NEWS & NOTES : WHAT'CHA GONNA DO, BAD BOYS? `COPS' REACHES 300-SHOW MARK.

Not that many TV shows these days live for a whole season. A lot fewer still hit the 100-episode mark. It's the rare series that can boast about making it to 300 episodes.

But, at 8 tonight, that's the milestone Fox's ``Cops'' will mark. It's doing so, however, not with a best-of show, but with a regular episode, one shot on location in Albuquerque, N.M.

The fact that it was the 300th show came as a surprise to the network and to show staffers, many of whom never thought the series would go this far.

``I was just trying to do a pilot and didn't think beyond that,'' said John Langley, executive producer and co-creator. ``When I first brought it in, the timing was right. The fact of the matter is, it was not right for any other network other than Fox.''

In the beginning, March 1989, network executives had trouble grasping the concept of having cameras tag along with real-life police officers, and then airing a show without a narrator. Fox, then an upstart with an attitude, was eventually persuaded to go along for the ride.

In the seven years since, ``Cops'' cameras have captured shootouts, car chases, domestic battles and undercover drug raids in New York, Hong Kong, London and Las Vegas.

``I think we are definitely looking at ourselves,'' producer Bertram van Munster said in explaining the show's appeal.

Another day, another dollar: Kirsten Dunst didn't mind spending nearly two months in horrible weather on a remote California mountaintop to film the CBS miniseries ``Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy.''

But she's not eager to do it again. ``For my next film, I want to do a comedy in Hawaii,'' she says cheerily.

In ``Ruby Ridge,'' airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday, Dunst stars opposite Laura Dern and Randy Quaid in the real-life tale of the Weaver family, whose 1992 clash with the government led to a deadly 10-day standoff at the family's isolated Idaho cabin.

Dunst plays eldest daughter Sara, a gun-toting teen who vehemently subscribes to her parents' anti-government and racist rhetoric. ``It was a sad role to do,'' she says.