Hollywood is busy right now, as the networks scramble to put together their fall schedules and wrestle with such weighty problems as which show will get Seinfeld's time slot and how quickly they can clone Ally McBeal. This spring, however, the most intriguing moves are being contemplated at the network news divisions. The result could be a big step on the road to a long dreamed of, but never realized, goal: a network newscast in the lucrative, heavily viewed hours of prime time.
ABC News executives are mulling a radical overhaul of their two successful magazine shows, merging PrimeTime Live and 20/20 into one program (most likely called 20/20) and expanding it to four or even five nights next season. The revised show may also include at least a few minutes of the day's news at the top of the hour. "It's one of the most important decisions ABC has confronted in recent years," says News president David Westin, "or will confront for some time to come."
At NBC, meanwhile, Dateline, the uncannily successful magazine show anchored by Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips, keeps spreading like kudzu into new prime-time real estate. The program began in 1992 and is now seen four times a week. Next fall it will probably expand to five, and West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer acknowledges that his ultimate goal is a full slate of Dateline, seven nights a week.
Even at CBS, where prime-time news has had a bumpier road (48 Hours, now in its 11th season, is still plugging along, but Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel has fizzled in the ratings), programmers are toying with an alluring but risky idea: expanding the venerated 60 Minutes to a second night. The chief stumbling block is the people behind 60 Minutes, who fear diluting the show. "We think it's a terrible idea," says executive producer Don Hewitt. "[Network programmers] hope to persuade us. But they haven't yet."
Enjoy life while you can, NYPD Blue and Chicago Hope. Your likes may not be long for this world. All three networks seem to be moving inexorably toward a prime-time news hour nearly every night of the week (usually at 10 p.m., 9 p.m. in the middle of the country), which could combine an evening-news-style wrap-up of the day's events with the kind of feature segments and investigative pieces that currently fill the magazine shows. Such a program could even--somewhere down the road, when the Rathers and Brokaws and Jenningses have passed from the scene--replace the traditional evening newscast altogether.