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Everybody in television has his own crystal ball, however, and most of them show the end of 1980 looking remarkably like the beginning of 1979. ABC will be on top, according to that vision, and CBS and NBC will still be battling for No. 2. The ratings race will be even more intense than it is now, and all three networks will be spending more and more —and enjoying it less and less—just to run in place. As they struggle to be No. 1, the networks are beginning to look increasingly alike. Within the space of a few weeks, earlier this year, for instance, all three introduced imitations of the hit movie Animal House. All were bad.
Since about 1950, when TV really got started in the U.S., Americans have had a love affair with the tube, and each year the number of viewers rose. In 1977 Nielsen gave the networks a scare, however, with statistics indicating that for the first time viewing was down by a fraction. They felt relieved when Nielsen showed that the pattern was up again in 1978, but last week the Washington Post, in a nationwide sample, confirmed the earlier findings: in a random poll of 1,693 people, the Post reported that 53% said they were watching less TV than they were five years ago. Only 32% said that they were watching more. Any show, no matter how good, has a fatigue factor, and after a time viewership automatically drops. Perhaps a fatigue factor has set in for the whole medium.
Of all the network bosses, Paley seems to be most aware of the problem. "I think there's something in the air that says we want something better," he declares. His solution is to treat the ratings race something like the arms race, with the networks fashioning their own SALT treaty: All three, he says, should give two hours a week to high-quality programs that would not be rated at all. Each one would take a different night, and the public would have a total of six hours of fine viewing. "It would give the mass audience an opportunity to sample things they haven't tasted before," he says. "There might be—I think there would be—an elevation in taste and interest." Both Silverman and Pierce, however, say that they are already offering such programs. The Pax Paley will probably be more elusive than an Arab-Israeli peace.
The networks must also worry about a whole range of new competitors. Cable and pay TV are siphoning off more viewers each year; videocassette recorders enable people to record and watch shows at their own leisure, at least partially negating all the network attempts to find a strong 8 o'clock lead-in; and relatively cheap videodiscs will soon allow people to buy their own shows to play again and again. Public television is becoming increasingly popular and even the local affiliates are less reliable. They are frequently bumping network shows and replacing them with syndicated specials like Edward the King. The networks, in short, may soon be fighting for a smaller prize. Whether that will increase or reduce the chaos in television programming remains, quite literally, to be seen.