Dial File: NASA to nada and back again

Godspeed, TV. And John Glenn, too.

And thank God for their pending launch pad reunion. Next Thursday, the 77-year-old astronaut-turned-senator-turned-astronaut will re-connect the space age timeline from 1962's Friendship 7 to 1998's Discovery by blasting back into the Earth orbit he pioneered for a nine-day Shuttle mission.

Live space coverage will blast back into TV vogue with him. It's been long, looooong overdue.

Longtime strangers NASA and the networks -- both broadcast and cable -- will get reacquainted for live liftoff coverage, and will reconvene for the Nov. 7 return. In between, Discovery will beam back daily pictures that will be carried live on CNN and MSNBC, with broadcast networks expected to excerpt them on evening newscasts and newsmags.

Even Walter "Man on the moon -- Oh, boy!" Cronkite is back on the space beat, co-anchoring CNN's coverage. The past as prologue to the future.

First, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa -- plus, this Bronx boy is proud to say, the World Champion New York Yankees -- and now, Glenn. Heroes are back -- we don't mean The Comeback Kid -- and TV's got 'em. Leave it to space cowboys and baseball sluggers to pull America out of its cynical slump, with television cameras recording the gee-whiz wonder of it all.

McGwire's record-smashing 62nd home run in St. Louis -- on his way to a record-setting 70 to top Roger Maris' 61 in '61 -- was a golden TV moment. Big Mac's boyish exuberance and bouyant bear hugs of everyone within reach of his tree-trunk embrace ripped through our Monica malaise like a cannon shot of American idealism.

Call it '60s heroics run through a '90s blender, yielding a medicinal brew -- sort of a psychological Pepto Bismol -- that relieved, if only for the moment, our national tummy ache after pigging out on the Monica-and-Bill buffet.

And expect America to guzzle Glenn's geriatric joy-riding among the stars -- with Glenn straddling both decades, playing the Maris and McGwire roles -- with the same thirst for national redemption.

But baseball, though crippled by the players' strike and World Series-less season of '94, has basically been an uninterrupted staple of TV programming. We've witnessed its usual flashes of greatness each season, even if none were in the same supernova orbit of McGwire/Sosa/the Yanks.

Space, however -- the Right Stuff, not the "Star Trek" stuff -- has been the untelevised frontier for the past few decades. And Glenn is pulling TV space coverage back from a deep, vast black hole.

Like high school buddies, TV and space travel came of age together in the '60s, liftoffs and splashdowns hugging our memories like lunchroom camaraderie and after-school football games. And watching, through grainy and ghostly shadows, that spindly, spider-like contraption descending to rendezvous with the words "The Eagle has landed"? History's coolest prom.

TV and space travel were both in the fevered grip of a shared adolescence, on the cusp of endless possibilities. NASA had put men on the moon. TV, testing its budding technological capabilities, had actually turned another heavenly body into its grand stage.

It was like teenagers discovering sex. A delicious, wide-eyed thrill.

Then, like high school buddies do, they grew up. Grew sophisticated. Grew jaded.

Grew apart.

But while it lasted, it was an electric pairing. Granted, I'm a space junkie, but the coverage of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions was television at its most inspired, vicariously rocketing all of us toward the heavens.

For me, 1969's Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong's descent onto the lunar surface ranks -- and will always rank -- as my top TV thrill. Nearly 30 years later, I still can't believe I saw it. And nearly 30 years later, I still occasionally gaze up at the moon and see an American flag rising from the lunar dust.

I can see it because TV showed it to me.

Over the years, much has been said -- all of it true -- about how we've gotten bored with space travel after our great lunar adventure. The monumental became monotonous, and the romance of Apollo became the routine of the Shuttle.

Yes, there have been occasional flashes -- the horrific Challenger disaster in 1986 and last year's Mars Pathfinder mission -- that fleetingly refocused TV on the cosmos. And space cheerleader Tom Hanks fueled the fire on the entertainment side with "Apollo 13" and "From the Earth to the Moon."

Still, TV basically went from NASA to nada, with liftoff-to-splashdown coverage replaced by 30-second bites on the evening news -- until the return of Glenn, America's prototypical hero.

Clearly, it would take no less than this man -- whose distinguished career in the United States Senate is about to be bookended by historic journeys to the stars -- to point TV's attention toward the siren call of space once more. He's a great story -- TV can't resist that, anymore than it could O.J. or Zippergate.

Hey, whatever it takes.

The networks will be there -- interrupting programming, prattling on with platitudes and even managing to over-dramatize an incredibly dramatic event. It's what TV does best, and in this case, it'll be worth it.

And even if this turns out to be a brief reheating of past glories rather than a rekindling of the space-TV romance, I'll take it.

Kick the tires and light the fires, senator.

And Godspeed, John Glenn.

Croon a Tune: Direct from Beautiful Downtown Burbank, we bring you the winner of this week's Flying Fickle Finger of Dial File Fate Award, the verrrrrry interesting but not-at-all-stupid Peter Green, the first croon-a-tuner to identify the theme from "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In."

Here come da Pete ... Here come da Pete ... Here come da Pete ...

Anyway, congrats to Joe Lacy and John "You Bet Your Bibby I Know That One" Paine, who also socked it to us.

For this week's theme, simply match your dialing digits with the Dial File number: 259-4012 (it will pick up after four rings).

Guess the Dial ditty and you'll be sittin' pretty. (Ain't I witty? Don't answer that, kiddies.)

Play us out, Maestro: In case you didn't think television was topical enough, the WB network -- as reported by TV Guide -- is cooking up a series called "D.C.," about "the lives and loves of young Washington, D.C. staffers."

They should call it "Internal Affairs" and move the action to Santa Monica.

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