Waiting for Freddie: Part 1

Comedy, sci-fi and girls, girls, girls...

Each year television executives perform their own rites of spring. They hide away in dark screening rooms, watch dozens of hours of pilots for new shows, then emerge, red-eyed but exultant, to announce what the American public will see in the fall. Last week both ABC and CBS ended their ceremonies with the traditional flourish of self-congratulatory press releases; NBC was due to announce its schedule this week. This year, however, the ceremony seems more like a rehearsal than the real thing: Fred Silverman, the high priest of programming, has yet to make his entrance, and everybody in TV is waiting for Freddie.

Hired away from ABC by NBC last January, at a reported salary of $1 million a year, Silverman has assumed enormous, almost mythical dimensions in an industry noted for its downbeat cynicism. "Freddie is going to change the face of network television," proclaims Producer James Komack (Welcome Back, Kotter).

Freddie not only knows how to make a show strong," says Producer Tom Miller (Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley). "but he can also bring an opposing show to its knees by figuring out its weaknesses and by counterprogramming against it."

Unfortunately, the myth will not be tested for another month. Silverman's contract with ABC does not run out until June 8, and he does not become the new president of last-place NBC, the all-thumbs network, until the day after.

Though Freddie, if his past record is any guide, is not likely to cut off many heads, he is certain to make major changes before he has twirled three times in his new swivel chair. "One thing he will do is break up those long, indecisive meetings at NBC," says Producer Grant Tinker (The Mary Tyler Moore Show). "NBC is really one long meeting, and he'll stick firecrackers under the chairs at those endless sessions." NBC'S programmers know that whatever they do this month may be rescinded next month. "Does NBC'S fall schedule mean anything?" asks Adman Lou Dorkin, a senior vice president of Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. "That's the $64,000 question. I can't imagine any lineup they announce being taken very seriously until Silverman gets there."

ABC, which Silverman helped push to the top, will still bear his stamp. Only three of its shows are being canceled --Fish, Baretta and The Six Million Dollar Man--and all but one of its five new series were well under way before Freddie jumped ship for NBC. For science-fiction fans there will be an hour-long show called Battle Star: Galactica, with John Dykstra, who won an Academy Award for the special effects of Star Wars, working the same magic every Sunday at 8 p.m. Vega$ will follow the adventures of a handsome young private eye "in that sizzling city of beautiful women and gambling men," says ABC, while Taxi and Apple Pie are billed as comedies about taxi drivers and zany Americans, in that order. Lest anyone get the characters confused, the shows are scheduled for different nights. The only non-Silverman entry is titled Mork & Mindy, which need only be as funny as its press release: "A being from the planet Ork ... meets a young and lovely earthling named Mindy. On a mission to observe earthlings, Mork's problems are multiplied by his frequent slips into Ork language and habits."

The folks at CBS may not know from Ork, but they have noticed the success of ABC's own lovely earthlings. Among its eight new shows, the network has come up with two series that should be called Charlie's Angels II and III, but which it stubbornly insists on titling The American Girls and Flying High. The first features two beautiful researchers who work for a TV newsmagazine like 60 Minutes. Flying High really is, with three from the same mold posing as stewardesses. With the accent on comedy, CBS is also scheduling WKRP in Cincinnati, the saga of a wacky radio station. Setting common sense against such fluffery, Mary Tyler Moore will be back in a one-hour variety show on Sunday night.

If CBS's new schedule is any indication, the ABC formula for success--sex and comedy--is about to be copied by the industry. Even if the new shows fail, the pilots that are ready to take their place are only more of the same. "We're in the jiggle stage," says Dorkin, "and all three networks will be running girlie shows next year. The sex is more implicit than actual in those shows, and the titles are usually more titillating than the shows themselves. But people do watch them."

Instead of exciting the networks to produce better shows, this year's battle for ratings has only persuaded them to make the same shows over and over again.

Fred Silverman's success has hinged on his ability to identify with the ordinary viewer. When he picks a show he likes, chances are that 40 million or 50 million other people will like it too. But now, through extraordinary circumstances, he will be programming for everyone. CBS, which he left in 1975, still runs many of his shows, including Rhoda, Good Times and M*A*S*H, and ABC will do the same for years to come. NBC will switch to the Silverman channel next month. It is, as the industry cliche goes, a truly awesome, and not altogether settling, thought.

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