Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993 TAG: 9311160258
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Where were you? Watching television. And watching television transcend itself during those four bleak, blank days of shock, horror and grief. TV unified a country in mourning and burned its images into our national psyche.
Television since has lost that power to unify, and one in five Americans alive today was not yet born when Kennedy was killed. Even those who lived those strange, uncertain days may yet have forgotten.
For them all, next week, television will attempt to do what it still does best: Television will remember.
ABC: ``JFK: Reckless Youth,'' the best-selling biography of the president-to-be, becomes a two-night, four-hour ABC miniseries starring Patrick Dempsey and airing Nov. 21 and Nov. 23.
Terry Kinney plays Joe Sr.; Diana Scarwid JFK's mother, Rose; Loren Dean his brother, Joe Jr.; and Robin Tunney and Natalie Radford, sisters Kathleen and Rosemary.
CBS: ``Jack,'' a two-hour special by filmmaker Peter Davis on the life and times of John F. Kennedy, airs Wednesday (at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7).
The two-hour CBS Entertainment special combines archival footage and stills with a nontraditional narrative that uses interviews with Kennedy's intimates to explore JFK's well-documented family life, as well as his public persona.
``CBS Reports: Who Killed JFK - The Final Chapter?'' is CBS News' sixth major investigation of the assassination, airing Friday at 9 p.m.
Anchored by Dan Rather, who covered Kennedy's trip to Dallas and has been reporting about the assassination for three decades, the two-hour special uses original research and new technologies to report fresh clues, as well as new theories about the century's greatest murder mystery.
NBC: The ``Today'' show will originate from the newly reopened Kennedy Library in Boston, on Friday. During the week of Nov. 15, NBC News' morning show will look back at the Kennedy years in several segments: JFK's personal side; his myth and our fascination with it; his policies and his legacies; conspiracy theories on the assassination; Kennedy's correspondence; and the Kennedy ``wit and style,'' reported by Jamie Gangel.
``Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald,'' is the story of Marina Oswald Porter who, at age 22, found herself alone with two small daughters - and the widow of accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. It airs on ``NBC Monday Night at the Movies'' (at 9 on WSLS-Channel 10). Helena Bonham Carter (``Howard's End'') stars as Marina, and Frank Whaley (``The Doors'') stars as Oswald.
Cable: Turner Network Television wraps its two-day tribute to JFK around four broadcasts of ``November 22, 1963: Where Were You?'' a Larry King special live from Washington, D.C., which premieres Nov. 21. It repeats that night, the eve of the assassination's 30th anniversary, after a showing of the theatrical film ``PT 109,'' and on Monday at 8 p.m. EST and 12:10 a.m. Tuesday.
Lifetime Television offers a one-hour profile of JFK's first lady on ``Clairol Presents: Jackie Onassis - An Intimate Portrait,'' narrated by Sharon Gless. It airs Sunday (at 10 p.m.), repeating Wednesday and Nov. 27.
by CNB