Waiting for Freddie: Part 2

Girls, guys. . .guys and girls

The countdown is on, and broadcast executives can almost tell to the hour how long it is to "S-Day," the ninth of June. That, of course, is the day that Fred Silverman becomes president of NBC and the TV world is turned upside down, inside out and dangled from the top of Manhattan's RCA Building, where NBC has its headquarters. Or so everyone in TV says. In the meantime, however, schedules have to be satisfied, and last week NBC announced its fall lineup. Oddly enough, it looked like something Silverman himself might have created.

There will be a Love Boat look-alike in a show called Coastocoast, the only difference being that the action will take place aboard the planes of a New York-to-Los Angeles airline rather than a cruise ship. Legs will presumably have lots of them, all belonging to Las Vegas showgirls. Produced by Garry Marshall, who is also the man behind ABC's Laverne and Shirley, it will probably have its polished, if dim, comedic style.

The Waverly Wonders bears a certain resemblance to ABC's Welcome Back, Kotter. Joe Namath plays the Gabe Kaplan part, acting as coach to a no-win high school basketball team called, naturally enough, the Waverly Wonders. The chief distinction between the two shows is that NBC'S sweathogs are better looking than ABC's. Another program that might appeal to Freddie is Sword of Justice, which sounds like a cross between The Green Hornet and The Scarlet Pimpernel. After serving five years in prison on a bum rap, the hero (Dack Rambo) emerges to be come a handsome, sexy and rich gadabout by day. But at night he is a handsome, sexy and rich scourge of evildoers. Zap! Zap! Or, yawn, yawn?

The most interesting-sounding series on the list is W.E.B., a nighttime soap opera about--guess what?--a network. The series was created by Lin Bolen, a former NBC vice president, who was widely rumored to be a model for the Faye Dunaway character in the movie Network. Whether the rumor is true or not, Lin's fictional Trans American Broadcasting may be livelier than the real thing.

Hidden between the lines of NBC's schedule is something else: desperation. Badly trailing both ABC and CBS in the ratings, the network has few old shows to build on. NBC is betting that at least some of its new shows will make it to the Top 20. That is a questionable proposition, considering that every single one of its new series failed last season. "There's a rule of thumb," says Producer Tom Miller, "that you don't have a full night of programming without one old show to act as anchor. Without that audience familiarity, NBC may be throwing two or three programs to the winds."

NBC'S new shows look little different from those just announced by ABC and CBS, and the accent is on good-looking girls and guys. "Nobody gives a damn about the subject," says Joel Segal, senior vice president of the Ted Bates advertising agency. "The theme will be dopey broads and handsome men. Women mostly control the tube, and NBC's hope is that enough of them will spot one of their pretty men and stick around." Adds TV Consultant Mike Dann: "The trend is toward fantasy. There is more flesh exposed, but there really isn't much sex." It is a pattern that Silverman, who started it all when he was chief programmer at ABC, is not likely to change; S-Day may really stand for the Same, over and over again.

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