First thing Monday, 10/23

♦ The national board of the Screen Actors Guild caucused in Santa Monica on Sunday and fired executive director Greg Hessinger and three of his aides. Variety's hed: "Thesps gone wild."

♦ How can a hit TV show like "Frasier" gross $1.5 billion and still be $200 million in the red? That's what a lawsuit against Paramount hopes to find out, the LAT says.

♦ The Times unleashed investigative reporter Ted Rohrlich on Regency Outdoor Advertising and its owners, Brian and Drake Kennedy: "According to sworn statements in lawsuits by a former Regency executive and an attorney who represented the firm, the Kennedy brothers have paid off politicians, bribed the Caltrans billboard inspector for Los Angeles and Orange counties and even poisoned palm trees obstructing some of their most lucrative signs outside Los Angeles International Airport." The Kennedys deny it all.

♦ Steve Lopez pressed his Skid Row crusade through Mayor Villaraigosa, who sees heroin injected, and police chief Bill Bratton, who sound-bites for the LAT columnist: "It's the worst situation in America, and we should be ashamed."

♦ The Times endorsed Proposition 77, the redistricting measure.

♦ Former Gov. Pete Wilson told the L.A. Business Journal that Republicans need better statewide candidates: "The last two gubernatorial races were frankly very bad campaigns. They made lots of mistakes. (Dan) Lungren never had a clear message, and he failed to take advantage of an opportunity to go after (Gray) Davis on educational issues. He spent most of the time talking about crime, which was not really the issue in that campaign. The next time, Bill Simon, who was a novice, made almost every mistake in the book, including some of which were hard to conceive of. They’re both decent, good men. But they were not good campaigners."

♦ Villaraigosa, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Councilmember Wendy Greuel tour the Valley's Orange Line busway this morning at 10 am.

♦ Sandra Tsing Loh complained about Times coverage of public schools (and fantasized that most editors send their kids private) in an "Outside the Tent" piece in Sunday's LAT Current section.

♦ Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Captain Eric J. Greene, a 28 year veteran, suffered a severe electric shock while on an aerial ladder Saturday in Hollywood. He's in stable condition at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks.

♦ Rick Caruso has taken his shopping center ambitions to the Bay Area, with the usual reactions.

♦ The Animal Defense League is boasting on its website that a 45-minute face-to-face with Villaraigosa was "assuredly the most contentious [meeting] AV's had since becoming mayor!"

♦ Villaraigoisa and KFWB have agreed to resume regular Ask the Mayor segments on the station. First one is Nov. 1 at 9 am, Rick Orlov says.