The Losers Are ...

TV programming executives are consummate gamesmen. But traditionally, the fall schedules they announce close to Washington's Birthday--unlike the trial balloons they float down Madison Avenue earlier--are the ones they really mean. This year, there was an unprecedented amount of delay and, in the words of one ABC vice president, "a lot of lying." The explanation came last week with the schedules: 35 of TV's 77 prime-time series, including the longest running program of them all, The Ed Sullivan Show, were jettisoned. It was the most convulsive upheaval in network history.

The turnover was caused primarily by a Federal Communications Commission ruling that will limit the networks to three hours of nightly programming instead of three and a half between 7 and 11 p.m. (6 to 10 p.m. in the Central Time Zone). The resulting changes exceeded anyone's expectations. NBC's cancellations include Red Skelton, Andy Williams, Julia, The Name of the Game, Men of Shiloh (ne The Virginian), and Kraft Music Hall. NBC's Bill Cosby and ABC's Mario Thomas (That Girl) declared their retirements before they could be canned. ABC also clumped, among others, Lawrence Welk, Danny Thomas, Johnny Cash, Pearl Bailey and The Newlywed Game.

At CBS, where the new regime of President Robert Wood and Programming Vice President Fred Silverman is rapidly ridding that network of its lingering Saturday Evening Post image, the casualty rate was the highest of all. Out, in addition to Sullivan, were such other golden oldies as Andy Griffith, Jim Nabors, The Beverly Hillbillies, Hogan's Heroes, Family Affair and Hee Haw. "The time has come to go big city as opposed to hayseed," says Silverman. Translation: CBS, adopting the reasoning of its competition, has decided that who watches a show is as important as how many. The young adult, metropolitan market is preferred by most sponsors because it buys more than rural customers and switches brands more often.

No Relevance. The networks' replacement shows, at least on paper, do not presage any major format breakthroughs for next season. The straitened conditions in the movie business have made a few top-rank stars available to TV for the first time and have forced a few old favorites to return. James Stewart will make his series debut as a college professor in an NBC situation comedy. ABC has landed Shirley MacLaine for a sitcom in which she is a roving photojournalist, Tony Curtis as a jet-set adventurer in an action series and Anthony Quinn as a Mexican-American mayor. CBS signed Glenn Ford for a western and brought back Dick Van Dyke in another sitcom.

The trend is away from the variety grab bags and toward action melodramas. "There will be no return to relevancy," says ABC Vice President Ed Vane. With acute understatement, he adds: "We didn't handle it too well." Another executive says: "The name of the game next fall will be law-and-order." Eleven of the shows will feature law-enforcement types. Don Adams, in his first sitcom since Get Smart, will be a dunderhead detective on NBC. The same network has cast George Kennedy as a cop turned priest; the show is not called God Squad but Sarge. If nothing else, Douglas Cramer, executive vice president of Paramount TV, which produces Odd Couple and Mission: Impossible, expects most scripts to be "tougher and more sophisticated" next season.

The distinction (or lack of it) between 1971-72 and the past will be due more to the FCC rule than any network decision. The regulation's laudable intention--to spur individual stations and independent producers into innovative programming--has been all but defeated by the naive way in which the commission drafted the rule and then modified it with exemptions. Producers call the rule the FCC's "Viet Nam." Local stations have overcome their panic at the prospect of having to be creators instead of just salesmen. All of them will be able to use old network material for a year.

The net result of the rule is that the nightly half hour turned back to the stations will be filled largely with syndicated games like Beat the Clock and third or fourth reruns of series like I Dream of Jeannie. "For the most part," says CBS Vice President Silverman, "it will be garbage."

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