When Things Are Rotten

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

"It is either a viewers' revolt or Nielsen has screwed up his figures," says one network executive. "I've been in this business since 1948," adds a New York rep for a number of major-market stations, "and I can't remember a crummier season than this one."

These are not aesthetic judgments. What is bugging the broadcasters is a drop of 4%--perhaps more--in the number of sets in use. Just as alarming is a fall-off in network ratings among viewers who are still bothering to tune in something or other. To date, helped by its nighttime World Series coverage, NBC has the best prime-time rating. But it is only a 19.3, which just a year ago would have been second in the standings. Indeed, NBC is winning while losing, with its rating down 5% compared with the same period last year. CBS, for 20 years the ratings leader, is in even worse shape, suffering a 12% loss (and the ignominy of twice running behind the usually lowly competitor ABC).

Thin and Thin. Where have all the people gone? Can it be that for once they believed the critics, who, upon previewing the new season, unanimously declared it unfit for human consumption? Is there a silent protest? Possibly. But there is not and never has been any such thing as a really good television season, and though this may be the absolute worst, that has to be a distinction so fine as to require deliberation by a board of moral philosophers. No one has yet determined how many bad ideas can dance on the pinhead of a network programming executive; the outside limit may not have been reached.

Besides, some experts suspect the defections from network programming are confined to a not much coveted demographic group--viewers 50 and older.

Some insiders insist that the 39-49 crowd --still demon consumers--have joined the Geritol set. And that they are all responding to a decline in quality. According to this argument, the networks have tied themselves too tightly to a small group of producers who have provided hits in the past but whose shows inevitably have a certain sameness about them. Universal is responsible for 8% prime-time hours (out of 22) on NBC alone this year. Some of the good independents like Norman Lear and Mary Tyler Moore are also overextended --and overimitated. This gives viewers a narrow range of choices: cop and doc shows, ethnic sitcoms, nice-girl sitcoms. It has become harder to tell good from bad in this small spectrum. Still, the suspicion lingers that TV's real--if possibly temporary--trouble springs from precisely the opposite condition.

Familiarity may have bred some contempt, but novelty of another sort has probably proved much more upsetting. In this more cynical opinion, Americans in their role as viewers are not very adventurous. They dote on old pals--Marcus, Archie, Dear Little Mary. They have gone through a lot with them and are loyal through thin and thin. They even resent seeing their good buddies shoved out of old time slots. This year the ludicrous family viewing hour forced unprecedented tinkering with new shows and much rescheduling. CBS and NBC compounded this upset with lineups filled with new programs that turned out to be heavy losers. Beacon Hill has already been leveled on Tuesday, and Switch! and Joe and Sons seem destined to go. The story is the same on Thursday at NBC. The Montefuscos and Fay were dispatched with unseemly haste; Ellery Queen and Medical Story will probably follow.

ABC, it now seems, handled the family-hour nuisance most wisely. Its ratings have actually risen marginally, probably because its new shows are supported, sometimes fore and aft, with old favorites. The network also realized that 9 o'clock, when you rise to shoo the kids out of the living room, is the logical time to switch channels if you are ever going to. At that point ABC stands ready to present what the ratings indicate most Americans want--a quick fix of violence (five nights a week if you count N.F.L. football) or an old movie (on Friday and Sunday).

ABC is also managing its other troubles more coolly than its competitors. It has no sudden mercy killings on its rec ord yet. When it does make its re placements at midseason, it will widen viewer choices by offering variety shows, not exactly a TV novelty but a breed now not much represented.

Hopeful Blip. One would like to entertain idealistic dreams about the sudden consumer resistance to business as usual in television. Occasionally, indeed, a hopeful blip appears on the screen. Last week a worthy special, The Incredible Machine, running on PBS, whomped its commercial competitors in some major markets, gaining a record-breaking 36% audience share in New York. It was, ironically, part of a documentary series that has been booted off all three commercial networks for lack of audience appeal. Jennie, a PBS import about Winston Churchill's mother, has done better in some significant urban areas than a lot of network Gorgonzola. If we ever had a stable, well-managed and well-financed public broadcasting system in the U.S., one capable of building a coherent, dependable schedule, the commercial broadcasters' status might be permanently affected.

As it is, NBC and CBS insist that more people are actually watching. It is just that they are clustered around fewer sets.

That sounds like whistling in the dark, though it tends to prove the supposition that it is older folks, whose kids have left home, who are the principal deserters. Be that as it may, the networks are expected to try to buy back this audience -- and ratings leadership -- with late-season specials and hit theatrical movies. CBS throws That's Entertainment!, surefire nostalgia fare, into the Beacon Hill breach on Nov. 18. Meantime, the permanently disaffected will be found over at the independent channels, gnarled fingers twiddling the dial in hopes of glimpsing Matt Dillon, Chief Ironsides and the rest of that old gang of theirs. On the whole it is a slightly better deal than being placed on an ice floe when your usefulness as a consumer has diminished.

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