STOCKING STUFFER The cast of the top-rated sitcom "Friends" has a little more gift-buying power this holiday season: Warner Bros. Television gave each member a $200,000 bonus. This tip-and-a-half should make the cast's salary renegotiations a little friendlier. (Early next year the studio will be looking to extend the buddies' contracts beyond the season-and-a-half they have left.) The six stars were reportedly feeling slighted earlier this year when cast members of other Warner shows were given lavish gifts, like a Porsche for Drew Carey and $1 million checks for the cast of "ER."

UGLY RESULTS A new study commissioned by the Screen Actors Guild found that many demographics aren't being properly cast on prime-time and daytime TV. The Temple University report found, for example, that African-American and older women are underrepresented (and in the case of over-40 women, their characters are usually evil), while Hispanics have the lowest representation, with their number of parts less than one-third of their proportion in the general population.

JAILED An Italian fashion designer was sentenced to two years in prison and then deportation for stalking his ex-girlfriend, "NYPD Blue"'s Andrea Thompson, who plays Det. Jill Kirkendall. Thompson, 38, met Gianluigi Assenato, 34, when he designed a dress for her for this year's Emmys. After she broke up with him he threatened both her and her child, and slashed her car's tires. Assenato is reportedly already on probation for stealing a $10,000 check.

SORRY Charlton Heston has apologized to Mike Wallace for publicly complaining about a "60 Minutes" segment on him before actually seeing it and deciding it was fair. In an article for Guns & Ammo magazine's January issue, NRA president Heston had written that he suspected the story would be a character assassination, and that "behind the smile and manners...(Wallace was) doing his best to ambush (me)." In his recent letter to Wallace, he called the piece that aired Sunday "accurate," according to Variety's Army Archerd.

CASTING Kenneth Branagh will direct and star in the fact-based Holocaust drama "The Betty Schimmel Story" for DreamWorks. Schimmel, mother of foulmouthed stand-up comic Robert, was separated from her childhood boyfriend in Eastern Europe during WWII, but met him again as an adult after thinking he died in a concentration camp.... Vanessa Redgrave has joined the cast of "Girl Interrupted," playing the head psychiatrist at the institution at which Winona Ryder is committed.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY In 1978, The Who officially welcomes ex-Faces member Kenny Jones as its new drummer to replace Keith Moon, who died two months earlier.... Darryl F. Zanuck, the former head of Twentieth Century Fox and producer of such films as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "All About Eve," dies in 1979.

You Might Also Like

• TV Review 60 Minutes | Ken Tucker
• All About 60 Minutes
• Book News Mike Wallace touts his new book | Gilbert Cruz
• In the News Lucas: Don't bring the kids to ''Episode III'' (May 19, 2005) | Michael Slezak
• Television News How CBS's shows fared this season
• Television Commentary Steve Kroft remembers Ed Bradley | Steve Kroft