Dallas D-coded

Q: Why don’t any of our local stations carry reruns of “Dallas”?

-P.W., Richardson

A: When “Dallas” was first available for syndication in 1984, Channel 8 bought the rights to the long-running television series and ran it for a year. J.R. and the family later found a home at Channel 33, where the series ran until 1992. “Generally, serial dramas repeat miserably-whether it’s ’Knots Landing,’ ’Dynasty,’ or ’Dallas,’ ” notes Ed Bark, television critic of The Dallas Morning News. The exception is in Europe, where “there’s this fascination with American wealth.”



Q: I’ve heard that there’s yet another big hook in the works about the Kennedy assassination. After Case Closed by Gerald Posner and Norman Mailer’s book on Oswald, is there anything left to say?

-F.D., Dallas

A: We’ll see. Max Holland, contributing editor for The Nation, is working on a book with a novel point of view. “The Warren Commission got it right, and the secrets that were kept from them-or that they kept-were because of the Cold War,” Holland says. “They operated on a ’need to know’ basis.” But Holland doesn’t believe that his book, to be published next year, will stop the conspiracy theorists. “I don’t have enough chutzpah to think I can change the minds of the 80 percent or more who believe the conspiracies,” Holland says. “But I can restore the historical record.”