Video: The Big Boys' Blues

Challenged by cable, VCRs and an audience eager to zap, the networks face the most troubled fall in their history

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Even before this fall, however, the excitement had largely drained out of , these annual new-season blitzes. For one thing, there is too much happening elsewhere on the dial, from PBS to pay cable. For another, authentic new network hits seem harder and harder to come by. When the audience for network TV was huge and habitual, nearly anything that programmers threw out at least got sampled. Today most new shows seem doomed to demise unless they get a time slot next to an established hit. Of the 22 network series introduced last fall, only two wound up in the season's Top 30. One, A Different World, had the foolproof time period after The Cosby Show; the other, My Two Dads, followed Family Ties.

How did the networks get themselves into such a mess? To a great extent, they are victims of a changing TV universe. "The networks are not doing anything wrong," says Ted Turner, the veteran network basher who tried to take over CBS three years ago. "It's like AM radio. They weren't doing anything wrong either, but FM radio was better." Years of colossal audiences and soaring ad revenues, however, bred complacency. "The networks closed their eyes to reality," says Ralph Baruch, former president of Viacom International and now a senior fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies. "They didn't fully comprehend the extent of technological changes." Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family and now the owner of six independent TV stations, sees the networks' distress as retribution for their copycat programming. "If these guys were standing in a circle with razors at each other's throats," he asserts, "they could not be committing suicide more energetically."

Yet viewers are not zapping the networks simply because of bad shows. Programming is no worse than it was during the 1960s and '70s, when viewing levels were lofty; indeed, with such ground-breaking fare as Miami Vice, Moonlighting and Late Night with David Letterman, it is probably better. The real reason is that network TV is no longer the only game in town. Among the new players:

-- Cable reaches 52.8% of all U.S. TV homes, up from 17.5% ten years ago, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co. Viewers who got their homes wired back in the 1970s were attracted mainly by the promise of better reception and pay- cable movies. Now they can sample a growing smorgasbord of fare, from news and sports to music videos. Flush with ad revenues, cable networks are competing aggressively for programming. ESPN, for example, has picked up a package of Sunday-night NFL games that are bringing record high ratings for the sports network. Cable may also bid for the rights to part of the 1992 Olympics. Canceled network shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd have been picked up by cable, which is developing its own movies and series as well. Although each channel takes only a sliver of the viewing pie, collectively they hurt. Says NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff: "We're being nibbled to death by these piranhas known as CNN, Lifetime and Sunday Night Football."

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