The Herald-News from Passaic, New Jersey • 47

More pay-TV on UHF from 8 to 2 a.m. Selected specials are also presented. A decoder device is used to unscramble the picture for subscribers, who pay $13.95 a month. There are also initial fees for deposit and installation. Air Fare i 1 iy 4 I 1 i TlesEn iiiiuiiiiii nnrnwwr' smKmtrm Mmmi here, and has already gathered some 75,000 subscribers.

In fairness to Wometco, one reason for the L.A. success story stems from that station's contract with the Dodgers. No home baseball games are televised in Los Angeles, so fans undoubtedly gobbled up the opportunity to see the second best team in baseball. Here, of course, at least the majority of Yanks and Mets home games areTV'd. The Channel 47 proposal calls for a "black box" decoder system, apparently similar to Wometco's.

A spokesman said the station would maintain its commitment to the Spanish audience during its hours of free operation. One problem: Action on the application has been put off by the FCC. The feds want to study the service provided New Jersey by all area TV stations first. Then, the effect on the Spanish community by the lost prime time programming on Channel 47 would be looked at. Bet is, though, that the application will ultimately be approved.

ODDS and ENDS NBC smashed the New York area competition Tuesday night with the showing of the final World Series game. Televised by both Channels 4 and 11, more than 70 percent of the sets in use were tuned in. By MIKE BOTTA Herald-News Staff Writer Columbia Pictures Industries hopes to become the next pay television operator in the metropolitan area. The film giant has submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking permission to broadcast over-the-air pay-TV via WNJU-TV Channel 47. The station, which happens to be owned by Columbia-Screen Gems, is licensed to the city of Newark, and has televised Spanish fare for more than a decade.

It is becoming ever more apparent as time goes on that within a few years, we will all have to pay for quality television programming. Communities by the dozens have approved cable TV in recent years, and the list is still growing. THERE IS also one over-the-air pay operation already in servict by i way of WTVG-TV Channel 68. Wc-metco Home Theater, as it is marketed, has been in operation for about Uj-years and boasts 25,000 subscribers. The outfit is based in West Orange, the station licensed to Newark.

Wometco presents recent movies, in entirety and without commercial interruption, each night The Columbia proposal, according to a company spokesman, calls for movies, sporting events, and special interest programming. Developed in cooperation with California-based National Subscription Television (NST), the Channel 47 pay-TV system would be capable of reaching far more viewers in the metro area, we were fold. FOR ONE, the station's tower is on the Empire State Building. Channel 68's is in West Orange, with a low power translator distributing the signal on Channel 60 from the World Trade Center. Two, the NSC system was placed into service in Los Angeles at the same time Wometco popped up Actress Kim Basinger poses as Lorame in a scene from the remake of the famed motion picture, "From Here to Eternity." The remake is to be shown on NBC and stars Natalie Wood and William Devane.

Less than good A need for bickering arguments. When egos are involved, controversy is inevitable. And egos are the essence of the Tonys. TODAY, OCT. 20 This is the birthday of Christopher Wren, architect (1632-1723); Bela Lugosi, actor (1884-1956); Anna Neagle (r.n.

Marjorie Robertson), actress (1904); Arlene Francis (r.n. Kazanjian), actress, broadcaster (1908) Billie Worth (r.n. Wilhemino Rothmund), actress (1917); Albert Selden (r.n. Albert Wiggin Seldon), producer (1922) Art Buchwald, columnist and single-time playwright (1925). i tr) mm By TOM SULLIVAN Herald-News Staff Writer ABC'S "More Than Friends" on tonight's Friday Night Movie, 9 to 11 p.m., is a classic case of a loose hour's worth of material shoe-horned into a two-hour framework.

It marks the debut of Rob Reiner and his wife, Penny Marshall, as an acting team, but the Lunts they are not. Since Rob also co-wrote with Phil Mishkin and shares overall producing chores with him, he must be prepared to shoulder a lion's share of the blame for this non-entertainment. It concerns a couple of schmos, Alan Corkus (Reiner) and Maddy Pearlman (Marshall), who are first seen as the oldest, most mature seniors in a Bronx high (, i H66e vi Morrison There will be no cause for controversy over the Antoinette Perry Awards for the 1978-79 season. So says Alexander H. Cohen, who produces the telecast of the ceremonies and, in effect, runs the whole shebang.

His statement itself deserves a Tony as the dreamiest vision of the theatrical year. The day there's no argument or protest over the Tonys will be the time when we can all forget about them, for it will mean that no one cares. One of the healthy things about the Broadway theater and, for that matter, the stage as a whole, is that people get emotionally involved. IT'S POSSIBLE to see one detail of the procedure that may bring complaint this year. That is the prsencef -Elliot the- Boston-Herald-American, and Glenna Syse, of the Chicago Sun-Times, on the Tony nominating committee.

It's unlikely that either of them will see every Broadway show during the season. The Tony rules state that only those who have seen every show represented in the nominations are eligible to vote. On that basis, it may and probably will be asked, how can anyone who has not seen every show be qualified to make nominations? How indeed? ONE OF THE award categories of recent years has been dropped for the 1978-79 citations. That is the "most innovative production" of a revival. The idea appears to be that no major revivals are scheduled.

If things turn out that way, that seems a reasonable decision. It may also be presumed that Tony officials (meaning Cohen) will reinstate the old setup if an outstanding revival comes along. There was a shrill protest last year by the Dramatists Guild because producers, rather than authors, seemed to get much of the attention during the presentation of the Tonys for best play and best musical. The Guild even threatened to boycott the Tonys if the situation should not be corrected. Nothing seems to have come of that.

One thing is certain about the Tonys of 1978-79, however. That is that there will be protests and No, ff's not Laverne and Meathead, but Pt my Marshall and Rob Reiner (real-life husband and wife) star in "More Than Friends tonight on ABC. LOOKING BACK Today is also the 35th anniversary of the opening of "The Green Bay Tree," a dream about homosexualism, by Mor-daunt Shairp, with James Dale, O. P. Heggie, Leo G.

Carroll, Laurence Olivier and Jill Esmond (then Mrs. Olivier), at the Cort Theater, for 166 performances. SO THEY SAY "People writing for the theater today are part of the problem; people are very introspective, but that's not theatrical, it's internal, and you can't make a play out of that. Introspective plays are very egotistical on the part of the authors." Brooks Atkinson, retired theater critic and columnist, as quoted by Stuart Murray in the River Valley Chronicle, an upper Hudson River Valley area syndicated newspaper feature. THE LINE'S THE THING "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." Trin-culo, a jester, in Act Two, Scene II, of Shakespeare's "The Tempest." ing an apartment for six months or so.

But, Hol-lywood calls, and Maddy goes off to live out an unbelievable round of cliches. The primary problem is self indulgence by Mr. Reiner, who is hardly a chip off his father's old block. Perhaps in an hour's form they might have had enough material to make a nostalgic and amusing tale. In its present form, it is tedium of the first school, doing some clumsy "heavy petting" on prom night.

THEY GO ON to City College of New York and eventually make it to a hot pillow motel that looks suspisciously like a California roadside fleabag. After that they drift apart, he to high school teaching, her to intermittent work in commercials and daytime TV. From time to time they reunite, even shar Diocese of Paterson presents WE ARE SENT Coverage of special Mission Sunday celebration with BISHOP DONAL MURRAY of MAKURDI, NIGERIA This Oct. 22, 12 PM ft will be seen on coble TV on UA COLUMBIA Ch. 3 SAMMONS CATV-Ch.

MORRIS CABLEVISION-Ch. Uu Cardan Stole UTV, mmm ta 720-7642 for tkorm.1 D'10; The Herald-News, Friday, Oct. 20, 1978 Serving North Jersey.