ABC NEWS PUTS PROPOSED ‘SEVEN DAYS’ ON THE SHELF

Although a pilot program for “Seven Days” was made last year, the proposed ABC News series, created last year by former “Entertainment Tonight” managing editor Jim Bellows, has been shelved, a spokeswoman for the network said Wednesday.

“It’s on the back burner now,” the spokeswoman said of “Seven Days.” The pilot was anchored by Kathleen Sullivan, co-anchor of “ABC News This Morning,” the early-morning program that airs before “Good Morning America.”

Bellows now is working on a another ABC News project with Susan Winston, who was executive producer of “Good Morning America” until she left that top-rated program to work at ABC News last August, the spokeswoman said.

Bellows joined ABC News in 1983 after nearly two years with the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight.” Credited with giving that show-biz news program a harder journalistic edge, he was hired by ABC specifically to create a new weekly news program.

In a phone interview Wednesday from his New York office, Bellows said he wasn’t sure why ABC executives decided to shelve “Seven Days,” but that its estimated weekly cost of $500,000 may have been a factor.

Another possible reason, he said, was that the proposed series had little “rerun potential” because each week’s program would have reported only on that week’s major stories--in contrast to CBS’ high-rated “60 Minutes,” which contains feature and investigative segments that can be rebroadcast.

Before his tour at the helm of “Entertainment Tonight,” Bellows, 61, was editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Washington Star, before the latter folded. He was also an associate editor of the Los Angeles Times and editor of the late New York Herald Tribune.