November 7, 1986

Belt Tightening For a week or so now, some NBC executives have greeted one another with the question ''Have your suspenders on?'' The salutation is a reference to a memorandum sent to top NBC managers by Robert C. Wright, the cost-conscious president of the network. Mr. Wright, who last month asked each division in the company to look for ways to trim costs, sent a memo to his executives urging them emphatically to comply with his request. Warning against redundancy at the network, he wrote: ''We will not operate this business with both belt and suspenders.'' Mr. Wright noted that many members of his executive staff seemed ''uncomfortable'' at a series of meetings in which their business plans were scrutinized. ''I, in turn, have been uncomfortable when you arrive at meetings with no hard data to back up your positions.'' Mr. Wright observed that many department heads seemed reluctant to provide detailed efficiency analyses. ''You have to sit down and pick through all your cost centers line by line to determine what must stay and what can be reduced or eliminated.''

Independent civilians will be added to the Police Department panel that reviews complaints of police misconduct, under a bill approved yesterday by the City Council that culminates 20 years of debate on the issue in New York City. The Council also passed a bill to prohibit landlords, cooperative-apartment boards and condominium owners from rejecting people because of their occupations, and it approved Mayor Koch's nomination of two new members to the City Planning Commission. The two bills now go to the Mayor for his signature; he has previously endorsed both measures. Since Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed four outsiders to a seven-member panel in 1966, New Yorkers have disputed whether civilians from outside the Police Department should be members of the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Mr. Lindsay's action, which fulfilled a campaign pledge, infuriated the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

President Reagan today vetoed legislation to strengthen the Clean Water Act, saying it was too expensive. It had been passed without dissent by both houses of Congress. His pocket veto sets the stage for an early test of strength with the 100th Congress. Several members said today that the legislation would be reintroduced as soon as Congress convened.

A 53-year-old police sergeant was shot to death with his service revolver early today after a naked and apparently deranged man disarmed him in a struggle on a run-down street corner. Bleeding from a head wound, the sergeant, Donald Carroll, sought refuge in a late-night grocery store. As Sergeant Carroll pushed against the store's plate-glass front door to keep the man out and yelled for the counter clerk to call police, the man fired five bullets through the door, striking Sergeant Carroll several times in the chest. Moments later, the man, who the authorities said had a history of mental illness, was killed in a fusillade of police bullets after crashing Sergeant Carroll's patrol cruiser into a parked car.

MOLLY RINGWALD is only 18 years old, but she is already a well-established movie star; her first film, at age 13, was followed by three major roles in successful movies - and Warren Beatty is producing her next cinematic venture. At the age of 18, Andrew McCarthy was plucked out of New York University to star opposite Jacqueline Bisset in ''Class,'' and today - at 23 - he has three more movies on his resume. Demi Moore is also 23, but she, too, has a string of movie credits, most recently as the romantic lead opposite Rob Lowe in ''About Last Night . . . .'' Their faces already recognizable icons of the big screen, their bank accounts fattened by Hollywood salaries, these young film actors might easily confine their creative activities to lucrative movie sets and Hollywood's quick takes. The fall season, however, finds all three braving the colder climate of New York theater, where each is starring in a different Off Broadway production. Last week Ms. Moore made her stage debut in ''The Early Girl,'' a new Caroline Kava play at the Circle Repertory Company. Set in an exclusive bordello, the play focuses on its madam and the lives of the young women who work for her as prostitutes. Ms. Moore plays the ''new girl,'' an ambitious apprentice and a quick learner, in a performance that was hailed by critics as a ''striking stage debut.''