ABC gears up Roots: The Next Generations
Special, miniseries, big event: these are the most overused terms in television's absurd lexicon of hype. But in the 1978-79 season, when almost every prime-time show is labeled spectacular by the networks, one mini-series surely justifies the advance billing. That show is Roots: The Next Generations, ABC's sequel to the most popular TV entertainment of all time. When this 14-hour production airs over seven nights in early February, upwards of 100 million viewers may tune in to see if it is a worthy successor to the original Roots. ABC expects a huge audience but a tough one. Explains Network Senior Vice President Brandon Stoddard: "The real apprehension is not whether we're going to get a 66 share in the Nielsens again. Based on the original run and this fall's rerun, we know there is still a great deal of interest in the story. The real question for us is: Have we kept up the standards we set last time?"
At first, none of Roots' creators wanted to risk such comparisons. "We had at least six lengthy discussions about whether or not to do a sequel," recalls Alex Haley, the man whose genealogical search launched the whole Roots phenomenon. "Our initial feelings were negative. We felt the other did so well that we should just let it hang up there. Then, very gradually, it began to come together. Someone would ask me about stories I had, so I told them about Sister Carrie or Aunt Liz, and then some more."
Eventually Haley started carrying a tape recorder around with him at all times to dictate his family tales. Within six weeks he piled up more than 800 pages of transcript. From this raw material, Writer Ernest Kinoy and Producer Stan Margulies constructed a plot that chronicles Haley's family from 1882 to 1965. Roots 2 opens in Henning, Tenn., where Chicken George settled the family at the end of Roots 1. The show's climax will dramatize Haley's arrival in Gambia to search for traces of his African forebear, Kunta Kinte. Along the way, Roots 2 will encompass the Reconstruction, two world wars, the growth of urban black ghettos and the birth of the modern civil rights movement.
Unlike the first Roots, a then risky venture produced on a bare-bones budget, the new show is going first class. (Estimated budget: $18 million, three times the cost of the original.) "This time," says Margulies, "the network said, 'Name it —you guys are king of the mountain.' " Over $1 million was spent just to rebuild Henning near Los Angeles: during Roots 2, viewers will see the town grow from a dusty rural outpost into an industrialized modern city. Says Margulies: "Finally I had the money to shoot in an honest-to-God cotton field."