THE ARTS

Brooks Testifies in Price-Fixing Trial

Diana D. Brooks, the former chief executive of Sotheby’s auction house, described herself Tuesday as a reluctant participant in a price-fixing scheme with rival Christie’s, saying, “I was nervous about it, but I agreed to do it willingly.”

In her second day testifying at the New York City trial of her former boss, A. Alfred Taubman, 76, Brooks denied a defense attorney’s suggestion that, with the art market sagging, she carried out a conspiracy to raise commissions charged to sellers in 1995 without telling Taubman--Sotheby’s chairman and chief shareholder--to raise the firm’s profits and protect her reputation as a business celebrity.

Brooks is the chief witness against Taubman in U.S. District Court as part of a deal with prosecutors under which she pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate antitrust laws.

She briefly fought to keep her composure when the defense lawyer played a tape of an appearance she made on TV’s “Wall Street Week”--a show that aired in the middle of the price-fixing scam. An interviewer asked her about the honesty of the auction business. “Our integrity is all we have,” Brooks replied.

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Radio

Limbaugh Prepares

for Cochlear Implant

Radio talk personality Rush Limbaugh has been totally deaf for the past three weeks, he told his listeners Monday. Before long, he expects to get a cochlear implant for his left ear and, if that’s successful, to be able to hear again in January.

“I thought I was deaf before, but this is unlike anything I experienced before,” he said. “I mean, I literally hear nothing. It’s the strangest thing.”

Limbaugh said he underwent an eight-hour evaluation last Wednesday at the House Clinic in Los Angeles, where he is being treated, and was approved for outpatient implant surgery, to take place within a month. Because it takes between four and six weeks for the implant to start to function, he won’t know until January if the procedure worked. If it does, the sound will come from the top of his head, not from his ears, he said.

Limbaugh, who announced in September that he was going deaf, has said that he expects to fulfill the multimillion-dollar long-term contract he signed with Premiere Broadcasting in the summer.

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Television

Arnett to Cover Terrorism for BNN

Peter Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Vietnam, has been hired by Broadcast News Networks, a New York-based independent news production company, to be a correspondent reporting on the war on terrorism.

A former CNN correspondent who reported from Baghdad during the Gulf War, Arnett left the network after 18 years in the wake of the “Tailwind” scandal. He was the correspondent for the June 1998 report that the U.S. military used nerve gas in Laos--a contention that was later retracted by the network.

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Fox to Keep Doubling Beleaguered Series ‘24’

Fox will keep double-running its first-year series “24” over the next several weeks, hoping to provide more viewers an opportunity to sample the program, which has struggled in its highly competitive Tuesday-night time slot.

The serialized drama, which continues to run Tuesdays, will repeat this Saturday and then rerun Fridays at 9 p.m. over the next four weeks. The program is also being rerun on the Fox-owned FX cable channel. Despite critical acclaim, “24” has made little headway on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. against “Frasier” and “NYPD Blue.”

Fox also said it intends to relaunch the prime-time soap opera “Pasadena,” which previously occupied the Friday time period, in January. The series, starring Dana Delaney, was recently pulled because of low ratings.

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Theater

Critics All Over the Map on New York’s ‘QED’

“QED,” Peter Parnell’s play in which Alan Alda stars as physicist Richard Feynman, is now at Lincoln Center in New York after a run at the Mark Taper Forum earlier this year. And the play, again staged by the Taper’s Gordon Davidson, drew mixed reviews.

“Disappointingly earthbound,” concluded the New York Times’ Ben Brantley. Linda Winer of Newsday credited the show with “an orderly, pleasant, hokey seriousness,” but said it was “lacking the burning presence of a playwright with something personal to say.”

Clive Barnes, of the New York Post, however, was considerably more impressed. “Who knew that quantum electrodynamics could be so much fun?” he asked. Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker found both character and play “buzzing with life.” And New York magazine’s John Simon called the play “an evening not to be missed.”

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Quick Takes

“NYPD Blue” co-creator David Milch is developing a new series for UPN and Paramount Network Television--a drama about a young street hustler who befriends an alien. The project is his first since his short-lived police drama “Big Apple,” which drew low ratings last season.... Andrea Bocelli kicks off his fall 2001 concert tour with a live performance on NBC’s “Today” show on Friday. Locally, he’ll be singing at Staples Center on Nov. 30 and at Anaheim’s Arrowhead Pond on Dec. 1.... Showtime has renewed its series “Soul Food” and “Resurrection Blvd.” and canceled “Going to California” and “Leap Years”.... Graceland laid off 50 employees this week because of declining tourism in after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Visitors to Elvis’ Memphis mansion have declined by 15%.... Argentine pianist Martha Argerich has taken what her publicist calls a “preventive hiatus” in her battle with melanoma, canceling all her concerts through February.

Elaine Dutka