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The expectation is that ABC will do even better this year than last—perhaps topping CBS's share of the market in 1968-69, the peak season of its many good years. Instead of consolidating his gains and hanging on to proven shows, as the programmer of the top network usually does, Silverman has torn apart ABC's schedule in search of even bigger victories. "Freddie's like a shark's belly. He can't get enough," says Producer Robert Wood, who was CBS president when Silverman was that network's programmer. To start with, Silverman threw away three moderately successful shows— Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman and The Tony Randall Show—on the theory that they were beginning to fade. CBS quickly grabbed Wonder Woman and Tony Randall, and NBC was happy to pick up The Bionic Woman.
Then, in a move that infuriated his competitors—and cost the three networks a total of perhaps $17 million in advertising revenue—he boldly moved the TV season up two weeks, from Sept. 19 to Sept. 6, the day after Labor Day and the time when millions of Americans, their summer over, will once again focus on the tube. Finally, doubling the intake of martinis at network lunches all over Manhattan, he decided to launch ABC's season with a $7 million blockbuster: six nights in a row of Washington: Behind Closed Doors, the fictionalized saga of the rise and fall of President Richard M. Nixon (see box).
A similar Silverman strategy last January made Roots the most successful television production in history and put ABC firmly on top for the second half of the 1976-77 season. Washington, reasons Silverman, may do the same for the new season.
Each night, all week long, the two-hour segments will be chockablock full of promotion spots for other ABC shows, and viewers will, Silverman believes, get into the habit of watching ABC. Says CBS's Wussler: "There never has been a season so complicated. Or so confusing."
Down the street at NBC, Program Vice President Paul Klein talks angrily in terms of war. NBC, he says, must stop Silverman's daring attack in the first week. "What ABC did [with Washington] was to try to position themselves without competition—an arrogant move," he told NBC affiliates. "It's essential to knock Washington off on Tuesday, and if we can injure Washington on Wednesday, then we will have done a job on them. When the numbers come in, they will either have a success or a huge failure—and the season will be over."
Klein's analysis is overdrawn—the failure of Washington would dampen but not ruin ABC's season —yet his reasoning is essentially correct. The course of the season will be strongly influenced by the first week. A measure of the impoverishment of CBS and NBC, however, is the quality of their counterattacks on Washington that first, fateful Tuesday night. Both have scheduled movies that failed at the box office and with the critics. CBS will air 1976's Logan's Run, a futuristic science-fiction thriller in which global overcrowding has dictated that people be put to death at the age of 30. NBC will carry 1975's The Hindenburg, in which George C. Scott tries to prevent the disaster that befell Nazi Germany's greatest dirigible.