A Wake-Up Call for Bob Costas’ ‘Later’

TV or not TV. . . .

NO DOZE: It’s a feast for insomniacs the next week or so as NBC’s “Later With Bob Costas” interview show gets hot.

Playwright Neil Simon sits for a two-part chat on the ever-improving Costas series starting Wednesday night, right after the David Letterman show.

Dodger announcer Vin Scully is the Costas guest Monday night, composer Henry Mancini turns up next Tuesday and comedian Don Rickles does a two-parter May 8 and 9.

For the uninitiated, the half-hour Costas show airs at 1:30 a.m., and it’s a refreshing relief from those embarrassing daytime talk programs. If you can’t stay up, tape it.

SLIPPAGE: The networks have been trying to get out of covering the political conventions for years, using the lame excuse that they’re dull because the primaries decide everything.

What the networks really mean is that they don’t have the imagination to report the conventions in an interesting way.

At any rate, C-SPAN reminds us that it plans gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 1992 conventions--which, of course, is exactly what the Big Three networks want so they can claim somebody else is doing it.

C-SPAN notes that it and the other TV news organizations that give the Republican and Democratic sessions a solid look will “take on added meaning . . . as the commercial networks will likely cover only brief snippets of convention speeches and floor activities.”

Just another reason why network news prestige is plummeting among serious viewers.

THE BIG KNIFE: Tom Brokaw has escaped from the nightly news ratings cellar, and NBC is boasting that he’s taking the measure of CBS’ Dan Rather.

“For the first time ever,” crows NBC, “CBS’ nightly newscasts have been third for six consecutive weeks.” ABC’s Peter Jennings remains the leader.

THE ONE AND ONLY: Laurel and Hardy fans won’t want to miss Bravo cable’s one-hour portrait of the skinny half of the legendary comedy team May 16.

It’s called “Stan Laurel: The Last Laugh,” and it airs on the channel’s distinguished series, the “South Bank Show.”

Bravo, by the way, is making a big deal about the fact that it plans to present “the exclusive American television premiere of the restored 5-hour, 11-minute version of Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic film ‘1900’ ” on May 25.

What Bravo is referring to is that the film, which stars Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster, “was restored and re-recorded for improved sound” in 1990, and re-released last January.

Ah, but Los Angeles film aficionados will recall that the late, great and lamented Z Channel--which set the pattern for imaginative presentation of movies on cable--was the very first outlet to present the entire, uncut “1900” on the home medium.

It would have been graceful for Bravo to mention that fact. Z, which was replaced by a nondescript sports channel, still leaves pay-TV look-alikes such as HBO and Cinemax in the dust when it comes to creativity.

SOMETHING ELSE: “thirty-something,” which is turning up the heat to win renewal, begins its all-out burst tonight, according to its studio, MGM/UA, which notes that Elliot (Timothy Busfield) has “had it” with his advertising job and friendship with Michael (Ken Olin). I’d give anything if only those two guys would stop yapping and really duke it it out.

EXIT LAUGHING: Carol Burnett’s “Carol & Company” anthology has its season finale Saturday with an hour cloak-and-dagger special set on a luxury cruise ship in the 1930s. Hey, how about a little credit here? Burnett singlehandedly beat the network belief that TV anthologies are dead and thus has kept the door open for other attempts.

HOW DUMB IS DUMB?: The notable weekly show “Teen Talk,” which was canceled by KCAL Channel 9, has won another Emmy nomination--posthumously--as best children’s series on a local independent station. And yet not one of our brilliant local stations has the simple good sense to revive the show, which has a list of awards as long as your arm. How about it, guys? Wake up.

FALLOUT: With all those pay cuts in TV news, does that mean no more round-the-clock limos and mortgage payments for anchors, and no more mileage for those who dash back from dinner just in time to be made up and read the reports that others have written?

Say good night, Gracie. . . .