n A story moved on the wire earlier this week that The Police will be performing the final show on their yearlong reunion tour this summer in New York. A comment on the band's Web site seemed to imply that not only would it be the final concert on the tour, but also the final Police concert ever.

"We kicked off our very first American tour CBGB's in 1978 and this summer, 30 years later, our journey will come full circle as we play our final show here in New York City."

It's certainly not out of the question that the New York show will be the Police's last stand. Guitarist Andy Summers, the trio's elder statesman, is 65, and it took a full 21 years for them to reunite in the first place. But I always feel a bit skeptical whenever any musician says he's going to retire, quit recording or touring, or when any band says that they're really, honestly and truly, hanging it up.

Maybe the experience of The Who's much-ballyhooed farewell tour in 1982 has left an indelible mark on me. It played stadiums, received extensive media coverage and yielded up a live album called, you guessed it, "Who's Last."

Sure enough, though, they were back seven years later, and have been together pretty much ever since. Even though The Who is now reduced to just Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, Rolling Stone recently reported they would be going into the studio soon to record a covers album. To paraphrase Neil Sedaka, breaking up is indeed hard to do.

For another example, look at Elvis Costello, who will be opening for The Police when they come to the P-G Pavilion at the end of July. He recently said that he was never going to release another album.

Well, it turns out, his new disc just came out this week.

n Another note about this "final" Police concert - it's a benefit for public television, so bet a mortgage payment that it will be screened extensively on public television stations during pledge periods in the next year or two. If nothing else, it'll beat Yanni, Michael Junior and those oldies marathons that seem to appear during pledge time.

n Even though the summer movie season is under way, the Cannes Film Festival starts next Wednesday in France, and it always offers a hint of the movies we can look forward to when the leaves start turning and the air turns colder.

Among the movies due to be screened at Cannes this year are "Changeling," a murder-mystery directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie; "Che," an epic look at the life of revolutionary leader Che Guevara with Benicio del Toro in the title role and direction by Steven Soderbergh; and "Blindness," an adaptation of the Jose Saramago novel directed by Fernando Meirelles, who made "City of God" and "The Constant Gardener."

Sean Penn is at the head of the jury this year, and awards will be handed out May 25.

n A baby boomer pal of mine has recently been complaining how TV Land appears to be slowly drifting away from its mission of showing reruns of classic television series, and is becoming "just another lousy cable channel relying heavily on bad reality shows and oft-seen movies."

He cites the announcement that the channel is going to launch a dating series where a group of young men compete for the hand of "a mature older woman." It's from the same people who made the "High School Reunion" reality series for TV Land.

I have a couple of theories about why this could be happening. First off, the boomers aren't getting younger and, in the eyes of advertisers, are becoming a less desirable demographic. Perhaps the powers that be at TV Land have decided they need to reach out more aggressively to people born in the 1960s, 1970s or beyond.

It also could be that other cable networks devoted to showing old TV programs, like the Retro Channel or the American Life Network, are eating into TV Land's audience. Another theory: The preponderance of old TV series turning up on DVD is making TV Land a much-less necessary stop for nostalgia buffs. And what about when all these programs are available on the Internet? Then, you'll be able to see any episode of "Gunsmoke" any time you want.

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