August 4, 1982

CBS Inc. and a telecommunications company based in New Rochelle, N.Y., asked the Federal Communications Commission yesterday for permission to establish multichannel over-the-air pay television services in five of the nation's biggest media markets. The systems, if approved, would be built and operated by the Contemporary Communications Corporation, a privately held company that is the nation's second-largest operator of such systems. CBS would arrange for the programming and would market the service, the companies said.

In an article yesterday on the comic opera based on Eudora Welty's ''The Ponder Heart,'' the name of the com- poser was misspelled. Her name is Alice Parker.

''I'm a longtime devotee of cooking columns and cookbooks. I've worked my way up the ladder of cooking from a simple omelet to a galantine of turkey, which I spent two days of my life executing. I've handled buffets for 60 on many occasions, but - HELP! I'm planning a wedding and reception for my daughter in mid-September. There will be approximately 100 guests. I don't know if it's the number of people or the event itself I find so overwhelming. But I can't think of one single dish to serve, aside from the usual cold salmon as a main dish.'' - Esther K. Oriol, Great Neck, L.I. THAT letter is but one of scores that I receive each year, all of them with a similar plea for help. The average reader, of course, is not a professional chef, and when faced with preparing food for a large group, the chances are that he or she does not have anything approaching the equipment or the staff of a cooking pro. Still, the task is far from impossible. With that in mind, Pierre Franey and I would like to offer a few guidelines on how to cope in the kitchen when cooking for a crowd.

The Continental Illinois Corporation took the extraordinary step today of disclosing information about many of its problem loans in an effort to reassure the public of the bank holding company's soundness. The disclosure was among steps Continental has taken in recent days to counter the impact of its $61 million second-quarter loss. The loss resulted from Continental's purchase of $1 billion in energyrelated loans from the Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City, which failed on July 5. In his first press appearance since the Penn Square failure, Roger E. Anderson, Continental's chairman and chief executive officer, listed the bank's more prominent problem loans, with details of how much was owed and expectations about possible repayment.

The nation's biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch Companies, disclosed yesterday that it was holding preliminary merger talks with Campbell Taggart Inc., the nation's second-largest bread company. The merger, if consummated, might involve as much as $650 million and would push Anheuser-Busch deeper into the food and wine business, which it has gradually been entering. But Wall Street sources, who asked not to be identified, said the likelihood of such a merger seemed remote, partly because recent rises in the price of Campbell Taggart's stock might make the company too costly to purchase. With Campbell Taggart's stock selling at about $30 a share before yesterday's announcement, Anheuser-Busch would have to offer close to $40 or more to gain the company's support for a takeover, analysts said. At that price, Campbell Taggart's nearly 16 million shares would be worth close to $650 million.