60-Minute Dash

TV gets magazine fever

Would more television viewers prefer a program in which a) three beautiful young women solve crimes, unencumbered by bras, b) two handsome young cops solve crimes, unencumbered by civil liberties, or c) three not-so-young and not-so-handsome reporters solve crimes, encumbered by a camera crew?

The answer: c. In the most recent ratings week, the 60 Minutes team of Dan Rather, Morley Safer and Mike Wallace was seen by more households than Charlie's Angels, Starsky and Hutch and all but five prime-time offerings. CBS's excellent decade-old magazine-style show this season has regularly finished in the top ten, demolishing the myth that there is no way a network can make money--or big Nielsen points--on news.

Later this year ABC and NBC will introduce their own versions of the magazine format, which is basically an hour-long collection of documentary-type reports. In addition, Producer David Susskind is developing a personality-profile TV show for CBS based on PEOPLE magazine, and stations across the nation are pasting together local variations of the magazine genre. At this rate television may soon offer more "magazines" than the corner newsstand.

Perhaps the most ambitious entry in the 60-minute dash is ABC's new 20/20, an hour-long encyclopedia of news, personality sketches, investigative reports, cultural and sociological features and satirical skits, possibly by Chicago's Second City troupe. The show is expected to appear in June. Executive Producer Bob Shanks (ABC's Good Morning, America, public television's Great American Dream Machine) has approached at least a dozen candidates for the host job, including Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, who turned down a $5,000-a-week salary and a promise that he could retain his role at the newspaper.

To fill other jobs on the show, Shanks has been talking to such nonelectronic types as Georgia State Senator Julian Bond about covering politics, Astronomer Carl Sagan about handling science segments and former Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Thomas Hoving about reporting on culture. Shanks has signed French Documentary Maker Marcel Ophuls (The Sorrow and the Pity) to film reports from Europe and former Esquire Editor Harold Hayes to oversee the editorial content. In a confidential memo to his bosses, Shanks wrote that 60 Minutes is "pontifical and humorless, and its 14-minute pieces nowadays often seem too long." He promised that 20/20 would be wittier and move faster. "We don't travel to the Coast by train any more," Shanks elaborated last week. "People perceive things in shorter forms today."

NBC is countering 60 Minutes and 20/20 by carving out a weeknight time slot this fall for its 3 1/2-year-old monthly magazine now called Weekend, an eclectic mix of investigative and lighthearted reports. Executive Producer Reuven Frank is casting for someone to share the increased work load with Writer-Reporter Lloyd Dobyns but otherwise plans no major changes. Says Frank: "Carbon copies don't work." One Weekend feature that will have to change when the show goes midweekly is the name. Says an executive who has survived a wave of demoralizing layoffs at NBC: "Knowing the way our company screws things up. they'll probably call it 59 Minutes. "

CBS officials are gratified by all this imitative flattery and profess no intention of tinkering with 60 Minutes. "Come on in, the water's fine," says Don Hewitt, the show's executive producer, to his new rivals. The water is so fine that CBS is cranking up a spin-off for kiddies, tentatively called 30 Minutes, a revival of the old newsreeler The Twentieth Century, and a feature based loosely on Mike Wallace's Biography series. In the ultimate irony of art imitating art. CBS is also pondering a totally new magazine based on 60 Minutes. This one would be a real magazine--you know, words and pictures printed on paper. A few more like it and the corner newsstand may soon be offering as many magazines as television.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.