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ABC yesterday announced eight new series for its fall television schedule, including a variety show to be hosted by singer Dolly Parton that will be the only variety show on any network. John Ritter and Dennis Weaver are the most familiar stars returning to regular series work for ABC (Channel 6), which picked four half-hour comedies and three one-hour dramas to debut along with The Dolly Show. ABC's most notable cancellations were the long-running Webster and The Colbys. Also discarded were Jack and Mike, Mr. Belvedere, Starman, Sidekicks and Our World.

A federal court jury yesterday rejected a Center City dentist's claim that he was libeled and falsely portrayed as a "charlatan" by the ABC news show 20/20. After barely a half-day of deliberations, the jurors said that ABC's show had not libeled Owen J. Rogal, a dentist who specializes in treating TMJ, a chronic jaw-muscle pain caused by grinding teeth. Rogal was featured in a 20/20 segment entitled "The Biting Pain" in March 1989. While the first half of the show recounted how sufferers traveled from doctor to doctor seeking a cure, the second half took a critical look at Rogal's Broad Street clinic.

"Sink or Swim" Dept.: So has ABC renewed The Love Boat for a 10th fun- filled season or what? Yes, no, maybe. (Choose one.) The network has given the Aaron Spelling show the green light for three two-hour Love Boat specials next season, but it may not be back as a regular weekly series. ABC isn't expected to make a decision for a few weeks. In the season-to-date ratings (through Dec. 15), Love Boat is dry-docked at 53rd among 75 series. However, it's been holding its own against NBC's Hunter in the 10 p.m. Saturday slot, and ocassionally wins the time period.

Replacing thirtysomething with a soap opera set in the '40s, ABC yesterday announced eight new prime-time shows for its fall schedule. At the same time, the Fox network unveiled five shows, and scratched Babes and Yearbook and sent Chris Elliott's Get a Life deep into the freezer. Fox also announced that this would be its last new-season announcement. Henceforth, the fourth network will abandon the traditional 30-week TV season race, launching new programs and new episodes of old ones year-round.

A year ago, ABC, in conjunction with Showtime cable, offered pay-per-view college football games as a supplement to the network's over-the-air package. While no official numbers ever were made available, suffice it to say the initial response was somewhat less than a success story. But now, ABC has teamed up for distribution and marketing with ESPN, a move that increases the access to roughly 22 million homes, about double the 1992 capability. And the second time around, there's renewed optimism.

The first sonorous voice the dedicated election-evening viewer tuned in to yesterday went with the funny-for-TV face of talk-show host Larry King on CNN. There he was on a special hour show at 5 p.m., an hour-and-a-half before everybody else geared up, tossing smiling softballs to the honchos of the Bush, Clinton and Perot campaigns. "Larry, thank you for what you've done for the process," Bush handler Mary Matalin gushed, having just finished several minutes of unchallenged news media bashing.

"Something extraordinary's happened to me," says one member of the non-ordinary family to a friend. "Something impossible, and I need your help to figure out what it is. " You, Mr. and Ms. Home Viewer, will be of no help, but you might have fun in the figuring, on ABC's new action-fantasy, No Ordinary Family , which, even a numskull can tell, is a family show, too. It premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. The show stars Michael Chiklis as Jim Powell,...

If you follow what's happening in the television industry, you're probably aware that Dan Rather's audience ratings have slumped of late. For some arcane reason, this seems to have launched a lot of TV columnists into paroxysms of glee. There was a time when print journalists generally took savage delight at any television journalist's misfortune, but I thought we had outgrown that. Not so in Rather's case, however. Every time he dips a digit or so in the national ratings, the TV columnists make a major story out of it, replete with boring statistics about how many viewing households each fraction of a point is supposed to represent, along with recondite data on relative "shares.

ABC announced the Television Actors Employment Act on Tuesday, a fall schedule with six new series and more than a dozen well-known TV names. Dana Delany (late of Desperate Housewives ) and Jeri Ryan ( Star Trek 's good old Seven of Nine) star in the crime drama Body of Proof . The Sopranos ' Michael Imperioli and NYPD Blue 's James McDaniel are featured in a cop show set in Detroit. Michael Chiklis ( The Shield ), Julie Benz ( Dexter ), and Tate Donovan ( Damages )

ABC says it went out of bounds with Terrell Owens and Nicollette Sheridan. The network's sports division apologized yesterday for its steamy Monday Night Football pregame teaser featuring Eagles star Owens and Sheridan, a resident vixen on ABC's hot new hit Desperate Housewives. The NFL labeled the skit "unsuitable. " The Eagles (but not Owens) said they wished it hadn't aired. The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing complaints. "We have heard from many of our viewers . . . and we agree that the placement was inappropriate.