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

TELEVISION

Ratings Watch: Season premieres of “Friends” and “Frasier” posted dominant ratings for NBC Thursday, while Fox’s gambit of pitting the animated series “Family Guy” against the latter failed badly. “Friends” drew an estimated 27.7 million viewers, while “Frasier” totaled 25.2 million. By contrast, just 5 million watched “Family Guy” and Fox’s risque new comedy “Action,” which dropped sharply from the previous week despite facing NBC’s new 9:30 p.m. sitcom “Stark Raving Mad” (18.6 million), which chased away a whopping 26% of “Frasier’s” audience. A preview of the NBC drama “Third Watch” fared well in “ER’s” slot, with 20.6 million watching the show in advance of its move to Sundays.

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Kelley’s Top Gun Gone: In an unexpected development, Jeffrey Kramer, the head of David E. Kelley’s production company, has abruptly left the company, which is based at Fox. A statement from Kelley’s spokesperson said: “David is about to enter into a new deal with 20th Century Fox Television, and this is a great time for David and Jeffrey to pursue their different interests. They have great affection for one another.” Kramer, a former actor, was Kelley’s right-hand man in development and constructing deals for the prolific writer-producer. He has worked closely with Kelley for years on such shows as “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice,” “Chicago Hope” and “Picket Fences.” There has been tension in the Kelley camp in recent months regarding reports in the tabloids about Kramer’s alleged relationship with “Ally McBeal” star Calista Flockhart. Kramer could not be reached for comment.

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Making Science Fun: Noggin, a Nickelodeon offshoot channel, has hired the host of the former PBS series “Bill Nye the Science Guy” to develop, produce and star in one or more new shows for the commercial-free kids cable outlet. Nye--whose PBS series will begin airing in reruns on the cable channel in September 2000--will also become a regular Noggin spokesman.

ART

A Sharper Eye on Van Gogh: Frustrated at seeing the authenticity of any number of paintings believed to be those of Vincent van Gogh questioned or brushed off as bogus, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum has launched a preemptive strike, declaring as genuine a controversial painting in its newest exhibition--and vowing to use the latest in high-tech, forensic sleuthing techniques to conclusively settle other disputes. The museum, housing the world’s largest collection of the Dutch master’s works, announced that it had proved beyond a doubt the authenticity of a long-suspect version of Van Gogh’s “The Garden of Saint Paul’s Hospital,” the asylum in St. Remy, France, where the troubled artist sought treatment a year before he committed suicide in 1890. Director John Leighton said, “If you look at a painting too closely, you risk losing some of the magic. But since we sometimes have to make pronouncements, we’ll be paying more attention to the technical aspects of investigation. It will keep us sharp.”

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Boston Backtrack: In a surprise turnaround, Boston Museum of Fine Arts director Malcolm Rogers has rehired two widely respected curators with 48 years combined tenure whom he unceremoniously dumped in June. Jonathan Fairbanks, founder of the museum’s department of American decorative arts and sculpture, and Anne Poulet, curator of European decorative arts, were reinstated last week. According to the Boston Globe, collectors’ groups that raise funds and give art to the museum had flooded the director’s office with complaints about the firings, which were part of a massive staff reorganization designed to shift power away from curatorial departments and toward administration.

PEOPLE

Hollywood $$$: Filmmaker George Lucas, DreamWorks principals Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, and TV producer John Wells will jointly fund advanced media classrooms and digital studios in USC’s new $15-million Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts. Lucas is contributing $500,000, Spielberg $1.5 million, Geffen $1 million and Wells $500,000. Lucas and Spielberg each made earlier donations to the center of $1.5 million and $500,000, respectively. The new facility is expected to open in the fall of 2000. . . . Lucas has also given $750,000 to the Artists Rights Foundation, which works to preserve films without alterations for future generations. The gift will fund the group’s public education efforts, with an emphasis on its youth outreach programs.

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Gifford Responds: Kathie Lee Gifford used her talk show to defend herself against charges that Salvadoran women are laboring in brutal sweatshops to produce her clothing line. “This is an issue that just doesn’t go away because sweatshops, unfortunately, haven’t gone away,” Gifford said Thursday on “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee.” Saying that she has been the victim of “vicious personal attacks,” Gifford said it is extremely difficult to monitor all the subcontractors who manufacture her apparel line, which is sold at Wal-Mart. After the issue was raised three years ago, she pledged to help end labor abuse in the apparel industry.

QUICK TAKES

American composer James Tenney has been appointed the second holder of the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition in CalArts’ School of Music. He’ll visit as a guest artist this spring and assume the full-time position in the 2000-2001 academic year. . . . Former “Seinfeld” co-star Michael Richards is developing a new comedy series for NBC. The program--which would star Richards as a new character, not Cosmo Kramer--is being targeted to premiere some time next year. . . . ABC has made a deal allowing its new drama “Once and Again” to repeat Fridays at 11 p.m. on Lifetime, just three days after the initial network play. Both ABC and the cable channel are controlled by Disney, which also produces the show.