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...tension between writers and broadcasters and has bothered many television viewers as well. But the issue emerged starkly a few days ago, when President Reagan showed up in the pressroom to announce a tentative agreement with the Soviets to reduce intermediate-range nuclear weapons. He had hardly finished when ABC's Sam Donaldson, CBS's Bill Plante and NBC's Chris Wallace simultaneously shouted questions at him for almost 20 seconds, creating an incredible din and an embarrassing spectacle. Reagan had little chance to respond to -- or sort out -- their jabbering. None of the correspondents would yield to the other...
...ABC sitcom Full House, two would-be fathers frantically try to diaper a baby, using an electric fan, a roasting pan and a roll of paper towels. It is one of the dumbest scenes in one of the dumbest of the season's new shows, but a sharp-eyed viewer will notice a small breakthrough: the baby. Infants on prime-time TV are sometimes talked about, maybe even glimpsed from afar; yet with rare exceptions (O.K., Little Ricky), they have traditionally been nonpersons in a medium that prefers tots old enough to fire one-liners at the grownups...
...unfunny variation on Cheers set in a New Orleans Creole restaurant. More promising is The "Slap" Maxwell Story, with Dabney Coleman as a self-centered sports columnist. Coleman, so delightfully rancid in Buffalo Bill, is more sympathetic here, his thick-skinned pomposity barely disguising the desperate character underneath. The ABC series, created by Jay Tarses (Buffalo Bill, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd), is maybe too precious and in-jokish ("Six cliches in ten seconds," marvels a bartender after one of Slap's overripe monologues), but Coleman seems headed toward another memorable characterization...
...disappearing act fueled fresh speculation about whether the ratings game was taking a toll on Rather. Once the top-ranked network anchor, Rather spent most of the summer stuck in third place, behind NBC's Tom Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings. But Rather may soon have reason to smile again: in trial runs of the new "people meter" rating system, which made its official debut last week, the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather finished in first place. No details, however, about how those six minutes of CBS Evening News Without Dan Rather fared...
Cosby's now fabled return to prime time was still years away. Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, two ABC program executives, had approached Cosby's agent, Norman Brokaw, several times about creating a sitcom for the comic but had generated no interest. Early in 1984 that changed. Cosby says he had spent some time watching TV and was appalled at the "lack of anything you could feel good about watching with your family. It was all car chases and breasts and characters yelling at each other and saying Yowie!" Carsey and Werner (who had since left ABC and formed their...