As of July 1, the Federal Communications Commission is instituting a new set of rules on the cable industry, which include the following man-dates:
- Must answer customer calls within 30 sec-onds.- Must make most repairs within one day.
- Must make installations within seven working days.
- Must give customers a four-hour time period within which their service representatives will arrive and do any installation or repairs.
- Must inform customers of any changes - either in programming or rates - 30 days in advance, giving the customers time to change or cancel their service.
Sounds good to me.
ED'S STAYING: In what turns out to be pretty much a non-story, Ed Bradley is staying at CBS.
The "60 Minutes" correspondent has been wooed by ABC in recent months, but he turned the network down. (Estimates of what ABC was offering Bradley range up to $4 million a year for five years - and the chance to anchor a new ABC news magazine. No word on what CBS is paying him.)
Bradley will be staying with "60 Minutes," but when a revamped, renamed "Street Stories" returns in '94 he won't be anchoring it anymore.
JOHN'S LEAVING: NBC's John Chancellor, who announced last year that he'd be retiring this year, has finally set the date.
The 65-year-old commentator and former anchor will make his last "NBC Nightly News" appearances the week of July 5.
TRAILING OFF: To hype Chevy Chase's debut as a late-night talk show host on Sept. 7, Fox has filmed a trailer (or advertisement) that will be seen before the movies in 2,300 United Artists theaters across the nation.
Unfortunately, this trailer is lame and completely unfunny - which makes one wonder if "The Chevy Chase Show" will be the same.
BACK TO THE `BIRDS': ABC will repeat "The Thorn Birds," the second-highest-rated miniseries in TV history, July 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 24.
This 1983 Richard Chamberlain-Rachel Ward saga is great stuff - well worth another look.
WEDDING BELLS: For those of you who missed it, "All My Children's" Erica (Susan Lucci) got married again on Tuesday.
The latest victim . . . er, husband is "dashing and handsome multi-millionaire Dimitri Marick" - that's ABC's description of him.
Marick, by the way, is played by Michael Nader - who played one of Alexis' (Joan Collins) husbands on the prime-time soap "Dynasty."
Oh, and this latest jaunt down the aisle leaves Lucci's character with the rather cumbersome name of Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Marick.
You gotta love this stuff, if only for the humor content.
CASTING ABOUT: Raven-Symone, last seen as Bill Cosby's aggressively cute step-granddaughter on "The Cosby Show," is joining the cast of ABC's "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper" in the fall.
She'll play Mark Cooper's cousin on the show.