As the annual fade-in of the fall television season begins, ABC --under the guidance of its programming czar Fred Silverman--is the network to beat in the deadly serious game of prime-time ratings. Our cover story this week, written by Show Business Writer Gerald Clarke and edited by Senior Editor Martha Duffy, traces how TV's perennial No. 3 network overtook and passed its larger rivals, and examines the television industry today.

Writer Clarke has been a fascinated observer of that industry and its products for most of their existence. "When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, the whole family would sit around and watch roller derbies and wrestling--the only things that were on sometimes in those days," says Clarke. "In 1949 that little flickering black and white image in your living room was like some invention of Merlin." Clarke, who came to TIME in 1965, was our Show Business writer in the early '70s, and returned to the job full time last January. These days he keeps up with new programming fare on one of five of Merlin's inventions in his Manhattan apartment and summer home on Long Island.

On the West Coast, San Francisco Bureau Chief Joseph Boyce and Reporter-Researcher Bonnie Siverd interviewed 23 people in the TV industry, including producers and network executives. Meanwhile in New York City, Correspondents Eileen Shields and John Tompkins interviewed Silverman as well as his friends and colleagues at ABC, broadcasting industry experts and rivals at the other two networks.

"At first Silverman declined to talk, so we had to get in touch with practically everybody who ever knew him and try to put together a composite profile," says Shields, who even tracked down one of Silverman's college fraternity brothers. After many phone calls and a chance meeting with Silverman at a party, she received word that he had changed his mind.

So thorough a portrait had the correspondents drawn of Silverman that when they finally talked with him--for five hours --they felt, says Shields, that "we already knew him."

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