Mail

'Blue' Notes Thanks for your story on NYPD Blue ( 194, Oct. 29). Let all those affiliate stations that have refused to air Blue show reruns of Hee Haw while their viewers drive across the border for what you rightly called ''TV's hottest (and best) new drama.'' Good ratings are the best revenge. Keith Flanders New York City

I applaud Lisa Schwarzbaum's first-class profile of NYPD Blue, which is not a cheap piece of exploitative trash, but a stylishly written, professionally acted drama about big-city cops. The priggish affiliates that have refused to carry it and the baying pressure groups who've denounced it should wake up to the fact that with Blue, TV is finally beginning to take its head out of the sand in regard to human sexuality and language. Duane Brooks Pittsburgh

Apparently, the only way an already good cop show acquires a sufficient audience is to add nudity and profanity. Damn! I wish Barry Levinson had thought of that; maybe Homicide: Life on the Street would still be on the air. J.D. Fisher Stonewall, Colo.

In your article on NYPD Blue, you discuss Dennis Franz's first role on Hill Street Blues as Sal Benedetto. Any die-hard Hill Street fan knows Benedetto died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound when he was cornered by the police in a bank vault, not from a dynamite explosion. Michael Milner Wichita

Soapboxes

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the soaps are dying out. While they've been running the same story lines for the past 10 years, talk shows offer a variety of eccentric characters and creative mayhem. Soaps give you characters who are clones of blond, perky, D-cupped women and muscular, square-jawed, misunderstood men. Talk shows give you transvestites, women who sleep with their mothers' bisexual plumbers, and people who've been seduced by aliens in UFOs. Is there really any comparison? Mary Shelton Riverside, Calif.

Reba-rouser

Thanks for the wonderful article on Reba McEntire. She's been my favorite musician for as long as I can remember. It is high time this classy country lady got some credit! Keep up the good work Reba, and you too, EW. Jennifer McDowell Casper, Wyo.

Catalog Copy

So, George Tirebiter, former child star (Highschool Madness) and Firesign Theatre in-joke, is going to play Bart in The Simpsons: The Next Generation (Kids Extra)? It's obscure stuff like this that puts your magazine head and shoulders above the crowd. Shoes for industry!

Will Pfeifer Rockford, Ill.

Clarification: Our Q&A with Ren & Stimpy (Kids Extra) was written jointly by Billy West and Bob Camp, not solely by Camp.