Battling Back From No. 3

By Richard Zoglin

ABC's popular nighttime soap opera, Dynasty, ended last week's episode with typical edge-of-the-seat melodrama. In a scuffle aboard a private plane, Blake Carrington and Daniel Reece (John Forsythe and Rock Hudson) accidentally knocked the pilot unconscious, sending their craft hurtling toward the ; mountains below. Their fate, in the manner of TV cliffhangers, rested in the hands of the network.

And vice versa. After years of churning out hits, ABC now finds its prime- time fortunes largely dependent on just one show, the long-running, top- rated saga of the Carrington clan. In addition to Dynasty, ABC has only one other prime-time program in the Nielsen top ten this season, Hotel, a fluffy comedy- drama that has the good fortune to occupy the time slot immediately following Dy- nasty. Disappointing performances from most of its other series dropped ABC to last place in the prime-time ratings this season, its lowest finish in ten years. Problems mounted elsewhere as well. ABC's daytime schedule slipped out of first place last year for the first time since 1978. And the network's evening newscast, which a few years ago was closing in on No. 1-ranked CBS, has fallen behind NBC in recent weeks, to third place.

Yet the network that is being acquired by Capital Cities Communications is hardly in dire straits. Since the mid-1970s, when it vaulted from last to first in the prime-time ratings, ABC has proved to be a skilled and tenacious competitor. "I think their problems have been overstated," says Fred Silverman, who ran the network's programming department during its boom years of the 1970s. "My guess is that ABC's performance at this point is a temporary blip. You'll see them bounce back."

If they do, it will be the result of hard, uphill work. Even at the height of its success, ABC never quite overcame its image as the upstart of TV's network fraternity. CBS, with its distinguished legacy of William Paley, Edward R. Murrow and Playhouse 90, has always embodied broadcasting's old- school elite. NBC, originator of the Today and Tonight shows and numerous other firsts, is a respected, if sometimes stodgy, TV pioneer. ABC, by contrast, is the brash outsider, by turns more innovative and more shrewdly commercial than either of its rivals.

The image comes from years as TV's best-known underdog. The American Broadcasting Co. was created in 1943 when the FCC forced the National Broadcasting Co. to give up one of its two radio networks (NBC kept the so- called Red Network; its Blue Network became ABC). Ten years later, ABC merged with United Paramount Theaters, whose chief executive, Leonard Goldenson, became president of the new company and its guiding spirit.

During its infancy, ABC was clearly overmatched by its two veteran rivals, , but slowly began to make its presence felt. The network's earliest hit show was Disneyland, produced by Walt Disney Studios in 1954. Later, ABC spurred television's western craze with such popular shows as The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Maverick and The Rifleman. The network was also home for such TV crowd pleasers of the '50s and '60s as Ozzie and Harriet, The Untouchables, Leave It to Beaver and The Fugitive, some of which are gathering a new generation of fans on daytime and late-night reruns. Still, with fewer affiliates and smaller financial resources than either of its two rivals, ABC was a perennial distant third in the ratings, the fractional participant in what was then called a "2 1/2-network" race.

Playing catch-up made ABC receptive to change. It was the first network to encourage Hollywood studios to produce series, striking early deals not only with Disney but also with Warner Bros. (77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye). ABC was also a pioneer in the made-for-TV movie format. Perhaps its most striking achievements came in sports programming. Under the leadership of Producer Roone Arledge, ABC increased the scope of athletics coverage with its weekly Wide World of Sports; introduced technical innovations like the instant replay; brought pro football into prime time with Monday Night Football; and substantially raised the standards of network sports reporting.

Still, ABC's financial situation was unstable (it was the target in the 1960s of attempted hostile takeovers by Norton Simon and Howard Hughes and an aborted merger with ITT), and its hold on last place in the ratings seemed depressingly unshakable. Some of the network's hit shows of the late 1960s and early '70s were often faddish entries, quick to catch on and quick to fade away: Batman, The Mod Squad, Kung Fu. ABC's ratings woes became the subject of mordant jokes. Asked how to end the Viet Nam War, industry wags would reply, "Turn it into an ABC series and it will be canceled in 13 weeks."

In the mid-'70s Fred Pierce, the aggressive former vice president of TV planning and development who had become president of ABC Television in 1974, engineered a stunning turnaround. His first major move was to hire Silverman away from CBS to head ABC's programming department. Under the guidance of Silverman, "the man with the golden gut," ABC began turning out a rapid parade of hits. Many of them were raucous, youth-oriented comedies (Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley); others exploited buxom blonds and sexual humor ( (Three's Company, Charlie's Angels); still others were sentimental puffballs from Producer Aaron Spelling (Love Boat, Fantasy Island). In the 1974-75 season, ABC was last in the ratings at 16.6, more than 3 points behind second-place NBC. Within two years it boasted seven of TV's ten top- rated shows and had climbed to first place with a whopping 21.6 rating. With its roster of lighthearted, youth-oriented shows, ABC had gauged the national mood well, but still it got no respect. To critics who disparaged TV as a "vast wasteland," ABC's schedule became Exhibit A. Network rivals were contemptuous. CBS-TV President Robert Wussler denounced ABC's program lineup as "junk"; NBC Executive Paul Klein called it "programming for kids and dummies."

Such assessments, aside from being self-serving, ignored the network's serious contributions. In January 1977, ABC telecast Roots, a twelve-hour multigenerational saga about American slaves that ran for eight consecutive nights. The scheduling tactic was unprecedented, the results staggering. Roots drew the largest audience of any entertainment program in history and helped make the mini-series form a prime-time staple. Since then, ABC has produced its share of ambitious dramatic fare, from the 18-hour The Winds of War to The Day After, the controversial film about the impact of nuclear war on a small town in Kansas.

ABC's successes in the late '70s were not limited to prime time. The network's soap operas (General Hospital, All My Children, One Life to Live) made it No. 1 in the daytime ratings by emphasizing younger characters, livelier story lines and more elaborate production values than its rivals on CBS and NBC. Good Morning America, which was launched in 1975 with an upbeat mix of news, features and talk, replaced NBC's then 29-year-old Today in 1980 as the early-morning pacesetter. In the same era, ABC's News division became a full-fledged rival of CBS and NBC for the first time. The network hired away such respected TV journalists as Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters from competing networks. Its evening newscast, despite a confusing succession of changes in format and anchors, moved steadily upward in audience numbers. And in 1979, during the Iranian hostage crisis, ABC launched network TV's first regularly scheduled late-night news program, the provocative, high- voltage Nightline, with Anchorman Ted Koppel.

Bad times for ABC came almost as suddenly as the good. After three years in first place, ABC dipped to second in the prime-time race during the 1979-80 season. This season everything seemed to go wrong. Despite ABC's aggressive on-the-air promotion of its new fall shows during last summer's Olympics coverage, not one of the newcomers became a hit. Older series like The Love Boat and Monday Night Football skidded badly. The network's only new mini- series of the season, Hollywood Wives, did not draw the blockbuster ratings many had expected.

What went wrong? "We obviously stubbed our toe," says Pierce. "We had what we considered a slump season." Others claim they could sense a growing attitude of caution and complacency. Says Leonard Goldberg, co-creator of the profitable Charlie's Angels and executive producer of this season's dud, Paper Dolls: "What made ABC so successful was that its programming was new, exciting and progressive." Garry Marshall, the creator of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, agrees: "As I was leaving ABC to make films, the programming side was no longer selling innovativeness. The network was getting conservative."

Some industry observers charge that ABC has relied too heavily on a few producers, notably Spelling, who started this season with a hefty seven hours of programming on the network. The audience, perhaps suffering from an overdose of Spelling's brand of glossy escapism, was notably cool to his new shows (like the disastrous Glitter), as well as to some former hits (Matt Houston). While NBC was having success with such novelties as The Cosby Show and Miami Vice, ABC seemed unable to extricate itself from its deepening rut.

Network TV is a notoriously cyclical business, and few industry observers expect ABC's troubles to last. "What ABC has done this past season is what NBC did the season before--make a lot of bad choices," says NBC Chairman Grant Tinker. "It'll take time to turn that ocean liner of bad choices around, but they'll do it." ABC has announced plans to introduce a spin-off of Dynasty next fall, and it has several major mini-series in the works, including a ten-hour dramatization of John Jakes' best seller North and South and a 20-hour version of Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance.

ABC's new owners, who will not take charge until next season at the earliest, are not likely to make any sudden, drastic programming switches in the game plan to get ABC back on top. Though Capital Cities Chairman Thomas Murphy is described as a man of old-fashioned values, an attitude that could influence the selection of shows, the company also has a strong tradition of not meddling in the program decisions or editorial content of its media properties. Says Murphy: "If you think I know enough about scripts that I'm going to make changes in network programming, you're crazy." Which means that except for the usual intrigues, double-dealing and airplanes falling from the sky, the Carringtons of Dynasty probably have nothing to fear.

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With reporting by Peter Ainslie/New York and Joseph J. Kane/ Los Angeles