• by November 3, 2003

ALIVE BUT FORGOTTEN - Riff didn't watch the live gala to celebrate the 75th anniversary of CBS, being too busy watching the season premiere of "The Simpsons" and having the TiVo tied up by one of the teenagers. Not even the chance to see Betty White again could compete with "Treehouse of Horrors."

SMOTHERED NO MORE? - Time must heal all wounds. Two of the celebrities at last night's live telecast marking 75 years of CBS were Tom and Dick Smothers, who in the late 1960s bedeviled the networks' censors in "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." Their politically fueled comedy didn't resonate well with the network, and the pair were thrown off the air in April 1969. The Smothers sued on First Amendement grounds - and won - and had a less-controversial (and less watched) series on CBS after the Vietnam War dead were long in their graves.

GET ME REWRITE - While we're on the topic, Riff wonders if Ed Asner was invited. Asner co-starred as Mary Tyler Moore's gruff boss at the Minneapolis TV station and successfully transitioned to an Emmy-winning drama series in one of the best spinoffs ever. But Asner's political activism never sat well with CBS brass, which canceled the show after five brilliant but relatively low-rated seasons.