Slaughter on Sixth Avenue

Fred Silverman sweeps out all of NBC's new shows

When Fred Silverman took over NBC last June, the fall lineup was already firmly in place, and the question was: When would the network's programs really be his? The answer came last week. In an unprecedented day of carnage, Silverman killed all seven of his predecessors' remaining new programs, or about a third of the entire nighttime schedule. Starting in January, when the shows he personally picked go on the air, NBC will officially be the Network that Freddie Built.

The slaughter on Sixth Avenue, Manhattan's Network Row, was more a sign of desperation than desire, however, and the truth of the matter is that Silverman had only two choices: to kill the shows one by one or en masse. Freddie chose the latter, and off will go Lifeline, Sword of Justice, Dick Clark's Live Wednesday, Eddie Capra Mysteries, Grandpa Goes to Washington, Who's Watching the Kids? and David Cassidy--Man Under Cover. An old show, Project U.F.O. will also be dropped. Two programs, W.E.B. and Waverly Wonders had earlier been dispatched to Silverman Hill, which is already crowded with the shows Freddie killed when he was at CBS and later at ABC. Quipped Johnny Carson: "NBC now stands for Nine Bombs Canceled."

"This is the greatest cancellation in the history of television," says Mike Dann, a TV consultant and Silverman's onetime boss at CBS. "What forced Freddie's hand is the fact that ABC has nine of the top 14 shows and the only runaway hit of the new season, Mork and Mindy. In modern broadcasting, ABC is the greatest network ever, and CBS and NBC are so far behind they can only fight for second place. Freddie was an integral part of the ABC steamroller, and now it's going faster than ever, rolling over both the other networks. Will it ever stop?"

Indeed, ABC's strength is itself a source of strength. A new show, placed behind one of the network's many proven hits, has a far better chance of success than it would next to just about anything on CBS or NBC. "You can keep a fire going by putting a new log on top of one that is already burning," says one industry observer. "The new one will catch fire from the old one."

Except for the two World Series weeks, NBC has been behind in the ratings all fall. The only consolation has been that, overall, it has beaten CBS. But even that may have been fleeting. In November, according to Arbitron ratings, CBS was marginally ahead. The new programs Silverman will put in may not be better, but they will in general be lighter. "We want to get comedy and a light feel to our network," says Mike Weinblatt, president of NBC Entertainment. "We are looking for young adults, and comedy attracts them. If you look at the top ten or 15 shows, most of them have comedic overtones."

Leading NBC down that laugh track will be Supertrain, a kind of Loveboat on wheels. The supertrain is--Amtrak take note--a superduper, atom-powered New York-to-Los Angeles train (complete with swimming pool), featuring a changing cast of stars acting out what is billed as a "comedy thriller." Brothers and Sisters focuses on the comic adventures of three fraternity brothers in a Midwestern college. Any similarity between it and Animal House, this year's movie sleeper, is purely intentional. McLean Stevenson, whose series In the Beginning-was dropped by CBS earlier, comes to NBC in Hello, Larry, the story of a divorced father with two teen-age girls.

Cliffhangers is a one-hour show that has three of them, cliffhangers that is, each week. In a throwback to the old Perils of Pauline format, the hero of each of the three 20-minute segments will be left in some dire peril each week, with the viewer presumably holding his breath for seven days to see how he escapes. In Mrs. Columbo, a weekly series, the often talked about but never seen wife of the rumpled police lieutenant finally steps out from behind the raincoat to solve crimes on her own show. Silverman, the master of the spinoff, has achieved the ultimate spinoff, creating a new show out of a totally invisible character.

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