What was going on when I was born?

During the last two weeks of June, when many New Yorkers are winding down for summer vacations, the three major TV networks are frantically making deals with advertisers clamoring to buy time on next season's prime-time shows. In last season's frenzied, ''upfront'' market, ABC, NBC and CBS had sold about $2.4 billion in commercial time, a record, to national sponsors by July 1. But the 1985-86 season, which begins in September, has gotten off to a unusually slow start. Although at least $2.2 billion is expected to be committed by early July, only a handful of deals have been written so far. Advertisers seem convinced that the demand for network time will be less intense than last season because of a sluggish economy, a decline in network ratings and increasing competition from independent TV stations and cable.

Like a shirt with concealed buttons, the rooms in a duplex apartment in U.N. Plaza -newly redecorated by L.J.K. Design of New York -seem to have something missing: The walls have no switches of any kind and look oddly blank. The neatness is deceptive. The apartment is, in fact, a maze of wiring and a small warehouse of relays and components that connect all the rooms through an integrated lighting, telephone, video and audio system designed by engineers. The system is controlled by low-voltage digital panels that concentrate the many switches and dials for lights, stereo and other equipment in a single, neatly packed panel. Although the basic technology of low-voltage control panels has been available for about two decades, remote-control switching panels for the house and office have proliferated only in the last five years. According to Stuart Fields, vice president of Boulton Music Systems in Manhattan, the advent of more sophisticated, better-integrated audio and video equipment has spurred more people to install switching panels to control the systems better. While wiring for the audio-video equipment, many people have wired the rest of the house or apartment for lighting, home appliances, security systems and motorized curtains and shades.

A Dallas dispatch yesterday on a speech on Jewish-black relations at a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People misidentified Morris B. Abram. He is a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a former head of the American Jewish Committee. He has never been an official of the Anti-Defamation League.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1985 International The Shiite leader Nabih Berri freed one of the 40 American hostages in Beirut and proposed that the others be placed in the custody of a third party until Israel freed 735 Lebanese and Palestinian detainees. Mr. Berri said the 39 Americans could be sent to a Western embassy in Beirut or handed over to Syria. There were indications that France was considering making its embassy available. [Page A1, Column 6.] The U.S. was said to be exploring the possibility of the offer by the Shiite militia leader, Nabih Berri, to move the American hostages to a Western embassy there or to a third country such as Syria. [A1:4-5.]

The proposed partnership between the International Business Machines Corporation and the MCI Communications Corporation could speed up the continuing deregulation of the telecommunications industry, according to Federal officials involved in telecommunications policy. At a time when the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress are looking for evidence that breaking up the American Telephone and Telegraph Company as a way to promote competition was a sound decision, the deal announced Tuesday brings welcome reassurance for pressing ahead on several pending issues, the officials said. I.B.M., the nation's largest computer company, announced an agreement with MCI, the nation's second-largest long-distance company, after A.T.&.T., in which I.B.M. could purchase up to 30 percent of MCI. Terms of the Transaction As part of the deal, MCI is buying Satellite Business Systems, a smaller long-distance competitor owned by I.B.M. and the Aetna Life and Casualty Company. The transaction is worth about $1 billion, with I.B.M. purchasing an 18 percent interest in MCI initially.

An article in Business Day Tuesday about rising delinquencies on home mortgage payments incorrectly reported the name of a private Government-created investment organization. It is the Federal National Mortgage Association.

It wasn't so long ago that a large-screen television installed in the living room created a focal point for home activities. Everyone could gather in one room and watch a show. Loners could listen to stereo in another room. But today's video and stereo aficionados have many options. New compact technology combined with remote control devices allow members of one household to listen, record and view an assortment of programs in many different rooms. The combination of television monitors, a television set and tape, cassette, laser disk and video paraphernalia have turned living rooms, dens and bedrooms into luxuriously appointed cockpits. Such a multiplicity of recording and viewing options means that if nothing else, all the new technology could render extinct the squabbling over who chooses the night's entertainment.

A tentative contract was agreed on yesterday in the 26-day-old strike against 53 of the city's busiest hotels, and workers began abandoning their picket lines. The settlement must be ratified by the 25,000 housekeepers, bellhops, reservations clerks, bartenders and other members of the Hotel and Motel Trades Council, which represents employees at 165 hotels. A membership vote was scheduled for 1 P.M. today at Madison Square Garden. ''It's a good agreement, particularly after being out this long,'' said the union president, Vito J. Pitta. He initialed the settlement at a final negotiating session with hotel representatives at the New York Athletic Club, on Central Park South at Seventh Avenue.

Saying that it had arranged a new $2.5 billion line of credit, Baxter Travenol Laboratories Inc. announced yesterday that its board would meet today to try to decide whether to pursue the American Hospital Supply Corporation. American Hospital Supply rejected a $3.7 billion buyout offer from Baxter on Tuesday. Vernon R. Loucks Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of Baxter, said in a telephone interview that he was ''not giving up'' his desire to merge with American Hospital, but he declined to discuss the options that his board was considering. Mr. Loucks said, ''We believe Baxter's proposal made last week has irrefutable financial logic for both Baxter's and American's stockholders, as well as a compelling economic rationale for the health-care industry.'' Last week Baxter said it would drop its offer, which it characterized as friendly, if it was rejected by American Hospital Supply.

A small Boise, Idaho, microchip manufacturer has accused seven leading Japanese semiconductor makers of cutting their prices nearly 50 percent below production costs to win sales unfairly in the American market for memory chips that serve as the building blocks of computers. The charges, made by Micron Technology Inc., a seven-year-old company that employs 900 people, were in a ''dumping'' complaint filed Monday with the International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department. The complaint is the first filed against the Japanese by an American semiconductor manufacturer and is expected to heighten tensions between American and Japanese industries and the two governments.

SIX months after Dr. Michael Salesin became the first person on his block with a videocassette recorder, he realized that it was obsolete. It had been the top of the line when he brought it home several years ago, a one-speed model with remote control. But the films that Hollywood began releasing to the home video rental market were taped at a different speed, and suddenly Dr. Salesin's VCR was an electronic dinosaur. So he bought himself a second-generation VCR with three speeds. ''To be the first on your block, you almost guarantee that whatever you buy will soon be obsolete and you'll have to upgrade your equipment,'' said Dr. Salesin, a gynecologist in suburban Detroit. ''It's a definite dilemma: Do you wait and buy when technology gets sophisticated, or do you buy early and enjoy it?''

With the newly popular CD's - laser-scanned compact disks - packing big sound onto little records, many audio buffs despair of finding houseroom for adequate playback equipment. Hefty amplifiers and bulky speakers to encompass the cascades of sound pouring from these new disks may be all very well for listeners luxuriating in large rooms. But what about those who live in smaller urban spaces? The audio industry has finally recognized the plight of this apartment-dweller: engineers have been busily concocting smaller sound equipment equal to the more demanding CD's, and their encouraging results are just beginning to reach retailers. The object is to make the equipment smaller without compromising the sound in either range or power.