Catharsis--Maybe

The fastest men on the draw in television are neither the Matt Dillons nor the Sergeant Fridays but the network executives in Manhattan. Their weapons are the staff memo, the telegram to Washington, and the press release.

Last week, some seven hours after President Johnson directed his commission on violence to determine if "the seeds of violence are nurtured through the public's air waves," CBS President Frank Stanton wired the chairman to pledge cooperation "in every way possible." At the same time CBS, which has more flying vice presidents than nuns, dispatched Michael Dann, senior V.P. for programming, to Hollywood. His mission: "individual conferences with producers and writers to discuss specific measures to de-emphasize violence in programs now in production." ABC President Leonard Goldenson disclosed that his network, too, was in the throes of reappraisal; he also designated a vice president, James Hagerty, as liaison man to the violence commission. NBC also weighed in with a lofty statement and a pledge of cooperation to the commission.

In TV's defense, Stanton's telegram pointed out that social scientists have not established that there is a "causal relationship between the fictional portrayal of violence in the mass media and any increase of actual violence in American life." But that may be beside the point. What seems to disturb the majority of the nation's 180 million viewers is not the conclusions of sociologists, but the fact that the horrors of war, assassinations and riots are real enough; why bludgeon TV audiences with variations on violence?

Murder Climate. This question seems finally to have seeped into the consciences of TV's producers, as well as those of the network brass. Six days after the Robert Kennedy assassination, Jerry Paris, who directed the gentle and funny Dick Van Dyke Show, but who also had acted in The Untouchables, took advertisements in the Hollywood trade papers announcing: "I will no longer lend my talents in any way to add to the creation of the climate for murder. I have looked into the mirror. I see myself and the face of our industry. I do not like what I see."

Such soul-searching has already brought some changes. Some previously scheduled rerun episodes of I Spy, Gunsmoke, Big Valley and even Flying Nun,* among others, were postponed--but not dropped--in favor of less brutal installments. On the West Coast, where next season's shows are already in the works, two It Takes a Thief scripts involving assassination have just been chucked. Alan Armor of CBS's new western, Lancer, has edited out one shooting and one ambush from his premiere show, and the producers of Gunsmoke, Get Smart and The Name of the Game have ordered re-evaluation of all scenarios. Bruce Geller, producer of Mission: Impossible and Mannix, says: "We're going to explore other areas of conflict than violence--conflict of emotion and conflict of intellect."

Even before the Kennedy and King assassinations, the three networks planned a cleanup of the atrocity-ridden weekend kiddy shows. NBC, in what it proclaims "the Saturday morning revolution," will replace one hour of action cartoons with The Banana Bunch, which features "personable animal personalities." At CBS, where, according to an advance release, "laughter is the key word," The Impossibles, a crime cartoon, and Frankenstein Jr. are being retired; their substitute will be the tame-sounding The Go-Go Gophers.

Soul-Searching. But it may be too much to expect that television's new cathartic will develop into a permanent new look. Some still argue that a "causal relationship" is the only way to measure the impact of violence on TV. In network corridors last week, the common cynical joke was: "Mrs. Booth, why did you let John Wilkes look at so much television?"

More to the point may well be the widespread view expressed by one Hollywood producer who said: "Let's wait and see what happens once all the soul-searching, breast-beating and wailing have died down. The name of the game is ratings, and the networks are profit-making enterprises. I personally abhor violence, and am more than happy to eliminate it from my show. But once we get into next season and another network puts a show on emphasizing violence opposite mine, and it draws a higher Nielsen rating, what do you think the network executives are going to say? They're going to tell me to fight fire with fire. The species Homo sapiens is the most violent, predaceous and rapacious on the face of the earth. Look at the books and movies that make the most money--sex and violence. Television just hasn't worked up to the sex kick yet."

* In the show, the airborne novice accidentally lights into a powwow of mobsters plotting a rub-out.

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