LEGAL FILE’Larry Sanders’ Suit: Comedian Garry Shandling...

LEGAL FILE

‘Larry Sanders’ Suit: Comedian Garry Shandling has been sued for sexual discrimination and sexual harassment by his former girlfriend, Linda Doucette, who claims that Shandling fired her from “The Larry Sanders Show” in January because their eight-year relationship had ended. Doucette, who played Darlene on the HBO comedy series and says she also contributed to the show’s writing and behind-the-scenes development, seeks unspecified damages. She alleges in her Los Angeles lawsuit that Shandling and the show’s producers and owners, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and Partners With Boundaries Inc., sexually harassed her by making a relationship with Shandling a condition of continued employment. Shandling said in a statement that he is “saddened by these false and outrageous charges.”

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Vincent Ordered to Pay: A Van Nuys Superior Court judge has granted a $374,000 default judgment against actor Jan-Michael Vincent to his former live-in girlfriend, Lisa Maria Chiafullo, who sued the actor in April claiming he had physically assaulted her after their breakup and caused her to miscarry their child. Chiafullo, 33, is a former model who said she is now unable to work due to injuries caused by Vincent, who failed to show up for the trial and mounted no defense in his behalf. The case is Vincent’s second brush with domestic violence charges--his estranged wife claimed verbal and physical abuse when obtaining a temporary restraining order against the actor last November.

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Abuse Charges: The husband of a former member of the Pointer Sisters singing group was due to be arraigned in Hollywood either Friday or Tuesday on assault charges for an alleged Christmas Eve run-in with his wife and one of her sisters. Jeffrey Bowens, 43, and his wife, Bonnie Pointer, 39, were spending the holiday at the Hollywood Hills home of June Pointer, 42, a police spokesman said. Bowens allegedly hit his wife after arguing about when to leave, and also allegedly hit June Pointer after she came to her sister’s aid. Bowens was eventually arrested and taken to the L.A. County-USC Medical Center jail ward, where he reportedly underwent surgery Thursday for a laceration above his eye. Bowens was charged with one count of spousal battery against Bonnie Pointer and simple battery against June Pointer. The Pointer Sisters was originally a quartet, but Bonnie left the group some years back.

POP/ROCK

Top o’ the Chart: Hootie & the Blowfish’s debut album, “Cracked Rear View,” was the biggest-selling record of 1995, outselling its nearest rival by more than 2 million copies. According to sales monitor SoundScan, the group’s Atlantic Records release sold approximately 6.8 million copies through last Sunday. The year’s other best-sellers included TLC’s “CrazySexyCool” on LaFace Records (4.6 million), Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” on Maverick (3.9 million) and Garth Brooks’ “The Hits” on Capitol Nashville (3.7 million). Meanwhile, Mariah Carey’s “Daydream” on Columbia Records topped last week’s charts by selling a whopping 759,000 copies, which gives the album more than 3.4 million sales for the year, even though it has only been in the stores for 11 weeks. It was followed in sales last week by the “Waiting to Exhale” soundtrack on Arista Records (606,000) and the Beatles’ “Anthology 1” on Apple/Capitol (600,000). “Anthology” has sold 2.7 million units in just four weeks. Since it is a two-disc set, the Beatles package has sold the equivalent of 5.4 million single-disc albums, enough to make it the year’s second-biggest grosser.

RADIO

New Year’s, Nixon Style: Public radio station KPFK-FM (90.7) will jump into the controversy surrounding the late Richard Nixon and Oliver Stone’s movie about the former president when it airs a 30-hour New Year’s weekend “Nixothon” on Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. The station is billing the broadcast, dubbed “All Nixon, All the Time,” as a three-day marathon of news documentary, drama, comedy and musical programming focusing on Nixon’s “real life and times.” Offerings include audio recordings of the Nixon era from the Pacifica Radio Archive; a dramatization by actors Harry Shearer, Roscoe Lee Brown and others of House Judiciary Committee hearings concerning Nixon; the opera “Nixon in China”; and satire from the late Orson Welles. Filmmaker Stone will also participate, discussing the role of the media in political debates. And the station hopes to conjure up the spirit of Nixon himself through a phone-in show with an impersonator called Nixon From Beyond the Grave.

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Station Silenced: Radio station KGRB-AM (900), a small West Covina station that broadcast big-band music, went off the air at noon Thursday after 32 years. The station had also aired Tom Snyder’s talk show on weeknights. Spokesman Erik Larson said station employees were told Thursday morning “that the [court] conservatorship was taking over.” Owner Robert Burdette, who is ill, was unable to function as resident manager, Larson noted.

TELEVISION

Not So Funny: Fox’s new reality series, “What’s So Funny?,” will have its fourth and final airing Sunday night. The network has canceled the 9:30-10 p.m. series, which premiered Dec. 3 and averaged a 10% share of available viewing homes, a 22% drop off from its lead-in, “Married . . . With Children.” Fox will replace “What’s So Funny?” on Jan. 7 with a prime-time airing of “The Best of Mad TV,” followed by a repeat of “Ned and Stacey” on Jan. 14. Programming beyond that point has not been determined.