The Big Boys' Blues

By Richard Zoglin

Like all good TV dramas, this one starts with an exciting precredit sequence. The time is early 1979, and the network wars have reached a frenzied peak. Sitcoms like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley are riding high in the Nielsens. Blockbuster mini-series are vying to reproduce the huge audiences that tuned in for Roots. Star programmer Fred Silverman, the Man with the Golden Gut, is ready to try everything from Gary Coleman to Supertrain in his quest to lift NBC out of the prime-time ratings cellar.

So fade in to Sunday, Feb. 11, 1979, the evening of the most widely publicized programming matchup in TV history. On CBS: a rare telecast of Gone With the Wind. On NBC: the TV debut of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On ABC: a much hyped TV movie, Elvis! Some network programmers grumble that this costly confrontation amounts to a three-way kamikaze mission. But it draws the crowds. Elvis! wins a 40% share of the viewing audience, Gone With the Wind gets 36%, and Cuckoo's Nest pulls in 32%. Does that add up to more than 100%? Indeed: some households had two sets on.

Now cut to fall of 1988 and, in network television, nothing adds up. The three networks are still scrapping with one another for ratings supremacy, but the days when they dominated the airwaves so thoroughly are just a Wonder Years memory. Only a few theatrical movies comparable to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest show up on network TV anymore; when they do, most people have already seen them on pay cable or videocassette. Gone With the Wind is no longer available to the networks at all; rights to it are owned by Atlanta TV mogul Ted Turner, who used it to launch his new cable channel, TNT, last week. And the days when TV movies could attract 40% of the viewing audience, almost without trying, are as dead as Elvis.

NBC, ABC and CBS -- the three companies that have virtually defined American television since the days of Uncle Miltie, Maverick and Playhouse 90 -- may not be dying, but they are sick and fighting for survival. Eating away at their audience is a panoply of new video choices: cable channels, independent stations, videocassette recorders, even an upstart "fourth network." The three networks' combined share of the audience shrank to a low of 70% last season, and the decline shows no signs of leveling off. New technologies like home satellite dishes and fiber-optic cable could eventually pose even greater threats. "We've been outplayed, outsold, outmarketed, outhustled by younger entrepreneurs," says Howard Stringer, the former president of CBS News recently promoted to head of the CBS Broadcast Group. "We are still the Goliath of broadcasting, but we will be slain by all the little Davids if we don't pay attention to them."

As if that weren't trauma enough, the networks are struggling through their worst autumn ever. Because of the five-month writers' strike, which shut down production on most shows during the spring and summer, the fall season is a shambles. The first of the new series premiered on NBC last week, but others will take months to dribble in. The disruption could give viewers one more excuse to flip the dial and sample the competition -- just what the networks don't need.

Even before this fall, however, the excitement had largely drained out of , these annual new-season blitzes. For one thing, there is too much happening elsewhere on the dial, from PBS to pay cable. For another, authentic new network hits seem harder and harder to come by. When the audience for network TV was huge and habitual, nearly anything that programmers threw out at least got sampled. Today most new shows seem doomed to demise unless they get a time slot next to an established hit. Of the 22 network series introduced last fall, only two wound up in the season's Top 30. One, A Different World, had the foolproof time period after The Cosby Show; the other, My Two Dads, followed Family Ties.

How did the networks get themselves into such a mess? To a great extent, they are victims of a changing TV universe. "The networks are not doing anything wrong," says Ted Turner, the veteran network basher who tried to take over CBS three years ago. "It's like AM radio. They weren't doing anything wrong either, but FM radio was better." Years of colossal audiences and soaring ad revenues, however, bred complacency. "The networks closed their eyes to reality," says Ralph Baruch, former president of Viacom International and now a senior fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies. "They didn't fully comprehend the extent of technological changes." Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family and now the owner of six independent TV stations, sees the networks' distress as retribution for their copycat programming. "If these guys were standing in a circle with razors at each other's throats," he asserts, "they could not be committing suicide more energetically."

Yet viewers are not zapping the networks simply because of bad shows. Programming is no worse than it was during the 1960s and '70s, when viewing levels were lofty; indeed, with such ground-breaking fare as Miami Vice, Moonlighting and Late Night with David Letterman, it is probably better. The real reason is that network TV is no longer the only game in town. Among the new players:

-- Cable reaches 52.8% of all U.S. TV homes, up from 17.5% ten years ago, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co. Viewers who got their homes wired back in the 1970s were attracted mainly by the promise of better reception and pay- cable movies. Now they can sample a growing smorgasbord of fare, from news and sports to music videos. Flush with ad revenues, cable networks are competing aggressively for programming. ESPN, for example, has picked up a package of Sunday-night NFL games that are bringing record high ratings for the sports network. Cable may also bid for the rights to part of the 1992 Olympics. Canceled network shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd have been picked up by cable, which is developing its own movies and series as well. Although each channel takes only a sliver of the viewing pie, collectively they hurt. Says NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff: "We're being nibbled to death by these piranhas known as CNN, Lifetime and Sunday Night Football."

-- Syndicated programming -- shows distributed directly to stations rather than through the networks -- has spurted in popularity, both on independent stations and network affiliates. Many of the latter are shoving aside network fare for syndicated shows (on which they can sell more advertising time). The ABC and CBS stations in New York City, for example, have shifted their networks' evening newscasts from 7 p.m. to the less watched 6:30 time period to make room for syndicated game shows.

-- The Fox network, though hampered by a weaker station lineup, has also made an impact on network viewing, especially on Sunday nights. Fox's 21 Jump Street, a teen-oriented cop show, has grabbed a healthy share of the audience at 7 p.m., and the new crime-stopper series America's Most Wanted often beats several network shows in the weekly Nielsen list.

-- VCR machines, exotic and expensive toys just ten years ago, have found their way into 60% of American homes, according to Nielsen. A study by Paul Kagan Associates, a California-based research firm, found that the typical VCR household rents 4 1/2 movies a month, and such viewing has almost certainly cuts into network ratings. More insidiously, the VCR -- and its high-tech sidekick, the remote-control unit -- has encouraged a new, more active method of TV viewing known as "grazing." A survey published last month by Channels magazine found that 75% of all TV homes have remote-control buttons, and nearly half of the button pushers say they switch channels frequently during programming.

All of this has helped depress the numbers that networks live by. A decade ago, the benchmark of prime-time success was a Nielsen rating of 20. (The rating refers to the percentage of total TV homes that are tuned in to a particular show. The "share" refers to the percentage of homes watching TV that are tuned to that show.) In the 1980-81 season, 28 network series achieved a 20 rating or better; last season only nine did. For many weeks last summer, not a single network show cracked the 20-rating level.

The ratings for expensive network specials and sports have also been sinking. The Summer Olympics on NBC drew an average prime-time rating of 17.9, well under the 21.2 promised to advertisers -- and a Bob Beamon long jump away from the 23.2 drawn by ABC for the Summer Games in 1984. NBC, which paid $300 million for the TV rights, will show an unexpected loss because of the compensation time it must give advertisers.

Blockbuster mini-series too have slipped badly in the ratings since the days of Roots and The Winds of War. Because of their high production costs and poor performance in reruns, they are rarely profitable. ABC's 30-hour version of War and Remembrance (the first 18 hours of which will be telecast in November) could lose up to $20 million for the network, ABC executives say, even if it does well in the ratings. These elephantine projects are probably doomed to extinction.

Such results have had an inevitable impact on the networks' bottom lines. Profits have plummeted at all but NBC. Each of the three networks has been taken over by a new corporate owner -- ABC by Capital Cities Communications, NBC by General Electric, and CBS by Loews chairman Laurence Tisch -- that has instituted severe cost-cutting measures. Some 3,500 people , from technicians to network censors, have been laid off at the Big Three in the past two years. Although some further postelection cuts are anticipated at CBS News and NBC News, the bulk of the reducing is probably over. "We need all the people we've got right now," says Capital Cities/ABC chairman Thomas Murphy. "I would think the other networks would be finished also."

Instead, the networks are looking for ways to expand their revenue base. In many cases, that means joining the competition. ABC owns 80% of ESPN, as well as smaller pieces of the Lifetime and Arts & Entertainment cable services. The network is also producing shows for cable, such as a documentary series on the Cold War, The Eagle and the Bear, done in collaboration with A&E. NBC is launching a 24-hour business-news channel for cable early next year, and has formed a home-video partnership with Columbia Pictures. Only Tisch at CBS has held back from such diversification. Since taking over the network in 1986, he has sold off CBS's record and publishing divisions, leaving the company with a hoard of cash and inviting rumors that he plans to sell the network. Tisch denies it; he has instead gone shopping for more local stations. (Despite the troubled times, the network-owned stations have continued to show healthy profits.)

The networks' financial woes are increasingly being reflected on the home screen, for good and ill. News programming is becoming more popular with network executives because it costs less to produce. CBS now has three hours of news in prime time; ABC has one and is planning a second for January. The networks are looking more kindly at other "reality" shows as well. ABC, for instance, has just set up a new subsidiary to produce nature shows and other nonfiction specials, both for the network and for other outlets.

Entertainment shows, meanwhile, are facing a cost squeeze. Hollywood producers, who must negotiate with the tight-fisted networks over fees to cover their production costs, are avoiding shows with elaborate action scenes and expensive locations (partly because such shows are doing poorly on the rerun market). "I sit in on development meetings," says Harris Katleman, president of 20th Century Fox Television Production. "I don't let someone develop a Star Wars. It would be crazy. We don't do westerns either, and we don't do big shows that require locations, car crashes and lots of stunts."

This penny-pinching approach could lead to what producer Aaron Spelling calls "bottled shows." "We always want to see someone come driving up to a house and going to the front door," says Spelling. "Now you will hear the car pulling up, the door slamming, and see someone coming into the house. I hate to see that happen." Some shows, like CBS's Wiseguy, are being shot in Canada to save money. Others are being jointly produced with foreign companies to spread the costs.

Are chintzy-looking game shows and talk shows in prime time the next step? No, network executives insist. "Our leg up is providing a distinctive service to our affiliates, who more and more are getting their doors knocked on by syndicators," says NBC's Tartikoff. "If you go down in costs, you give up what makes you a distinctive service." Not that distinctive: Geraldo Rivera, whose live specials on Al Capone's vaults and the drug trade have drawn high ratings in syndication, will do an NBC special later this month, Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground.

One place the networks have gone in an effort to alleviate their cost squeeze is Washington. Because of federal regulations, the networks can * produce only a limited number of their own shows and cannot share in the lucrative syndication market (selling the reruns of hit shows to local stations and cable). The networks are lobbying hard to remove such restrictions. Says ABC's Murphy: "The three networks want a level playing field."

The networks are also counterattacking by looking to expand their advertising to magazines, movie theaters, billboards and other media. "We can't depend on promoting next week's shows on this week's, because people are less habitual," says David Poltrack, CBS's senior vice president of planning and research. ABC has started placing commercials on cable. NBC has even put flyers for its shows in boxes of TDK videocassettes.

Meanwhile, a subtle shift is taking place in the networks' traditional programming strategy. While all networks still long for a mass-audience hit like The Cosby Show or Who's the Boss?, they are now more willing to take a chance on shows with a smaller, more targeted audience. ABC's thirtysomething and CBS's Tour of Duty probably would not have survived on network TV ten years ago. Today, when the audience levels needed for prime-time success are lower, both have been renewed. "Tour of Duty gets a 10.8 rating and a 17 share," says Poltrack. "It wouldn't have lasted three weeks in the '70s. But it is considered a good buy ((by advertisers)) because it appeals to young men. The networks have gone from broadcasting to narrowcasting."

Yet it is mostly business as usual at the networks, a dangerous attitude while new technological advances loom on the horizon. An estimated 2.2 million homes get their TV programming via home satellite dishes. That number could grow as dishes come down in size and cost, especially if companies begin programming directly for the home-satellite audience. Satellite distribution could also upset the traditional relationship between networks and their affiliates. Local news operations can get reports via satellite from syndicated services, or directly from sister stations in other cities, rather than depending on the network. Some news executives warn that stations could one day assemble their own national newscasts instead of picking up the CBS Evening News or ABC's World News Tonight. Suppliers of prime-time programming too could someday abandon the network middleman and distribute their wares directly to stations via satellite. So far, however, there is no sign that stations are ready to give up the financial rewards of being a network affiliate for the uncertainty of independence.

Another technology that could help bury the networks is fiber-optic cable, which can greatly increase the number of channels brought into the home. Fiber optics will make possible a new array of home services, such as video shopping and information retrieval. The technology could come more quickly, moreover, if telephone companies are allowed to transmit cable programming over fiber- optic lines; the FCC is contemplating asking Congress to permit just that.

The networks have won at least one round in the fight to stay abreast of new technology. High-definition TV, currently being developed by companies in the U.S., Europe and Japan, will provide a picture of much greater resolution and clarity than present ones have. But many different systems are competing for acceptance, and some could not be delivered over broadcast TV without major retooling. Last month, however, the FCC ruled that any HDTV system approved for transmission in the U.S. must not render existing TV sets obsolete. That seems to ensure that the networks will not be left out.

Where will the networks be ten years from now? The doomsday scenarios come in varying shapes and sizes. As the network audience dwindles, one of the Big Three may be forced to close down or sharply curtail its operations. Or all may survive, but merely as three players in a new, more fragmented competition among eight or ten networks (both broadcast and cable) of nearly equal size. More radical transformations may be in store. Tom Winner, executive vice president and media director for Campbell-Mithun-Esty advertising, predicts that the networks "will ultimately be program services selling product to the highest bidder" -- station groups, cable, home video or satellite companies.

Certainly the days of captive audiences and free-spending arrogance are over. "Network television is a mature medium," says Grant Tinker, the former NBC chairman who now runs his own production company. "There is no more audience growth. The universe is what it is." In a survey of top advertisers, Eugene Secunda, professor of marketing at Baruch College in New York City, found that 53% would consider making a significant shift in their ad dollars if the three networks' share dropped to 65%. "You're dealing with inevitable decline," says Secunda. "It's like those folks who kidded themselves that the Roman Empire was going to go on forever. It was an illusion."

But don't run Sermonette just yet. Despite audience erosion, network TV is still the most pervasive mass medium in the country and a powerful tool for advertisers. "I think we've got a long way to go before the house of cards collapses," says Larry Gerbrandt of Paul Kagan Associates. "On any given night, with any given show, they have the ability to attract a predominant share of the TV audience." Alan Gottesman, media analyst at Paine Webber, asserts, "The next thing you will hear will be the turning of the worm. There is an operating cycle of about two years in this business. Each network has gone through a semicataclysmic change in management. If you add two years to that, you come to the bottom of the cycle. This is the bottom."

The networks, not surprisingly, are making optimistic projections. At CBS, Poltrack is preparing a report for his bosses forecasting what the TV world will be like in the year 1995. It predicts that network shares will stabilize at 63% to 65% and contends that cable's inroads are peaking. NBC president Robert Wright argues that the networks' problems are being overstated compared with those of competitors. "There is more frustration on the small end of the scale," he says. "It is scary, for example, for niche services like the Discovery Channel. They may already have 100% of their audience."

Such predictions may be self-serving. But this is, after all, a TV drama, so let's give it a happy ending. The networks will live on -- chastened and less powerful, perhaps, but still the main providers of news and entertainment for the mass audience. Although the explosion of new video choices has been a boon for viewers, the Big Three still serve a unique and important function: providing a communal link, a source of shared experiences, a finger on the nation's pulse. Network shows are the ones we watch together and talk about at work the next morning -- not just presidential debates and space-shuttle disasters but the Academy Awards and Johnny Carson's monologue and Thursday night's Cosby Show. The networks will survive because we need them.

Or is that just another prime-time fantasy?

With reporting by Mary Cronin and William Tynan/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles