NETWORKS SET PLANS ON NORTH

With star witness Lt. Col. Oliver North scheduled to take the stand when the Iran- contra hearings resume next week in Washington, all three television networks are poised and ready to interrupt their regular daytime schedules to cover his testimony.

As of now, NBC and ABC plan live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings on Tuesday, and will decide on coverage after that as developments warrant. CBS will cover “all pertinent testimony” next week and will have Dan Rather in Washington to anchor the reporting.

In addition, Cable News Network, which has provided gavel-to-gavel coverage since the hearings began, will resume full live coverage on Tuesday, and C-SPAN, which has been rebroadcasting the hearings at night, will continue to do so.

Public television will cover Tuesday’s session live, with subsequent coverage to be decided on a day-to-day basis. Public radio stations also plan to continue their live coverage.

NEW CALLING: TV broadcaster Tom Snyder will move from television to radio this fall to host a national call-in talk show announced this week by the ABC Radio Networks. “The Tom Snyder Show” is scheduled to premiere in early September, and will be based in Los Angeles.

Snyder, most recently a special correspondent for KABC-TV Channel 7 here, also is a former KNBC news anchor and NBC-TV late-night host.

How Snyder’s new radio show will fit into KABC radio’s nightly lineup here has not yet been determined, a station spokesman said Thursday. Snyder’s broadcast is scheduled for 7-10 p.m., which would overlap the station’s coverage of the Dodger games.

AIDS UPDATE: KHJ-TV Channel 9 will carry “The AIDS Connection: An All-Night Dialogue” July 24 from 8:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

The home base for the dialogue will be Minneapolis, but medical experts and audiences in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Houston and Albuquerque will be connected via satellite to share information on the AIDS epidemic.

In all, some 125 stations plan to air the program, which is targeted at 18- to 34-year-olds and designed to promote AIDS awareness and education.

Local hosts will be Tom Lawrence and Wendy Gordon, who co-anchor KHJ-TV’s “9 O’Clock News.”

“The AIDS Connection” will air three days after CBS presents in prime time “An Enemy Among Us,” a drama about how a teen-ager and his family cope with AIDS.

ROCK: CBS is teaming with the BBC in England for a new late-night series for the fall. “Top of the Pops” will air Fridays at 11:30 p.m., beginning Sept. 25.

Actually, the show isn’t new to England. The half-hour show has been running weekly there since 1964. What CBS plans to do is take that show and add another half-hour featuring taped performances by U.S. groups to make an hourlong program. Hosts haven’t been named yet.

SHORT TAKES: Patricia Kalember, whose “Kay O’Brien Surgeon” series suffered a quick death last fall on CBS, gets another starring role in comedy series planned for mid-season on ABC. She’ll star with Tim Matheson in the still untitled half-hour show from Warner Bros. Television. . . .

USA cable will have a six-hour “Thanks for Giving” special Nov. 29, an information-entertainment event for the benefit of Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International. Michael Landon and Gloria Loring are set as the anchors, with Fred Travelena as the announcer. . . .

Tony Verna, whose Global Media company handled the worldwide “Prayer for Peace” broadcast in June, has been asked take on another big-scale project. He’ll create, produce and direct an international entertainment event next May to note the 125th anniversary of the Red Cross. . . .

Ballots will go out next week for the 39th annual Emmy Awards, with a July 24 deadline of returning them. The winners will be announced Sept. 20 on a national telecast on the Fox network of stations.