Fresh Crews over Sixth Avenue

ABC continues to score in the network dogfight

In most businesses success or failure is measured in years. In TV the message can be delivered overnight--and almost certainly within the first month or two of a new season. Last week, just five weeks into the fall season, CBS gave its own unhappy assessment: TV's new year has brought it disaster. CBS--until last year the undisputed leader for two decades-was in third place in the ratings, miles behind ABC and irritating inches behind NBC.

Then, following a ritual as intricate as an Aztec sacrificial rite --and only slightly less colorful --CBS Chairman William Paley met with his top aides. At "Black Rock," CBS'S somber, granite headquarters on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, the troops were told to expect an announcement of executive changes at 3:30 p.m. At 3:30 they were told to wait until 4 --coincidentally when the stock market closed and it would be too late for investors to be react.

Small wonder. The changes turned out to be more extensive than anyone could have guessed: CBS not only moved most of its top broadcasting executives, it also realigned its corporate structure. In doing so, it copied stitch for stitch the winning pattern of ABC, which separates responsibility for programming, sports and business operations among three men, rather than consolidating it in the hands of one man, as CBS had done in the past. Overseeing everyone will be Gene Jankowski, 43, the new president of the Broadcast Group and a protege of CBS President John Backe. Robert Wuscome, 41, who had been network president, was boosted aside to become head of sports. James Rosenfield 57, a vice president for sales, was moved up to become top businessman. In the most important move, Robert Daly 40 who had handled programming and production on the West Coast, will now become chief programmer-- CBS'S answer to ABC s Superprogrammer Fred Silverman.

Seconds after Daly's promotion was made public, Silverman looked out of his 38th -floor office in the ABC building to see Daly in the CBS building across 53rd Street hopping up and down to catch his attention. "He jumped up on a window ledge'" says Silverman, a longtime friend "waved and made a V for victory sign with his fingers."

Victory is not likely to come soon for CBS or NBC. In the aerial dogfight above Sixth Avenue ABC will certainly have the edge for the rest of the 1977-78 season--and perhaps for the rest of the decade as well. "The ABC powerhouse has clearly established itself as the General Motors of the business," says Mike Dann a TV consultant who for seven years was CBS'S chief programmer. "It might develop that we'll have one General Motors and two American Motors."

ABC has seven of the top ten shows, including the first three: Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days and Charlie's Angels. It also has 13 of the leading 20. Soap the silly sex opera that drew criticism from moralists even before it went on the air is No. 8. CBS, by contrast, has only three in the first ten and five in the top 20. Worse, the new shows it had Counted on to help lift its ratings-Lou Grant and the Betty White Show--have failed by the usual yardsticks.

Despite its second ranking, NBC does not even appear on the list until No 16 with their Monday Night at the Movies. The network has stayed ahead of CBS with special, one-shot shows, like the Muhammad Ali-Earnie Shavers fight, and mini-series like 79 Park Avenue. Its competitors sneer at specials as "stunting" --costly, desperate efforts to keep from drowning. Such shows are more expensive than regular series to produce--$600 000 to $750,000 an hour, v. $325,000 to $400,000 for ordinary series. Also they have less potential for reruns, which have always provided the networks with high profits. The public, however, seems to be responding, at least a little, to the more expensive fare. Two of NBC'S regular shows, Police Woman and Mulligan's Stew, have not even been shown this season, so many specials have pre-empted them. Says NBC s chief programmer Irwin Segelsteur We sense a growing appetite among the public for events and specials."

Though NBC leads CBS in the ratings, most industry observers believe that in the long run, CBS is the stronger network. "There is no leadership. No one is running NBC," says one West Coast producer who deals with all the networks. At the start of the season, before the first scores were even in, NBC made its own executive switches, with Robert Mulholland replacing Robert Howard as network president. Three weeks ago, in an offhanded acknowledgment that stunting was indeed expensive, the network fired 300 to 400 people. Says Producer Norman Lear: They talk about violence on TV! There is more violence being done on the corporate level than anything we see on television. Putting so much importance on being No. 1 is the real violence."

The carnage on Sixth Avenue is not likely to stop any time soon however, and the race to be first --or at least not last--is certain to bring new career casualties "It used to be that there was a new season and a second season," laments CBS Programmer Daly on his first week in the job 'Now each week is a new season." What will he do? Well just about everything. Says he: "We are open to everything. We are not going to copy ABC, but there is an appetite for young programs. We are going to try and find the next trend, and we are looking at all forms, old and new."

Yet even as the battle goes on along Network Row, there is a cloud-so tiny yet as to be almost invisible--blowing in from the Hudson. As they try to find the shows that will appeal to the most people, the networks are apparently turning away at least some of the people. Since March, reports Nielsen, total TV viewing, both day and night, has dropped an average of 3.4% per month. No one knows why but advertisers are watching keenly. If it continues, more shake-ups will be in store.

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