ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

TV & RADIO

Bidding Good Night: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” sidekick Andy Richter--who has been a writer and comic performer on the show since its inception more than five years ago--is leaving the talk show in the spring. Richter, who hopes to find work in prime-time series and films, announced his decision on Tuesday night’s “Late Night.” “I’m losing a great co-worker and a good friend, but you don’t hire someone as talented as Andy Richter and not expect them to move on at some point,” O’Brien said. The show’s producers have not yet decided how the show will change after Richter’s departure.

*

Promoting Latinos: A new nonprofit group has formed to improve the image of American Latinos in radio, TV, film and print media. Saying that Latinos are grossly underrepresented in those industries, leaders of the L.A.-based Hispanic Americans for Fairness in Media said they are dedicated to the “inclusion of minorities” in the media, and to increasing diversity in news coverage and programming. Group president Esther Renteria said one of the main objectives of the new group is to establish an online job bank for American Latinos.

*

Single Mom Flap: Brazil’s queen of kiddie television, Xuxa, engaged in a bitter war of words with the country’s health minister this week after he publicly criticized her decision to become a single mother. Speaking at a conference on teenage pregnancy Tuesday, Health Minister Jose Serra said that Xuxa had set a bad example for her millions of adolescent fans by choosing to have her daughter Sasha out of wedlock. “I keep imagining how many teenage mothers were influenced in Brazil by this example,” Serra said. Xuxa, 36, fired back Wednesday by accusing Serra of failing in his job and saying the country’s health system was a shambles. “I have the means to raise my daughter, which is not the case of the majority of our population who are victims of politicians who prefer to give hard-hitting interviews instead of taking decisions which will improve people’s lives,” she said. Xuxa--whose show previously ran in the U.S. on Univision--surprised her fans in 1997 by announcing on prime-time television that she was having a baby with soap opera hunk Luciano Szafir. The unmarried couple separated before she gave birth.

*

Introducing Radio Iran: Lotus Communications, which took back control of Simi Valley-based radio station KVCA-AM (670) on Aug. 1, plans to turn it today into KIRN-AM, a full-service Farsi-language station known as “Radio Iran.” Lotus, which owns 20 stations including Spanish-language KWKW-AM (1330) in Los Angeles, bought KVCA more than two years ago and originally played a mix of tropical music and regional news reports aimed at Southern California’s burgeoning Central American community. But in January 1998, it leased the 5,000-watt signal to Radio Unica, the Miami-based Spanish-language network that broadcasts news, sports and talk programming. When Radio Unica purchased 50,000-watt KBLA-AM (1580) eight months ago, however, it asked out of its deal with Lotus. John Paley, a vice president at KWKW, will be KIRN’s general manager.

QUICK TAKES

Celine Dion, Jewel, Bono, Eurythmics, George Michael, Jimmy Page and British singer Robbie Williams are among the first official acts announced for NetAid, three simultaneous concerts scheduled for Oct. 9 in New York, London and Geneva as part of a United Nations campaign to fight extreme poverty. Other confirmed acts include Counting Crows, Bush, the Corrs, Wyclef Jean, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend and Michael Kamen. The concerts will be broadcast in the United States over the Internet and on VH1 and MTV. . . . No public tickets will be sold for the Aug. 23 Troubadour show featuring Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, an official at the West Hollywood club said Thursday. Instead, the show will be for invited industry guests only. . . . The WB network’s kids lineup has won the Saturday morning ratings race for three straight weeks, thanks to its big hit, “Pokemon.” However, ABC’s Saturday kids lineup still leads season-to-date, with Fox coming in second and the WB third. . . . Actor Jim Nabors, who played TV’s Gomer Pyle, has recovered after being hospitalized following a minor stroke he suffered in late June, his assistant said this week. Nabors, 69, briefly lost movement in one arm and had trouble speaking, but suffered “no permanent damage.”