TELEVISIONGingrich on PBS: PBS is among the...

TELEVISION

Gingrich on PBS: PBS is among the stations choosing to carry House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s live prime-time address on Friday. The decision may surprise some since Gingrich has led the much-publicized Republican effort to “zero-out” federal funding for public broadcasting. Following the speech, PBS will join cable’s CNN, CSPAN and CNBC in also airing the Democratic response, delivered by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. PBS said its decision to carry Gingrich’s address is “in keeping with (PBS’) mission to provide programming that serves an informed, engaged citizenry.”

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Anchorman Fired: Former KNBC Channel 4 news anchor Keith Morrison has been abruptly fired from Canada’s CTV, where he was in line to take over the high-profile 11 p.m. anchor slot--on the country’s highest-rated newscast--following the scheduled retirement next year of current anchor Lloyd Robertson. Morrison, who anchored the morning show “Canada AM,” which is similar to the “Today” show here, told the Canadian press that he was given no reason for his termination.

POP/ROCK

‘Pocahontas’ Making Tracks: With Vanessa Williams already having cut the first pop single version of a song from Disney’s upcoming animated musical “Pocahontas,” bilingual pop star Jon Secada and R&B; singer Shanice recorded a duet for the second single. The pair performed “If I Never Knew You,” which will be included on the “Pocahontas” soundtrack album (due in stores at the end of May; the single will probably be out in the fall). The movie premieres in June. A Spanish-language version of the duet by Secada and Shanice will also be released.

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Wright Memorial: Funeral services in L.A. for rapper Eric (Eazy-E) Wright have been switched to Friday at 11 a.m. at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. Services for the rapper and N.W.A. co-founder, who died of complications from AIDS, had previously been scheduled for Thursday. Meanwhile, a woman named Shanna Jones is claiming that Wright fathered her infant son, and she has filed suit in Los Angeles seeking a court-ordered autopsy of Wright’s body in an effort to prove paternity and inheritance rights. Wright’s survivors have been listed as his wife, Tomica, their son and six children by other women, not including Jones.

ART

Desmarais Going to Cincinnati: Charles Desmarais, former director of the Laguna Art Museum, has been hired as director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, effective May 1. The Cincinnati center made headlines in 1990 when director Dennis Barrie, who now heads the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, led a successful legal battle over the right to show photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe that depicted sexual acts. Desmarais, 45, was fired without public explanation by the Laguna Beach museum’s board a year ago, after a 5 1/2-year tenure.

STAGE

SCR Lineup: South Coast Repertory’s 1995-96 subscription season will include world premieres of plays by Thomas Murphy, Philip Kan Gotanda, David Hollander and David Stanley Ford. On the Mainstage: Murphy’s “She Stoops to Folly” (Sept. 8-Oct. 8), the West Coast premiere of Nicky Silver’s recent New York hit “Raised in Captivity” (Oct. 20-Nov. 19), Gotanda’s “Ballad of Yachiyo” (Jan. 12-Feb. 11), Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” (March 1-31), the U.S. premiere of Richard Nelson’s “New England” (April 12-May 12, 1996) and Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” (May 31-June 30, 1996). On the Second Stage: Hollander’s “The Things You Don’t Know” (Sept. 22-Oct. 22), Ford’s “The Interrogation of Nathan Hale” (Nov. 3-Dec. 3) and three plays to be announced.

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Mending Fences: “Sunset Boulevard” star Glenn Close and composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber made peace Tuesday in a dispute over the New York production’s ticket sales. Close had sent a bitter letter to Lloyd Webber after one of his aides apparently inflated box-office figures when she took a vacation from the show, thus implying that her understudy had as much pull with audiences as Close herself. But the pair issued a joint statement on Tuesday saying that they had resolved the matter. “Like any close family . . . there are bound to be differences of opinion and mutual hurt feelings from time to time,” Close said.

QUICK TAKES

A former Led Zeppelin fan who now calls the band’s music “satanic” remained jailed Tuesday on charges of felonious assault and aggravated assault for allegedly trying to stab guitarist Jimmy Page at a Friday night Page-Robert Plant concert in Auburn Hills, Mich. Four people, including two concert-goers, suffered minor cuts when Lance Alworth Cunningham, 23, allegedly slashed at them with a pocket knife from behind the stage before he was subdued by stage hands. . . . Elizabeth Taylor’s publicist held an L.A. press conference Monday to squelch rumors that Taylor is seriously ill, and said the 63-year-old actress suffers only from high blood pressure, which can be controlled. “Miss Taylor isn’t really feeling up to par but she’s doing fine,” the spokesman said.