TELEVISIONContinuing the Search: The Home Shopping Network...

TELEVISION

Continuing the Search: The Home Shopping Network will air its annual missing children awareness program, “Bring Them Home America,” for 15 hours starting at 9 p.m. Christmas Eve. The program, consisting of an hourlong loop featuring 120 photographs of missing children from across the country as well as safety tips to prevent child abductions, is a joint effort of the cable channel and the National Child Safety Council. “Bring Them Home America” was nominated for a Golden CableACE in 1994. Thanks to past broadcasts, two missing children have been located and a missing teenager was inspired to reunite with her family.

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‘Today’ Co-Anchor Schedule: NBC’s Katie Couric goes on maternity leave after today’s “‘Today” show. An updated schedule of her replacements: Elizabeth Vargas, Monday through Jan. 12; Maria Shriver, Jan. 15-26; Jane Pauley, Feb. 5-16; and Vargas returns Feb. 19-March 1. The Jan. 29-Feb. 2 slot is still open, as are the first two weeks of March. Couric is due to return in mid-March.

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Stewart Slaps Buffalo: TV’s best-known homemaker, Martha Stewart, is miffed about a chilly reception she got in the self-proclaimed “city of good neighbors.” Stewart left a Dec. 1 charity luncheon in Buffalo, N.Y., before signing all the books that were bought. About 1,000 women attended. Some women complained that they were promised an autograph. Others said the event was overbooked and poorly organized. Stewart said the criticism directed at her was unfounded: Her contract only called for a 90-minute book signing. She wrote a letter to the Buffalo News, published Wednesday, saying she may not be back. “I’ve been coming to Buffalo a long time, and I promise I’ll think long and hard before I accept another invitation to your chilly and downright unfriendly city again,” Stewart wrote.

MOVIES

Too Quick to Blame?: Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti says that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and other officials were too quick to blame the movie industry for the Nov. 26 subway attack that killed New York token booth attendant Harry Kaufman. The attack, in which flammable liquid was squirted into the booth and ignited, was criticized at the time as copying a similar scene depicted in the Wesley Snipes-Woody Harrelson movie “Money Train.” However, the suspects arrested for the crime have told police the incident had nothing to do with the movie. In calls to Hollywood reporters this week, Valenti said Dole and other critics owe Hollywood an apology. However, a spokesman for Dole, who had called for a boycott of the film, told the trade paper Daily Variety that the senator “makes no apology for speaking out about the excesses of the entertainment industry.”

STAGE

Birth of ‘Death’?: A recently discovered short story written by Arthur Miller when he was about 17 could have been the birth of “Death of a Salesman.” The work titled “In Memoriam” was recently discovered in the writer’s archive at the University of Texas, and it tells the story of an overcoat salesman named Schoenzeit beaten down by his “dignified slavery.” It appears to foreshadow Willy Loman, the similarly disillusioned subject of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Death of a Salesman.” Loman’s suicide ends the play. A note attached to “In Memoriam” says: “The real Schoenzeit of the story threw himself in front of an El train.” The New Yorker’s drama critic, John Lahr, made the find and reports in the magazine’s year-end issue that Miller, now 80, had long forgotten about the story. Lahr said it was based on a salesman Miller met as a boy while working for his grandfather’s coat-manufacturing business.

QUICK TAKES

Country singer Doug Stone was released from a Charlotte, N.C., hospital on Wednesday after being treated for a mild heart attack he suffered a week ago. He said at a news conference that the attack was not related to the quadruple bypass heart surgery he underwent in 1992. No further surgeries are planned. . . . The 12th Israel Film Festival, which concluded Dec. 14, posted an 11% increase in attendance this year. In all, more than 17,000 people attended the festival’s Los Angeles run, which was dedicated to the memory of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. . . . Geraldo Rivera says in the Dec. 30 TV Guide that he will quit his daytime talk show when his contract expires in 1998.

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Quotable: “I’m here to be nasty, mean, bitchy, objectionable, offensive. Some people would say I’ve been researching this part for my whole life.”

Actress Raquel Welch, speaking on today’s “Entertainment Tonight” about her upcoming role on CBS’ “Central Park West”