TELEVISIONHollywood’s Newest Scribe: Jay Leno is joining...

TELEVISION

Hollywood’s Newest Scribe: Jay Leno is joining Tim Allen, Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres in the ranks of TV stars-turned-authors. The “Tonight Show” host has sold his glimmer of a book idea to HarperCollins for more than $4 million, publishing sources said. International Creative Management agent Amanda “Binky” Urban said the deal is “subject to a creative meeting,” since the book was shopped without a proposal. Esquire senior writer Bill Zehme, who wrote a flattering Leno profile in the magazine’s October issue, is the leading contender as co-writer.

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New Weekend News: KCOP-TV Channel 13 will launch a new hourlong weekend newscast on Saturday. The new newscast--anchored by former CNN anchor Sasha Foo and Robert Kovacik, who has been a general assignment reporter at KCOP--will air Saturday and Sunday evenings at 10. Others joining Channel 13’s weekend team include weeknight anchor Bob Jimenez, who will host “Issue of the Week,” a 20-minute public affairs segment on a current topic that will air every Sunday.

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Ratings Kudos: KCET-TV Channel 28’s Tuesday night airing of PBS’ two-part “Frontline” special on the Gulf War earned the station’s best ratings so far of the 1995-96 season and one of the highest ratings in KCET’s history for a public affairs show. An estimated 303,800 viewing homes turned in to the program, which a KCET spokesman called “absolutely earth-shattering” for public affairs viewership.

MOVIES

‘Casino’ Challenged in Sweden: Sweden’s National Board of Film Censors has ruled that two scenes in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” are too violent to be shown in the country’s theaters. The board objected to footage of a man having his head crushed in a vice and a scene in which victims are beaten to death with baseball bats. “The two scenes are very close to the legal term ‘brutalizing’--that is detailed and drawn-out violence,” the board’s director said Thursday. “The impact of the whole scene is intact. There is no way the public can misunderstand what is happening.” Scorsese has formally protested the decision, and the film’s distributor, United International Pictures, said Thursday that Scorsese might not let “Casino” be shown in the country if the scenes are censored.

POP/ROCK

No Sex Pistols Reunion, Yet: Reports that the surviving members of pioneering British punk band the Sex Pistols are reuniting for a world tour this year are a “complete fabrication,” said Eric Gardner, manager of the band’s lead singer, John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon. Gardner told The Times on Thursday that while the band is discussing “various options to commemorate” its 20th anniversary this year, nothing has been decided yet. Gardner said that Lydon, guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, bass player Glen Matlock and their managers are looking at a host of options--”from live performances, to multimedia, to feature film, to home video, to pay-per-view”--and expect to “come up with a cohesive game plan” within six weeks. One of the band’s best-known members, bassist Sid Vicious, died of a drug overdose in 1979. He had replaced Matlock, who departed the band just before it shot to fame.

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Pumpkins Still Smashing: Reports that the Smashing Pumpkins’ current tour will be their last are also erroneous, a band spokesman said Thursday. “It would be wrong for anybody to interpret this as a farewell tour,” he said. “They plan a very long, arduous tour and [afterward], they’ll take some time off and discuss their future. But I honestly believe they will tour again.” Billy Corgan, the group’s leader, has said in interviews that the band may take a new direction after its current tour, but he told The Times in October: “A lot of people are taking this as the end of the Smashing Pumpkins, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.” The band’s album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in October and has remained in the Top 10 ever since, selling nearly 2 million copies to date.

QUICK TAKES

Oscar nomination ballots will be mailed today to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 3,877 California voting members. Out-of-state and foreign ballots were mailed last week. All ballots must be returned by Feb. 1. . . . It looks like the “Seinfeld” folks will be back for at least one more year. Neither NBC nor “Seinfeld” representatives would confirm or deny reports in next week’s TV Guide that the entire cast will return for an eighth season. A “Seinfeld” representative would say only that “there will be an announcement next week.” . . . NBC was so pleased with Tuesday night’s premiere of its much-promoted new comedy “3rd Rock From the Sun” that it has already ordered an additional six episodes of the series, bringing the total order to 19. The show, starring John Lithgow and Jane Curtin, won its 8:30 p.m. time slot, drawing an estimated 23% of homes watching TV at the time. . . . “California Love,” the new music video from Death Row Records rappers Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur, will debut today at theaters in 44 cities across the nation before the new Wayans Brothers’ film “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” . . . KUSC-FM (91.5) has dropped its airing of President Clinton’s Saturday radio addresses. No new station has signed on for the broadcast yet.