FIRST OFF . . .

NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff says the network pulled a promotional ad for its “Favorite Son” political thriller miniseries last month, but not because of a complaint from Republican officials but because he thought the promotional emphasis should be on the romance and action-adventure aspects of the series. The three-part miniseries premieres Sunday. A network spokesman in Los Angeles has said that a GOP campaign official--he didn’t know the official’s name--had called to express concern about the ad, which aired several times during NBC’s Olympics telecasts. The promo shows a fictional president of the United States referring to a handsome, flawed young senator who is his running mate, and asking if “you think a man should be vice president because he looks good on television?” That, some say, could be taken as a reference to the GOP vice-presidential candidate, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, whom Democrats have criticized as lacking qualifications for the job he seeks. “There was no intention . . . to draw those parallels,” Tartikoff told visiting TV writers in New York on Sunday. He has felt all along, he added, that “if we could promote this miniseries without ever mentioning the word politics, I would feel better. . . .”