and Glen Campbell.

Hurrying through final preparations, she said: “They point me in the right direction and I get in that long white car and I just go.”

ALL-POINTS ALERT: ABC airs “The Best of ‘Nightline’ with Ted Koppel, 1980-1990,” next Tuesday at 10 p.m. . . . And KCET Channel 28 reruns “Brideshead Revisited” starting May 3.

NOT SO PRIME TIME: Yes, it’s true, concedes NBC. At 8:09 p.m. last Tuesday, during “Jesus of Nazareth,” the network aired a promo in which one of the female characters on “Cheers” said, “I’m hot to trot.”

UPDATE: ABC’s “Good Morning America” now has defeated NBC’s “Today” 14 consecutive weeks since Jane Pauley left the slipping show. In the latest ranking, “Today” dropped half a rating point from the previous week. That’s about 460,000 homes.

TAILGATING: When CBS airs “I Love Lucy: The Very First Show” on April 30--featuring the newly discovered 1951 pilot--it will be followed immediately on KTTV Channel 11 by a similar episode of the series. In both shows, Lucy tries to become part of Desi’s act when she learns TV scouts are checking him out.

BEAT THE CLOCK: It’s 4 a.m., Jay Leno winds up a comedy-writing session for “Tonight” at his home, wakes at 8 a.m. and barrels over to NBC at 2:30 p.m. on his Harley to do the show, writes Mark Schwed in a nifty piece in the April 13 Entertainment Weekly.

BEEFING: Paul Rodriguez, guest host for Sajak last week, observed that the McDonald’s opening in Moscow brings “just what Russian women need--double doubles.”

BEING THERE: David Letterman’s Top 10 list of unsuccessful lambada movies is headed by this one: “Lambada: The Dance No One’s Actually Doing.”

Say good night, Gracie. . . .