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NBC's Homicide and Frasier are the highest quality drama and comedy on network TV, according to the 1996 Viewers for Quality Television Awards. Viewers for Quality Television is an 800-member, non-profit group founded in 1984 to advocate high-quality network series. NBC received the group's first award for network commitment to quality, while Bonnie Hunt, star of her own now-canceled CBS sitcom, received the founder's award for unrecognized quality work. Other winners of the 1996 awards: NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz and ER's Sherry Stringfield (best actor/actress, drama); Frasier's Kelsey Grammer and Mad About You's Helen Hunt (best actor/actress, comedy); Boca Ciega High School graduate Barbara Bosson and Stanley Tucci (supporting actor/actress, drama); Christine Baranski (Cybill) and David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) (supporting actor/actress, comedy). Previous winners of the Founder's Award include the ABC series Life Goes On and Fox's South Central. Actor Urich has cancer Robert Urich, who played a tough Boston detective in TV's Spenser: For Hire, has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Doctors discovered the synovial sarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer, after a routine physical last week, his spokeswoman Cindy Guagenti said Tuesday. Urich, 48, will undergo chemotherapy for several weeks at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and "the prognosis for recovery is excellent," said Dr. Gerald Rosen, the actor's physician. Synovial sarcoma tends to be near a joint, but in rare cases is in the joint itself, said Dr. Jeffrey Eckardt, an orthopedic surgeon and surgery professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. The 6-foot-2 Canadian-born actor stars in the syndicated Western The Lazarus Man and is expected to return to the TV show, which is on summer hiatus, when the chemotherapy is completed. TBPAC renovates for `Sunset Boulevard' To support the mammoth set of Sunset Boulevard, the stage floor is being replaced in Carol Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, with workers beginning the three-week job on Tuesday. The production, with a set that depicts a Hollywood mansion, weighs in at more than 115,000 pounds. The new stage will be a Robbins Sports Surfaces Bio-Channel Floor, similar to those in gymnasiums. It will replace a "basket-weave spring" dance floor. The musical plays TBPAC in November and December. DeNiro's Nobu robbed Robert De Niro could have used a few goodfellas at his trendy sushi restaurant. Two gunmen barged into Nobu, the restaurant De Niro co-owns in Tribeca, NY, and shot three workers as they were closing up Monday night. Among the victims was Nobu's renowned sushi chef, whose skills fetch up to $80 for a sampling of raw fish. None of the victims were seriously wounded. The gunmen stole $1,000. Police found one suspect hiding near a trash bin shortly after the crime. The Goodfellas actor was not at the restaurant. Three named to Country Hall of Fame Buck Owens, Ray Price and the late Patsy Montana will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October, it was announced Tuesday. The Country Music Association will recognize the three at its annual awards show Oct. 2. Owens, who has 20 No. 1 hits to his credit, co-hosted Hee-Haw, which was television's longest running musical variety show - on the air for more than two decades. Price joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1952 and scored with such hits as Crazy Arms and For the Good Times. Montana, who died in May, was the first female country artist to sell a million records with her 1935 classic, I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart.