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

TELEVISION

Saturday Night Stern?: CBS has been in discussions with Howard Stern about doing a late-night talk show that would compete against NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Sources say that the show would be produced for the CBS owned-and-operated stations and would be distributed by CBS’ syndication arm, Eyemark Entertainment. No deal has been reached, sources said, but there is said to be significant interest at CBS in the project.

Midseason Comedies: Fox will premiere “Damon,” starring Damon Wayans, David Alan Grier and Andrea Martin, on March 22. The comedy series--which features Wayans as an undercover cop in Chicago--will air Sundays at 8:30 p.m. for two weeks before moving to Mondays at 8 p.m. on April 6. Another new comedy, “The Way We Work,” starring Vivica A. Fox, Duane Martin and Jon Cryer, will premiere April 6 in the Monday 8:30 p.m. time slot. The two shows will displace “Melrose Place,” which Fox said will return in the summer with new episodes.

POP/ROCK

Grammys Returning to L.A.?: The recording academy’s feud with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani “increases the likelihood that the Grammys will be back in L.A. next year,” says a member of the L.A. Sports & Entertainment Commission. Cody Cluff, an appointee of Mayor Richard Riordan, is hopeful that the Grammys will be held at the Shrine Auditorium next year and at the planned downtown Staples Center arena in 2000. Scheduled this year for Feb. 25, the Grammys will be held in New York for the second consecutive year (after alternating between the coasts previously), but Giuliani said this week that he wouldn’t care if the show moved to Los Angeles next year. Giuliani reportedly is upset with Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, over the tone and manner in which Greene told a city hall staff member that Giuliani would be making only a cameo appearance when Grammy nominations were announced in New York on Jan. 6. “It’s an unfortunate circumstance that probably works in our favor,” Cluff says of L.A.’s efforts to land the 1999 show. “We believe we have a good shot anyway, and evidently Mayor Giuliani is helping us.”

More Grammy News: Multiple Grammy winner Whitney Houston says that she won’t attend this year’s ceremony because she doesn’t believe that nominators pick the year’s best achievements. “I’m sick of work being done and people not recognizing it,” Houston told “Entertainment Tonight.” Houston said she was upset that her “The Preacher’s Wife” album was nominated in the R&B; category, when “basically, it was [a] gospel album.”

From Film to Concert Stage: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament will join Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, Lyle Lovett, Tom Waits, Michelle Shocked, Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and David Robbins for “Not in Our Name, Dead Man Walking: The Concert,” a benefit show March 29 at the Shrine Auditorium. Tickets for the concert--hosted by actor-director Tim Robbins and Sister Helen Prejean, and featuring many of the same artists who performed on the movie’s soundtrack--are expected to go on sale later this month or in early March. Proceeds will benefit the national organization Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, and Hope House of New Orleans.

STAGE

‘Aida,’ Disney Style: Walt Disney Theatrical Productions’ next big musical, Elton John and Tim Rice’s “Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida,” will open Oct. 7 as part of the Alliance Theatre Company’s season in Atlanta, where it will play through Nov. 1, presumably en route to Broadway. Based on the same legend that Verdi used in his opera, the book is by Linda Woolverton, with Robert Jess Roth directing--both of them veterans of Broadway’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

‘Gallop’ing Again: Brenda Vaccaro will star as fashion queen Diana Vreeland in the L.A. premiere of the one-woman play “Full Gallop,” by Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson, opening at the Coronet Theatre March 30. The director is Nicholas Martin, who also staged “Full Gallop” with Wilson playing Vreeland at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in 1995.

QUICK TAKES

Melanie Griffith has signed to star in a CBS sitcom, “Me & George,” planned to premiere in the fall. The show is about a single mother with a baby who’s also a New York press agent. . . . Former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden will try on his acting shoes as “a veteran homicide detective investigating the murder of [a] high-profile sports figure” in “One Hot Summer Night,” an ABC movie scheduled to air March 12 at 9 p.m. . . . After only 16 minutes of deliberations, a jury has cleared actor Eric Douglas, the son of Kirk Douglas, of allegations that he harassed a 12-year-old girl at a Connecticut psychiatric hospital in 1996. Douglas, 38, was accused of improperly touching the girl while both were patients at the Silver Hill psychiatric hospital in August 1996. Douglas’ lawyers had said he hugged the girl and her family to reassure them. . . . Citing the Jan. 25 death of a baby elephant that was part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey traveling circus, best actress Oscar nominee Kim Basinger (“L.A. Confidential”) has written to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Daniel Glickman protesting the use of elephants in circuses and other traveling shows. Basinger also asked Glickman to suspend Ringling Bros.’ exhibitor’s license while it investigates the animal’s death. . . . MTV will spoof its own advice show, “Loveline,” when it airs “MTV’s Lovelorn,” on Saturday at 3 p.m. The Valentine’s Day program will feature Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler (currently co-starring in the big screen’s “The Wedding Singer”) offering “four hours of advice on love, relationships and sex.”