"The New America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back" had a pretty good publicity campaign going for it -- tomorrow night's episode was to have highlighted a fugitive who had appeared previously on the show as a hard-hitting New Jersey prosecutor (Channel 5 at 9) . . .
Lance Heflin, executive producer of "America's Most Wanted," said he'd dispatched a crew to Laughlin, Nev., to wrap up the story and talk to the tipsters who had led law officials to Bissell's room at the Colorado Belle hotel-casino . . .
Heflin said the Bissell segment will be shorter on a program that will also feature the captures of a serial child molester and a fugitive who jumped out of a police station window, plus updates on a robber in the Southwest, the sniper killing of a University of Kentucky football player and a segment marking the D.B. Cooper anniversary . . .
This isn't the first time a fugitive's death has changed program plans, Heflin noted; most recently, the first show of this season was to have featured a rapist, but he was shot down by police before the show aired . . .
ABC News's "Nightline" tonight (Channel 7, 11:35) will feature an unusual philanthropist, a retired Richmond postal worker who has lived frugally all his life in order to give away his savings to the truly needy and even to millionaires who have impressed him . . .
"Today" show executive producer Jeff Zucker returns to the job Monday after a month's leave during which he had successful surgery . . .
ABC will air Barbara Walters's "10 Most Fascinating People of 1996" on Friday, Dec. 6 at 10, moving Walters's weekly edition of "20/20" back to 9 that night . . .
ABC won't disclose who's No. 1, but the other nine will be Tom Cruise, Michael Crichton, Elizabeth Dole, Shannon Lucid, Binyamin Netanyahu, Rosie O'Donnell, Dennis Rodman, Martha Stewart and Kerri Strug . . .
Steven Fant joins Channel 4 as design director starting Monday . . .
He comes from CNN in Atlanta, where he was senior graphic designer . . .
Changes in the Saturday kiddies world: ABC brings back "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" starting Jan. 4 at noon, replacing "Flash Forward," which will flash no more after its Dec. 21 fulguration . . .
And CBS says next fall it will cut its Saturday programming to three hours from five hours and change its aim from the 2- to 11-year-old set (where it runs fifth behind Fox, Nickelodeon, ABC and WB) to the 6-to-11 crowd . . .
Variety says the candidates for inclusion next year are a newsmagazine from CBS News with an animated spokes-dog as the narrator for live-action stories pegged to current events -- and a Sports Illustrated for Kids . . .
They'd replace "Ace Ventura" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," two Captain Airwaves favorites . . .
Which reminds us: Channel 53 in Northern Virginia will have a "Wishbone Marathon" starting tomorrow at 6 a.m., with nonstop showing of all 39 episodes of the PBS children's program -- featuring Wishbone the dog and his literary friends -- right through to Sunday at 6 a.m. That should give everybody paws this holiday weekend . . .
If you thought that just because the Nielsen Media Research computer down in Florida suffered a Thanksgiving Day meltdown there'd be no serious ratingzzz until next week -- surprise! . . .
After all, when we last joined you in the breakfast nook, ABC was just two-tenths of a ratingzzz point behind CBS in the hair-raising battle for second place in the crucial November prime-time ratings sweeps -- with two nights to go in a contest that ended Wednesday night. Quel excitement! . . .
Well, on Tuesday night, ABC won with a 12.5 national rating average and a 20 percent audience share. Not bad, but then CBS, finishing third for the night, had a 10.8/17, which didn't improve ABC's situation all that much. Second-place NBC did an 11.7/19; Fox, relying on a repeat "Cliffhanger," a 7.7/12 . . .
"Roseanne" may have written her sitcom mom (played by Estelle Parsons) out of the closet Tuesday but even that questionable tactic could produce no better than a third-place finish in her 8 p.m. time slot behind NBC's "Mad About You" and CBS's "Promised Land." "Home Improvement" led the ABC lineup . . .
"NYPD Blue" reasserted itself against "Dateline," beating the NBC show by 2.1 million households in the 10 o'clock hour after suffering a loss the previous week . . .
The conclusion of CBS's "In Cold Blood" averaged a 10.9/17, down from Sunday night's 12.6/19 . . .
Locally, Channel 20's "Moesha" did a 5.9/9 at 8 p.m., as "Roseanne" on Seven managed to win the time slot here with a 12.5/19. "NYPD Blue" with a 17.1/27 absolutely flattened Four's "Dateline" at 8.1/13, which also lagged behind the last hour of "In Cold Blood" on Nine (12.6/20) and "Cliffhanger" on Five (9.4/14). "Hercules" was tops on Fifty with a 1.5/2 . . .
ABC apparently also won Wednesday night, averaging an 18 share for the evening, at least in the Nielson overnight figures from 35 big cities, but three hours of "The Pelican Brief" on CBS was close behind with a 17 share, which leaves the November second-place finisher still in doubt. As has happened so often in the past -- at least since September -- each national ratings point represents 970,000 TV homes; a local point, 19,085 . . . Here Comes the Weekend
Honey, what's goin' on in the Sunday public affairs arena? . . .
Well, considering the long holiday weekend and all, quite a bit, actually . . .
"Fox News Sunday" (Channel 5 at 9 a.m.) will feature Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) talking about his trip to North Korea and the rumors of a possible Cabinet post; Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) on campaign financing; and William Bennett on the future of the Republican Party . . .
NBC's "Meet the Press" (Channel 4, 10:30) will include Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles's (R-Okla.) campaign finance reform and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) discussing the budget, Medicare and the new Congress . . .
ABC's "This Week" (Channel 7, 11:30) will look at campaign finance reform and Janet Reno's decision on the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Democratic fund-raising with tentative guests Lawrence Walsh, former special prosecutor, and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Bill Bradley . . .
CBS's "Face the Nation" (Channel 9, 11:30) will be devoted, as it were, to gambling. Guests will include J. Terrence Lanni, chairman and CEO of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. of the American Gaming Association, Gov. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Howard Shaffer, director of the division on addiction at Harvard Medical School . . .
CNN's "Late Edition With Frank Sesno" at noon will have former hostage Terry Anderson discussing Lebanon, and on the subject of the booming stock market, Money magazine executive editor Michael Sivy and personal finance expert Andrew Tobias . . . Codex Tubalorum
Details are emerging of the could-be-controversial ratings system for television, due to be announced in December . . .
The L.A. Times's Jane Hall reports that the industry committee devising the standards is close to settling on five or six categories based on the familiar Motion Picture Association of America code -- but, to the relief of producers of 10 o'clock dramas like "NYPD Blue" and "Law & Order," they won't include an R rating . . .
The categories are expected to be G, for general audiences; PG, for parental guidance suggested; PG-7 or PG-8, for programs that may be inappropriate for children under 7 or 8; PG-13; and PG-17 . . .
Newscasts will be exempt, but no decision has been made yet on whether ratings will extend to newsmagazines like "Dateline NBC" or "60 Minutes" . . .
But, says the Times, such talk shows as CNN's "Larry King Live" can expect to be rated, as can animated shows . . .
The implementation committee, headed by MPAA President Jack Valenti, meets again on Tuesday, with plans to finalize the system on Dec. 18, and announce it at a news conference the following day . . .
The committee includes network executives and representatives of the creative guilds, who have been meeting since last spring with producers (many of them the most vocal opponents of any ratings system), community and child advocacy groups and child psychologists . . .
A survey commissioned by the National Parent Teachers Association and released last week shows 80 percent of the parents surveyed favored a system such as Canada's that provides information about the amount of sex, violence and coarse language in each program . . .
Valenti responded to the survey with a statement saying, "We are trying to devise a TV parental guidance system that will be family-friendly, easy to understand, easy to use and, most of all, grounded in honorable purpose so that parents can better monitor and supervise the TV watching of their children" . . .