TELEVISION - Sept. 23, 1995

NBC KO’s Competition: The many friends of “Friends” loyally followed the NBC sitcom to its new time slot Thursday night. Launching its second season at 8 p.m., “Friends” racked up an audience of about 19.7 million homes--more than double its closest competitor, CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote,” which also debuted in its new time slot. NBC won every time period Thursday night, topped from 10-11 p.m. by the season premiere of “ER,” which was seen in about 24.3 million homes, representing a whopping 41% of the available audience.

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Daytime Ratings: In other ratings news, CBS won the 1994-95 television year (ending Sept. 17) in daytime, averaging 19% of the available audience, as opposed to 15% and 11% for rival networks ABC and NBC, respectively. In the final year-end tally, CBS’ “The Young and the Restless” was the No. 1-rated regularly scheduled daytime program, followed by NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” and CBS’ “The Price is Right 2.” . . . CBS also won the year in late-night, where “Late Show With David Letterman” wound up with a 15% share of the available audience as opposed to 14% for NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” But Leno finished strong, winning the year’s last four weeks.

POP/ROCK

Acoustic Tour for the Boss?: Plans involving Bruce Springsteen often seem subject to change, but it looks like he’ll have a new album in November, with a brief acoustic tour of intimate theaters expected to follow, a source close to the situation says. The record, tentatively titled “Blindspot,” is described as sparse and personal in the manner of 1982’s “Nebraska” and 1987’s “Tunnel of Love.” The concerts would be Springsteen’s first official small-venue tour since the mid-’70s. Representatives of the rocker and his record company, Columbia Records, said they could not confirm details about either the album or the tour.

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Unpronounceable, but Alive: Contrary to a report Thursday on radio station KYLD-FM in San Francisco, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince is “alive and well and living in Minneapolis,” his publicist, Michele Schweitzer, said Friday. After reporting Thursday at 7 a.m. that the singer was dead, KYLD played his music for an hour before explaining to its audience that the name Prince was dead. (Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in 1993, and on “The Gold Experience,” his new album due out Tuesday, he sings, “Prince Is Dead.”) “All we were doing was mirroring Prince’s words and Prince’s message that he’s been trying to get out to the world since ‘93,” said Michael Martin, programming director at KYLD, whose “report” prompted fans to flood other stations and Warner Bros. Records with dozens of calls.

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Rap Sheet: Rapper Tupac Shakur, who is serving a 1 1/2- to 4 1/2-year sentence at an Albany, N.Y., prison for sexual abuse, is one step closer to getting out of jail. New York’s Court of Appeals on Thursday unanimously upheld a judge’s decision lowering the rapper’s bail from $3 million to $1.4 million while he pursues an appeal. “I’m hopeful that he will be in a position to raise that bail and be released very shortly,” said Shakur’s lawyer, Edward Shaw. Shakur’s latest album, “Me Against the World,” recorded just before he went to prison, has sold 1.6 million copies.

STAGE

Limited ‘Party’ Seats: Only 272 of the Henry Fonda Theatre’s 863 seats will be sold for performances of David Dillon’s “Party,” a comedy about seven gay friends who play a “truth or dare” game. Producers of the show, which opens Nov. 12 and features extensive on-stage nudity, received permission from Actors’ Equity to use a Hollywood Area Theatre contract, which covers shows in mid-sized theaters, rather than the more expensive contracts normally used in larger houses. The balcony will be closed and rear orchestra seats will be blocked off by a curtain.

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Getty Helps Globe Effort: American composer and philanthropist Gordon Getty has donated $1.6 million toward the rebuilding of London’s Globe Theatre, the centerpiece of the planned International Shakespeare Globe Center. Getty had pledged to donate the amount once the Shakespeare Globe Centre (USA) and its London affiliate, the Shakespeare Globe Trust, raised $15 million for the project--a fund-raising goal met in August. The Shakespeare Globe Center, scheduled to open in 1999, was the brainchild of American actor and director Sam Wanamaker. The Globe Theatre is scheduled to open next June 14.

QUICK TAKES

Beginning Oct. 16, “CBS This Morning” will be broadcast live in front of a New York studio audience whose members will be able to question the actors, authors, politicians and other guests who appear on the show. Ticket requests can be made via phone, (212) 975-7000, fax, (212) 975-8181, or E-Mail TIXCBSNEWS.COM. . . . Former “Saturday Night Live” players Nora Dunn, Terry Sweeney and Melanie Hutsell, TV stars Margaret Cho, Bobcat Goldthwait and Ann Magnuson, and Scott Thompson of “Kids in the Hall” fame are among the rotating cast members for “Character Assassination,” a new late-night, comedy stage show set to run at Santa Monica’s Highways on four Saturday nights starting Sept. 30.