WORTH NOTING ON TV

* SATURDAY

Sinbad's Summer Jam: '70s Soul Music Festival (HBO, 10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.): As original programs go, comic Sinbad's past two specials for HBO - in 1991 and 1993 - were ratings hits, and he's now set for three more. The last two will be standup comedy, but in this case he's host of a Memorial Day weekend event that was taped on the French Caribbean island of St. Maarten, launching the current tourist season there.

The acts lean toward classic soul and include Earth, Wind & Fire, performing ''Shining Star''; Gladys Knight (''I Heard It Through the Grapevine''); War ('''The Cisco Kid''); Average White Band (''Pick Up the Pieces''); Teena Marie (''Square Biz''); Frankie Beverly & Maze, the Ohio Players (''Love Rollercoaster''); and the O'Jays (''Love Train'').

* WEDNESDAY

The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (PBS, 9-10:30 p.m.): The re-airing of this important documentary provides viewers with a glimpse of how TV covers history.

First broadcast in 1981 and rescheduled to mark the 50th anniversary of the first atomic explosion in 1945, the profile of the great scientist and principal architect of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, won a Peabody Award. Later it garnered an Academy Award nomination after being shown at the Sundance Film festival (where it got a Special Jury Prize).

The production pictures a man with a dazzling breadth and subtlety of mind - student of poetry, linguist, philosopher. The creation of the atomic bomb is chronicled through interview clips of the facilities at Los Alamos, N.M.

The sad later chapters of Oppenheimer's career are also covered, including when his loyalty to the US was challenged because of an alleged association with Communists and when his security clearance was lifted by President Eisenhower. The Atomic Energy Commission later decided that he had ''fundamental defects in character'' that made him a security risk.

Please check local listings for these programs.

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