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Sitting on top of its Nielsens, ABC, for its part, claims to have hardly heard of the sweeps. "Our point of view has always been to schedule the network from the start of the season until the end of the season," says Network President Fred Pierce, 45, "not necessarily for any particular period. Our average for the entire season will be the same as it is in any of the so-called sweeps periods that everybody writes about." Like General Motors, which sets prices for the automobile industry, ABC now sets the tone for commercial television; it lays out its schedule, and the other two networks have to work against it.
Though Silverman, the "super programmer," usually has all the publicity, particularly since becoming NBC's president last year, many observers in the industry think that Pierce is really the better programmer. Organized and low key in temperament, he has largely done away with the second guessing and last-minute, panicky decisions that plague his competitors. If there have been any internal tremors since Silverman's defection, they are not evident. Tony Thomopoulos, Silverman's replacement, seems a perfect subaltern to the superefficient Pierce. "The network is working as well as or better than when Silverman was here," says one ABC executive. "Silverman's penchant for working 22 hours a day and his personal drives caused some serious problems. Thomopoulos delegates authority well. There are no more head-to-head confrontations."
But considering ABC's strength, all Thomopoulos had to do was avoid knocking over the furniture when he moved into Silverman's office. On at least three nights of the week—Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday—the network seems so secure that the opposition might just as well give lessons in Kabuki dancing. On Tuesday, Happy Days leads into Laverne & Shirley, which is followed by Three's Company and Taxi. Wednesday is a night for everybody: Eight Is Enough, the quintessential family show, introduces Charlie's Angels and Vega$, both of which unveil as much skin as the network censors will allow. On Thursday, Mork & Mindy is already so strong that it gave Angie, the show that now follows it, a 41 share of the audience on its premiere.
The other four nights, however, are ABC's weak spots. On Friday, NBC's Different Strokes, which began last month, is doing well, nicely beating The Incredible Hulk on CBS and crushing ABC's Making It. Unfortunately for NBC, its stockpile of good shows is so low that it cannot capitalize on such a strong lead-in; there is nothing for an encore. ABC also starts behind on Saturday, with the mindless Delta House, but the night is saved by Love Boat and Fantasy Island, both strong, fatuously cheerful shows. Sunday is also a downer for ABC, with the grotesque Battlestar Galactica, which is a very bad parody of Star Wars. Monday's starter, Salvage-1, usually loses out to NBC's Little House on the Prairie.