Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

TELEVISION

Will She or Won’t She?: Is Sherry Stringfield leaving TV’s biggest drama, “ER”? That was the question of the day Tuesday as representatives for the actress, producer Warner Bros. and NBC holed up in meetings with series executive producer John Wells. “Tune in and see what happens on Thursday” was NBC’s only official comment on the Stringfield situation, which was prompted by last week’s episode--in which her character, Dr. Susan Lewis, announced she was leaving the Windy City to join her sister and niece in Phoenix. Meanwhile, both NBC and Warner Bros. refused to confirm reports saying the actress was leaving the show to spend more time in New York with her boyfriend and to lead a more “normal” life.

Rescue Stories: Barbra Streisand and Cis Corman are executive producers for “Rescuers: Stories of Courage,” a series of three two-hour movies for Showtime based on the book “Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust” by Gay Block and Malka Drucker. Each film will feature two true stories about non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Holocaust victims. Peter Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show”) directs the first film.

Cronkite in Space: Legendary newsman and science aficionado Walter Cronkite now has his own asteroid. Cronkite, who delivered a keynote lecture at Caltech Monday night, was surprised after the lecture when institute astronomers told him that they had named an asteroid 6318 Cronkite. “This is a member of a class of asteroids that are normally named, by tradition, for gods or goddesses,” said Eleanor Helin, the astronomer who discovered the asteroid six years ago. “It is extremely rare that a near-Earth asteroid be named for a living person.”

RADIO

Four Hours of Imus: Syndicated shock jock Don Imus has been cut back an hour on KLAC-AM (570). On Monday, the station began airing Imus from 5 a.m.-9 a.m. instead of 5 a.m-10 a.m. Marty Miller, operations manager for the station, explained that the last hour was a repeat of the 5 a.m. hour, and listeners would often hear in the 9 a.m. hour about something “coming up” that was not. The trim was “for continuity of the show,” Miller said. The station now starts its music programming of pop standards at 9 a.m.

POP/ROCK

Changing ‘Alice’s’ Menu: Balladeer Arlo Guthrie is revamping his famous 1967 song, “Alice’s Restaurant” to raise money for the Guthrie Center, a social service organization in the Great Barrington, Mass., building once occupied by the famed restaurant. The rambling song recounts a raucous Thanksgiving feast in 1965 and Guthrie’s arrest for littering, which gave him a criminal record that kept him out of the draft. He will add more recent political references and sing it for local audiences next week, his daughter, Annie Guthrie, said, adding that the reworked song will also be taped and broadcast over dozens of radio stations on Thanksgiving.

Battle of the Bands: Five unsigned bands will perform in the fourth annual National Ticketmaster Music Showcase on Thursday at the Palace. Hidden Persuaders, from New York; Bloom, from Gainesville, Fla.; Lughead, from Albany, N.Y.; Marigold, from Eugene, Ore.; and TV Fifty, from Kansas City, Kan., were selected from more than 200 acts who played at one of more than three dozen local and regional showcase events during the last three months. Each of the five will receive $2,500 development grants and $2,500 in musical equipment, plus CD recordings and a broadcast-quality video of Thursday’s performance. Past participants in the Showcase, designed to give unsigned bands a leg up in the highly competitive music industry, include Dishwalla, the Verve Pipe and the Refreshments. More than 10,000 bands signed up for this year’s event.

ART

Reaching Out: Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, have each received $850,000 from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The L.A. grant, to be split over three years, will go toward “Family Destinations,” an initiative to increase family attendance and participation at MOCA. The San Diego grant, to be spread over four years, will support “Ojos Diversos/With Different Eyes,” an effort to attract Latino visitors, patrons and museum members.

QUICK TAKES

The “First Wives Club” trio of Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton (nominated as a single unit) will vie against Rosie O’Donnell, Rene Russo, Cybill Shepherd and Sharon Stone for the Hollywood Women’s Press Club Golden Apple Award for female “star of the year.” Male star of the year nominees are George Clooney, Gene Hackman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jimmy Smits. The 56th annual Golden Apple Awards take place Dec. 15 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. . . . The Martin Luther King Jr. estate has filed suit against CBS seeking an injunction and damages regarding a documentary video, “20th Century With Mike Wallace,” containing King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The estate has a copyright on the speech and maintains it cannot be reproduced for commercial purposes. CBS said it believes the footage, as a news event, is protected by the 1st Amendment. The program, produced by CBS News, aired on A&E; in 1995and was included in a boxed video set.