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THE RESTAURANTS and merchants of Rittenhouse Row are gathering again on Walnut Street this Saturday, and that means about 50,000 area residents and guests will be joining them for one of Center City's largest street fairs. The Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival will close Walnut from Broad to 19th streets (from noon until 5 p.m.) and feature food, fashion, entertainment and fun for children. It's big. It's crowded. It's fun. And this year there's a lot of new stuff. * Dunkin' Donuts will be giving out free iced coffee on the 1400 block of Walnut.

KYW-TV (Channel 3) led the way in nominations for the regional Emmy Awards, announced yesterday by the Philadelphia chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). A total of 198 nominations - representing 18 stations, two independent production houses and two cable companies - were announced in 44 categories. Channel 3 had 45 nominations, followed by New Jersey Network with 29, Pittsburgh's KDKA with 23, public station WHYY (Channel 12) with 18 and WCAU (Channel 10)

Tom Brookshier, a 23-year veteran at CBS Sports, will be joining KYW-TV as a year-round commentator. The Daily News has learned that Brookshier, who has done preseason games and Monday commentaries on the Eagles for KYW, now will expand his analysis to other sports. When Ted Shaker, the executive producer for CBS Sports, was asked last month about Brookshier's future with the network, he said, "It's Tom's call. " Shaker is on vacation this week. A CBS spokesman said yesterday that the network has not been unhappy with Brookshier's work.

Democrat Bob Casey has moved back into the lead over Republican William W. Scranton 3rd in the race for governor, according to the Eyewitness News Poll broadcast last night by KYW-TV Channel 3. The poll, conducted by telephone Thursday, showed Casey with 43 percent and Scranton with 38 percent, with 19 percent undecided. Four hundred registered voters were contacted by phone Thursday night by KRC Research of Cambridge, Mass., pollster Ed Reilly said. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percent.

In the latest quarterly Arbitron ratings book, you have to look beyond the usual numbers to get any idea of what's happening on the local radio scene. That's because, for the most part, the major indications of the listening patterns of people 12 and older each quarter have become more or less predictable. For example, KYW-AM (1060), the all-news station that has reigned supreme in the Arbitron wars, did so again in the latest figures, for winter 1998-99, winning overall honors with a 7.8 percent share of the audience.

KYW (1060/AM), the all-news radio station, thinks it can answer every child's nagging question, "Why?" with one-minute informational spots geared to children and their parents. The KIDFUN messages will try to provide information children want, and give parents tips on what to do with the kids when they use their other favorite word "boring. " The spots air Monday through Friday at 8:10 a.m., 12:10 p.m., 4:40 p.m. and 11:40 p.m. and are reported by KYW anchor/reporter Rica Duffus, who has three children of her own. BEING THERE Remember when attending a "Be-In" in Fairmount Park was just about the hippest thing you could do during the summer?

It's 4:30 a.m. at 5th and Market streets. There's no traffic, and the only sign of life is a bag lady sleeping on a bench. Stepping briskly out of the darkness toward the locked lobby of KYW-TV studios comes Gary Geers. Gary who? Gary Geers, 60, for 34 years the early rising host of the longest-running television program in Philadelphia: the "Farm, Home and Garden Show," broadcast Monday through Friday from 5:35 to 5:45 a.m. Not all viewers roll out of bed at 5:30 a.m. in eager anticipation of helpful hints on pickling beets, fighting crab grass or making their own furniture polish.

How does Jack Eden know so much about gardening? He has done it for almost 30 years. Eden, 61, the voice of the daily garden reports on KYW-AM (1060), began working the soil in the early '60s, after buying his first house in upstate New York. "I started studying horticulture as if I were trying to run the four- minute mile," said Eden, a retired organic chemist. He became an avid reader of scientific reports from universities and agri-businesses and turned into an expert on everything "from bluegrass to African violets to tomatoes.

In a Philadelphia first, KYW-TV plans to broadcast today's scheduled 2 p.m. space shuttle launch in the dazzling new wide-screen, high-definition format. The digital picture should be so vivid that you will swear you are watching John Glenn through a picture window at Cape Canaveral. The only problem will be finding a TV set that can receive the broadcast. High-definition, or HDTV, sets, with their cinema-screen dimensions, are just starting to go on sale, and carry price tags up to $20,000.

"People are Talking" no more. The last live broadcast of Channel 3's (KYW-TV) embattled local talk show will be broadcast next Wednesday, KYW spokeswoman Joanne Calabria announced yesterday. She said reruns of the show will air at its weekdays-at-12:30 p.m. slot throughout December, after which the station may develop another local program. She wasn't able to say whether that would be another talk show or a news program. Host Jerry Penacoli will continue to co-anchor the 5:30 p.m. "Eyewitness News" broadcast, and there are no plans to move the station's noon newscast, she said.

THOSE OF US who remember Mort Crim might find it difficult to think of the sobersided former KYW-TV, Channel 3 news anchor as having a "bucket list. " But Crim does indeed have a number of things he'd like to do and achieve before his Final Sign-Off. And one of them is the focus of his return to local screens Saturday afternoon.   "Flight Level 74 and Still Climbing," which airs on his alma mater at 3 p.m., chronicles Crim's 7,800-mile round-trip, solo cross-country journey three years ago. "The trip itself was something I had on my ‘bucket list,' he said during a recent phone call from his Jacksonville, Fla., home.

David Gomberg, 86, a legendary behind-the-scenes "idea man" and mentor in Philadelphia TV news, died Wednesday, May 30, at his home in Cherry Hill. Known professionally as Dave Neal, Mr. Gomberg had suffered from congestive heart failure and kidney failure, his family said. Mr. Gomberg worked for all four TV news operations in Philadelphia as well as KYW radio. He was an assignment manager, producer, or adviser to such luminaries as Larry Kane, Jessica Savitch, and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

CROSS another wealthy potential bidder for Philadelphia Media Network off the list. The Associated Press reported yesterday that local philanthropist Raymond Perelman and his billionaire son, Ronald, complained in a letter to PMN's board on Wednesday that they were not being allowed to bid on the company, which owns the Daily News , Inquirer , Philly.com and SportsWeek . "This whole thing is very weird," Raymond Perelman, 94,...

A handyman found Mary Pellegrino bludgeoned to death in her Lower Moreland home two years ago, but despite a $10,000 reward officials say they are no closer to an arrest than the day her body was discovered. In a bid to jog memories, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman's office has released new information about the woman, who was 86 when she died. Ferman tells KYW-AM ( http://cbsloc.al/yQy9wi ) that Pellegrino was known to strike up conversations with strangers at Dunkin' Donuts and Tiffany's Diner in Northeast Philadelphia and frequented the Home Depot in the Leo Mall on Bustleton Avenue.

If Shelley Kanther's allegations against CBS Radio Philadelphia are true, its Market Street office has a few Don Draper wannabes who've seen one too many episodes of "Mad Men. " You think redheads are "fiery" in bed? That doesn't give you the right to slap one on the butt and ask if red's her "natural" hair color. You "got a blowjob" on a trip out West? Congratulations. Close the office door before telling your buddy all about it. Publicly guessing the bra sizes of co-workers is generally frowned upon these days.

The black-and-white television news footage of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Girard College is compelling, even after 46 years. King, at an August 1965 rally protesting racial segregation at the North Philadelphia residential school, leans down from the stage when KYW-TV reporter Tom Snyder asks him what recommendations he has about the segregation of Girard College and "settling our controversy here. " "I have said, over and over again, that there is nothing to do but to continue the struggle and to continue to keep the issue before the forefront of the conscience of the community," King replies.

Lynda S. Dartnell, 71, of Center City, a Realtor for more than 20 years and a former radio and TV promotion director, died of complications from chemotherapy Sunday, Sept. 11, at Pennsylvania Hospital. Ms. Dartnell graduated from Bloomfield (N.J.) High School in 1958 and earned a bachelor's degree from Temple University in 1966. She briefly sold residential real estate in Jenkintown and Cheltenham before joining KYW-AM (1060) in Philadelphia in 1967. She became director of promotion at the all-news station and, in the late 1970s, helped launch an ad campaign with the slogan "Catch the Spirit.

Veteran broadcaster Dick Stockton will do the play-by-play and Bob Brenly the color commentary for the Phillies National League division series, which will start on Saturday at Citizens Bank Park and be televised on TBS. Stockton, a native Philadelphian who began his professional broadcasting career at KYW in the mid-1960s, said each of the potential playoff matchups for the Phillies provide him with an intriguing story line. "The Cardinals are the team the Phillies had the hardest time with during the regular season, and they're fighting for their wild-card lives," said Stockton, who's best known for his call of Carlton Fisk's dramatic home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

JACK O'ROURKE was something like the "mayor" of the Carpenter complex at Clearwater, Fla., where the Phillies held their spring training. "Everybody knew him," said Steve Butler, director of programming for KYW Newsradio. "The ushers knew him. When you visited him, which I did a few times, he would take you around and introduce you to anybody you wanted to see - and get you a parking space. " Jack O'Rourke was the man who sent Phillies' games to a listening fan base from the late '80s on, from the lean years through their current streak of successful playoff runs.