NBC’S TINKER SEES REST OF SEASON AT 2

During his hour at the podium, NBC Board Chairman Grant Tinker said he thinks NBC will remain No. 2 in nightly ratings through this season, was magnanimous to an ABC rival who made an unwise decision and hoped that viewers indeed now seek quality in network shows.

He was followed by NBC News President Lawrence Grossman, who reported ratings progress for “Today” and “NBC Nightly News,” announced two new series in the wings, one of the shows for children, and suggested that there should be an end to punitive damage awards in libel trials----even though NBC was awarded $3 million in such damages last November.

So it went Wednesday at the two executives’ back-to-back news conferences at the Century Plaza, where about 80 out-of-town TV critics and writers are gathered for this winter’s press powwows put on by the three networks and the Public Broadcasting Service.

The Tinker-Grossman show was quite relaxed, a state no doubt made possible by the ascent of NBC to No. 2 in prime-time ratings so far this season and the unexpected descent of ABC to the third place slot that the Peacock network occupied for the last nine years.

Tinker began on a note of corporate modesty. He said he had no opening statement to make on that No. 2 business. Predictably, he was asked about it. He yielded. The competition will be tough, he allowed, “but I would think that we would wind up No. 2” at season’s end.

(Front-runner CBS still is a full ratings point ahead of NBC in the season-to-date averages and is expected to cross the Nielsen finish line this spring as the winner.)

Tinker also sympathized with ABC Entertainment President Lewis Erlicht who, although refusing to concede the ratings race, admitted last weekend that he’d rejected a scriptless proposal for what became NBC’s “The Cosby Show.”

The proposal came Erlicht’s way, according to NBC, during a momentary dispute between those offering the show and NBC executives last year. NBC retrieved the series and it become one of the network’s biggest hits this season.

But Tinker, who has a reputation as a gentleman in an executive-eat-executive business, refused to make sport of Erlicht and the latter’s decision.

“He’s having a tough time right now, and we know something about that time,” he said. “We were there. We’ve all made mistakes.” He cited his own network’s 1983 fall schedule, when nine out of nine new shows bombed. “That was our Lew Erlicht year, and we just went right into the tank. . . .”

In his turn at bat, NBC News chief Grossman said NBC will air four prime-time “White Paper” news specials in March, April, June and July. The shows respectively will study women in the workplace; how the United States got involved in the Vietnam War; hostility to the press, and pensions.

Also coming, he said, are two weekly news series, “W/5” for children (the title comes from the five W’s of journalism, who, where, what, when and why), and an as-yet untitled prime-time program anchored by Roger Mudd.

He hopes to get the Mudd show on the air by August, he said. He said “W/5” probably would air in the daytime on weekends, but he didn’t know when it would premiere. The latter show will be anchored by William Schechner, co-anchor of the ill-fated “NBC News Overnight.”

On other matters, Grossman said he wasn’t alarmed about Reagan Administration plans to help local TV stations interview high government officials, including President Reagan, via a satellite hookup provided by the White House.

Reporters should be on guard against the use of government funds to create an outlet for “propaganda vehicles,” he said, “but I think the more information that goes out the healthier we’ll (the country) be.”

He also touched on punitive or “punishment” damages in discussing the multimillion-dollar libel suits brought against NBC, CBS and Time magazine by independent presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., Gen. William C. Westmoreland and former Israeli general Ariel Sharon, respectively

It is important, he said, that “even those in the highest places” of government be allowed to sue and be paid actual damages if it is proved that “they have been unfairly treated and have been specifically damaged by malicious or purposely inaccurate reporting.”

However, he said, “I’m not so sure but that the courts or the legislature should not eliminate punitive damages.” He didn’t elaborate on the point.

(Plaintiffs in libel cases often seek double, sometimes more, the amount in punitive damages that they request in actual damages. For example, Westmoreland’s $120-million suit against CBS seeks $40 million in compensatory damages and $80 million in punitive damages.)

Grossman wryly noted that he was proposing an end to punitive awards even though last November the federal court jury in the LaRouche-NBC suit not only rejected LaRouche’s allegations, but then awarded NBC $3 million punitive damages in the network’s countersuit against LaRouche.

The jury also awarded NBC $2,000 in actual damages.

Grossman was asked if NBC had been paid its $3 million yet.

“We haven’t gotten it yet, and I don’t know when we’ll get it,” he said.

Wednesday’s meet-the-press session was remarkable in one respect: Tinker, the recipient of hostile questions from visiting TV writers last summer about the violence in NBC’s hit “A-Team” and new “Hunter” series, didn’t get any of that this this time out.

Instead, the NBC executive, who often talks of the need for quality TV entertainment, was asked if the gradual ratings success of critically acclaimed series on his and the two other networks indicates a trend, a growing demand for literate, well-crafted programs.

“I certainly hope you’re right,” he said. He added that he doesn’t really know if such a demand for quality shows is afoot but that “I hope that what we--all three networks--are doing will beget more such television.”

In Wednesday’s editions of Calender, it was reported that NBC will rebroadcast its high-rated “The Burning Bed” TV movie about wife-battering on March 10. The report said the broadcast will come during a ratings “sweep” period important to network affiliates.

In fact, the movie is airing after that one-month period, which ends on Feb. 27, according to a spokesman for the A.C. Nielsen Co.