The 1978-79 Season: I

By Frank Rich

Silverman 's last-minute shuffle upstages the new series

As the 1978-79 season gets under way, TV's best show remains unchanged: it is the daredevil, off-screen saga of Master Programmer Fred Silverman. Newly enthroned as president of third-place NBC, Silverman just will not sit still. Last week on the eve of the new season's first premieres, he upstaged the entire industry by ripping up his own previously announced schedule. Silverman changed the prime-time lineup on five out of seven nights, shifting the long-running Saturday Night at the Movies to Wednesday and announcing a smorgasbord of "stunts" (movies and specials) for the fall. Says Mike Dann, ex-CBS program chief and onetime Silverman boss: "Never before have there been so many major moves so late in the game. Historically, the networks set the schedules on Washington's Birthday and never changed them. Now they're going to change them daily." Once again Silverman has rewritten the rules of his industry.

The reasons for the last-minute shuffle are not hard to guess. Stuck with weak programs chosen by the previous NBC regime, Silverman was headed for a third-place finish in September. Replacement series now in production will not be ready until January, when Silverman will have new--and no doubt better--material to choose from. He has ordered up roughly 40 pilots since taking over the network in June. In the meantime, explains Dancer Fitzgerald Sample's senior vice president Lou Dor kin, "Silverman has to work with what he's got. He has to stunt like crazy and cause as much confusion as possible until his own series are ready to go into place."

The new fall series, by popping in and out of the schedule throughout September, will escape conclusive Nielsen verdicts for many weeks. This novel stalling tactic typifies Silverman's bold programming.

Though many of Silverman's interim shows sound tired (a two-part Rescue from Gilligan's Island), they may fare better than the lameduck series that they will preempt. Among them are such rock-bottom offerings as Sword of Justice (Sept. 10, 8 p.m. E.D.T.), a contemporary rehash of Zorro, and The Eddie Capra Mysteries (Sept. 8, 9 p.m.), yet another rip-off of Perry Mason. Though Grandpa Goes to Washington (Sept. 7, 9 p.m.) has Jack Albertson playing a U.S. Senator, it seems as old-hat as The Farmer's Daughter. NBC's principal new sitcom, The Waverly Wonders (Sept. 7, 8 p.m.), boasts a surprisingly ingratiating star in Joe Namath, but is otherwise a pale carbon of Welcome Back, Kotter.

NBC's one good series is Lifeline (Sept. 7, 10 p.m.), a breakthrough show that uses documentary techniques to record the dramas of real-life doctors and their patients. Though marred by heavy-breathing narration and a worshipful view of American medicine, the first episode does present an affecting portrait of a surgeon at work. The show's closeup depiction of operations and lack of continuing characters ensure bad ratings, yet that didn't bother Silverman when he announced Lifeline last spring. "You've got to take chances," he told NBC's skeptical affiliates. "Lifeline could be the single show on any network this fall that changes the face of prime-time television."

Maybe so, but last week Silverman announced that this series too would do a vanishing act for a whole month after its premiere. If it returns, it will be in a new and tougher time slot (Sundays at 10 p.m.), when it will be opposite Kaz and ABC movies. Says one NBC insider: "Silverman has little hope for Lifeline; he's taking the coward's way of introducing a show." So much for taking chances.

Once the dust settles from NBC's upheavals, the 1978-79 season may prove to be the most competitive in years. ABC is returning with its winning (and largely Silverman-created) schedule, along with five new series. In Battlestar Galactica, premiering Sept. 17, it has the fall's only sure ratings blockbuster. An elaborate space fantasy starring Bonanza's Lome Greene, the show's special effects are the work of Star Wars Wizard John Dykstra. But CBS has its strongest lineup since Silverman left that network in 1975. It remains to be seen whether ABC'S new and untested programming chief, Anthony Thomopoulos, can beat back a serious challenge from his competitors.

Still, some things never change, including all three networks' conviction that audiences like characters whose names begin with a hard k sound. While Kojak and Columbo have retired to reruns, their places will be filled this fall by such heroes as Kaz, Eddie Capra, Jack Cole (Sword of Justice), Joe Casey (Waverly Wonders), Joe Kelley (Grandpa) and even Professor Charles Kingsfield Jr. (Paper Chase). It's enough to drive a viewer krazy.

Three good shows:

The Paper Chase (Sept. 9, CBS, 8 p.m.). All summer CBS has been touting The Paper Chase as its classiest new program. One can see why. Well acted and produced, this series has a highbrow setting (a law school), a prestigious star (John Houseman) and harpsichord music on the soundtrack. As if all this were not proof enough of culture, the first episode contains not one but two 25-c- words: "contradistinction" and "propitious." PBS would kill to have a show like this.

Nonetheless, The Paper Chase is unlikely to tax the minds of viewers. Based on a negligible 1973 movie (which won Houseman an Oscar as best supporting actor), the series is a high-minded exercise in old-school TV sentimentality--a sort of Teacher Knows Best. Houseman plays a legendary professor whose stony exterior belies a heart as big as a lecture hall. He is surrounded by a bevy of students (one farm boy, one city slicker, one feisty woman) who try to curry his favor and share his wisdom. Since the first episode recounts virtually the entire plot of the movie, The Paper Chase may have nowhere else to go except oblivion. CBS has put it opposite ABC'S killer hits, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and that is a far from propitious sign.

Kaz (Sept. 10, CBS, 10 p.m.). Ron Leibman is a brash and at times abrasive character actor who does not have what it takes to be a movie star. The small screen is another matter. TV audiences adore performers who burst into their living rooms like loudmouthed relatives. Though such actors as Peter Falk, Telly Savalas, Robert Blake and Carroll O'Connor never caused a sensation in movies, they all made it quickly to TV superstardom. Thanks to Kaz, Leibman will soon join their ranks.

Kaz is a street-wise ex-con who got a law degree in jail and now defends the poor and downtrodden. His legal methods are pushy, his language rough, but you can be sure he gets results for his clients. Smartly enough, the series' creators have also provided the hero with a perfect foil: Patrick O'Neal as an elegant corporate lawyer who takes Kaz into his firm. Whenever it seems that Leibman might burn a hole in the tube, Old Pro O'Neal trots out to cool things down.

WKRP in Cincinnati (Sept. 18, CBS, 8 p.m.). If this Mary Tyler Moore pro duction can maintain the level of its premiere, it will be the funniest series to hit prime-time TV since The Mary Tyler Moore Show itself. Set at a money-losing radio station that dumps its "elevator music" format for top-40 rock, WKRP is a sitcom dream. Its laughs derive from character rather than contrived gags; its cast is an ensemble of inventive comic actors. The first episode, which establishes the premise and players with dazzling efficiency, is an almost steady howl.

In the MTM tradition, WKRP is about the modern American family: people who work together rather than live together. Among the station employees are the hip new program director (Gary Sandy), a shamelessly corrupt ad manager (Frank Bonner), and a prissy newscaster obsessed with hog futures (Richard Sanders). If there is a standout performer, it is Howard Hesseman as a fading deejay who falls asleep during his own broadcasts. Hesseman gets so many laughs that even the show's typically effusive laugh track cannot keep up with the pace

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