Silverman 's last-minute shuffle upstages the new series
As the 1978-79 season gets under way, TV's best show remains unchanged: it is the daredevil, off-screen saga of Master Programmer Fred Silverman. Newly enthroned as president of third-place NBC, Silverman just will not sit still. Last week on the eve of the new season's first premieres, he upstaged the entire industry by ripping up his own previously announced schedule. Silverman changed the prime-time lineup on five out of seven nights, shifting the long-running Saturday Night at the Movies to Wednesday and announcing a smorgasbord of "stunts" (movies and specials) for the fall. Says Mike Dann, ex-CBS program chief and onetime Silverman boss: "Never before have there been so many major moves so late in the game. Historically, the networks set the schedules on Washington's Birthday and never changed them. Now they're going to change them daily." Once again Silverman has rewritten the rules of his industry.
The reasons for the last-minute shuffle are not hard to guess. Stuck with weak programs chosen by the previous NBC regime, Silverman was headed for a third-place finish in September. Replacement series now in production will not be ready until January, when Silverman will have new—and no doubt better—material to choose from. He has ordered up roughly 40 pilots since taking over the network in June. In the meantime, explains Dancer Fitzgerald Sample's senior vice president Lou Dor kin, "Silverman has to work with what he's got. He has to stunt like crazy and cause as much confusion as possible until his own series are ready to go into place."
The new fall series, by popping in and out of the schedule throughout September, will escape conclusive Nielsen verdicts for many weeks. This novel stalling tactic typifies Silverman's bold programming.
Though many of Silverman's interim shows sound tired (a two-part Rescue from Gilligan's Island), they may fare better than the lameduck series that they will preempt. Among them are such rock-bottom offerings as Sword of Justice (Sept. 10, 8 p.m. E.D.T.), a contemporary rehash of Zorro, and The Eddie Capra Mysteries (Sept. 8, 9 p.m.), yet another rip-off of Perry Mason. Though Grandpa Goes to Washington (Sept. 7, 9 p.m.) has Jack Albertson playing a U.S. Senator, it seems as old-hat as The Farmer's Daughter. NBC's principal new sitcom, The Waverly Wonders (Sept. 7, 8 p.m.), boasts a surprisingly ingratiating star in Joe Namath, but is otherwise a pale carbon of Welcome Back, Kotter.
NBC's one good series is Lifeline (Sept. 7, 10 p.m.), a breakthrough show that uses documentary techniques to record the dramas of real-life doctors and their patients. Though marred by heavy-breathing narration and a worshipful view of American medicine, the first episode does present an affecting portrait of a surgeon at work. The show's closeup depiction of operations and lack of continuing characters ensure bad ratings, yet that didn't bother Silverman when he announced Lifeline last spring. "You've got to take chances," he told NBC's skeptical affiliates. "Lifeline could be the single show on any network this fall that changes the face of prime-time television."