Arsenio Hall

How does a Baptist preacher's son from Cleveland, whose biggest dream as a child was to live in a house without roaches or rats, find himself hosting his own late-night syndicated talk show up against the likes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman? "I thought I would become a weatherman," says the 30-year-old Arsenio Hall, whose show debuts at 11:30 p.m. tonight on Channel 29. "Because the television weatherman in every city I ever went to was usually some psychotic guy with the IQ of navel lint, and I figured I fit that mold.

At Channel 10, it is known as "the Eagles hour. " "The Randall Cunningham Show" at 11:30 a.m. every Sunday is followed by "The Rich Kotite Show" at noon. Bagels and blitzes with your coffee. When you're on the sports TV beat for the Daily News, you spend Sunday mornings with Cunningham and Kotite. The shows are as different as "Saturday Night Live" and the "McNeil- Lehrer Report. " With Cunningham, the injured Eagles quarterback, and co- host Ron Burke, the show has a youthful feel.

QUOTE "I knew that I was the right one to tell America that John Lennon had been assassinated. I had a very special relationship with him. " - Howard Cosell, who was "Monday Night Football" commentator when the ex- Beatle was slain ACTRESS DOESN'T DIG ARSENIO Communism is kaput. The fillings in our mouth are safe. And a real live star is actually criticizing Arsenio Hall. This country is definitely on a roll. The Arsenio-basher is Ann-Marie Johnson, the cop's wife on "In the Heat of the Night" who somehow got stuck making the dud "True Identity.

Find your own couch, Eydie. Late-night talk shows, for years a place to hear Vegas-style musical guests yak after performing some shmaltzy song, are kicking out a different tune. In recent weeks, "The Late Show with David Letterman" has featured Chicago alternative diva Liz Phair; on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," there was Icelandic pop imp Bjork; and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" presented Kristin Hersh, the Meat Puppets and Buffalo Tom, rock acts more accustomed to playing clubs like J.C. Dobbs and the Khyber Pass than appearing on national TV. Although showcasing up-and-coming music acts is nothing new to talk shows - Dinah Shore featured a young Tom Waits on her sofa in the mid-'70s - the last year has offered an explosion of experimental music for night owls to sample.

THUMBS-DOWN FOR TOP-RATINGS GRABBERS Just in case you had been losing sleep over it, the results of US magazine's third annual readers' poll - which surveyed about 3,600 people - are now in. What they prove, more than anything else, is that US readership is one fickle lot. Just last year, they chose Roseanne Barr as the best TV actress, but this year Her Chunkiness was named "worst" and "most overexposed" TV actress. Her show won top of the bottom-of-the-heap acclaim as "the worst TV series.

Because this was the first full-blown talk-show political campaign, many traditional journalists fear that they have become irrelevant. For much of the campaign, they were stuck in the cheap seats, scribbling notes while the candidates chatted with Larry King, Arsenio Hall, Phil Donahue, Jay Leno, Rush Limbaugh and other TV and radio stars. Even the network heavies - Dan, Sam, David and Professor Will - frequently found themselves being bypassed. So now, many newspaper and network drudges are asking themselves and each other: "Is this the end of us?

In Harlem Nights, the much-touted three generations of black comics are reduced to much-repeated four-letter words. The film brims with the expletives-never-deleted vulgarity of an Eddie Murphy concert without being nearly as funny. As the dialogue, penned by Murphy, drags into yet another scene of strident four-letter - not to mention 10-letter - cursing, it becomes obvious that what we have here is not just pointless bad language, but bad writing. Having somebody swear is a lot easier than having him say something revelatory.

"It was great, just a blast," said John DeBella, beaming ear to ear. With that, the WMMR-FM (93.3) Morning Zoo keeper plopped into a chair backstage, exhilarated from the taping of his first could-go-national TV program, The John DeBella Show, which debuted on Channel 29 at 12:30 a.m. today. "I gotta tell you, I have no idea about my performance," said DeBella, who wants desperately to join the ranks of Howard Stern and Rick Dees, radio jocks who host TV talk shows. "I was comfortable.