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

RADIO

Grooving Again: A new music format made up of hit acts such as Blackstreet and Notorious B.I.G. didn’t go over so well at radio station 103.1-FM (both KACD and KBCD). The station, which switched to the contemporary hits format a week ago, will return to its “Groove 103” format of house and dance music today at noon. “We had a deluge of listeners just demanding that we return the station back to its original format,” said a station spokesman, noting that 458 messages were received on Tuesday alone. On Wednesday, the station aired taped listener complaints every 15 minutes, urging folks to tune in for today’s change.

TV & MOVIES

‘Mad’ Numbers: The naming of baby Buchman (it’s Mabel) helped lift the season premiere of NBC’s “Mad About You” by 17% compared to last year, with almost 25 million people tuning in Tuesday. ABC, meanwhile, already has cause for concern, as its new sitcom “Hiller and Diller” lost more than a third of the viewers from “Home Improvement,” which, as the night’s most watched show, remained solidly ahead of NBC’s Emmy winner “Frasier.” CBS did reasonably well at 10 p.m. with the premiere of Danny Aiello’s “Dellaventura,” drawing 12.8 million viewers against 11.9 million viewers for ABC’s “The Practice,” which aired in “NYPD Blue’s” 10 p.m. time slot.

Latinos Lobby: Actors Jimmy Smits, Sonia Braga and Esai Morales visited Capitol Hill Tuesday to tell a group of lawmakers about the lack of Latino TV and film roles. “We can’t break into mainstream films as mainstream characters because scriptwriters and directors don’t visualize us as mainstream individuals,” Morales (“La Bamba”) told the congressional Hispanic Caucus. “It seems as if they don’t believe that audiences will find us credible if we just happen to be Latino, educated and normal.”

THE ARTS

NEA Support: Supporters of the National Endowment for the Arts rallied Wednesday at downtown’s California Plaza with a series of outdoor performances and speeches. Numbering 1,400, according to plaza artistic director Michael Alexander, attendees hoped to raise awareness of the agency’s battle for survival currently taking place in Congress. Among the speakers were Centre Theatre Group artistic director-producer Gordon Davidson and L.A. Cultural Affairs General Manager Adolfo Nodal.

QUICK TAKES

In his first TV movie since “Brian’s Song” (1971), James Caan will play detective Philip Marlowe in HBO Pictures’ “Poodle Springs.” Tony-winning playwright Tom Stoppard (“Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”) is writing the adaptation of the story that was started by Raymond Chandler and completed years later by Robert B. Parker. Production begins next month. . . . Director Steven Spielberg, who sprained his shoulder when his limo got into an accident Tuesday on the way to the Hollywood premiere of DreamWorks SKG’s first movie, “The Peacemaker,” was resting at home Wednesday but was expected back at work soon.