SPONSORS STICK TO ‘ATLANTA’

Despite the controversy over CBS’ “The Atlanta Child Murders,” no sponsors withdrew from the program prior to its two-hour opening installment on Sunday, and none has pulled out of its concluding chapter, scheduled for tonight at 8 (Channels 2 and 8), a CBS spokesman said Monday.

“It was sold out a long time ago,” spokesman Michael Silver said. The Sunday broadcast here contained eight commercial breaks in which a total of 35 commercials were shown--seven for cars and five for various shampoos or hair conditioners.

CBS calls the five-hour two-part TV movie “a drama based on fact,” but Atlanta community and business leaders have denounced it as containing “inaccuracies and distortions.”

Written by Oscar-winner Abby Mann (“Judgment at Nuremberg”), the film strongly suggests that Atlanta officials, more concerned about their city’s image than justice, railroaded Wayne Williams, a young black man who was convicted in 1982 of murdering two young black men. During his trial, he also was linked with the slayings of 10 black children from 1979 to 1981 for which he was not charged. (After his conviction, police closed their books on more than 20 other murders of young blacks.)

Mann has vehemently defended his dramatization of the case as fair.

The well-publicized dispute over the program didn’t appear to give a major boost to its Sunday ratings. According to overnight ratings from nine cities, “Murders” won its time period in six cities, but not by a wide margin, an A.C. Nielsen Co. spokesman said.

In New York, the nation’s largest TV market, “Murders” got a 19.6 rating, representing 1,289,680 homes, while its broadcast in Los Angeles got a 19.7 rating, or 872,000 homes, he said. The show’s national ratings aren’t expected until midday today.

Atlanta, where the movie’s two-hour opening segment was broadcast by CBS affiliate WAGA-TV, wasn’t among the nine cities where overnight ratings were taken.)

The “Atlanta Child Murders” docudrama (based on real events but with some fictionalization, composite characters and telescoping of events for better theatrics) has been described by CBS as a “fair dramatization.”

Prior to Sunday’s telecast, the network, after meeting with a delegation of Atlanta leaders that included Mayor Andrew Young, agreed to have an advisory about the movie read and displayed on the screen. Aired before the start of the film Sunday, the advisory said the movie “is not a documentary, but a drama based on certain facts surrounding the murder and disappearance of children in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. Some of the events and characters are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.”

The announcement, which took 12 seconds of air time, was followed by a “parental discretion” advisory warning that young viewers may find certain scenes disturbing.

On Friday, despite CBS’ planned advisory, Mayor Young, acting on behalf of the city’s business, civic and religious leaders, sent the nation’s top 100 TV advertisers a telegram to “express our deep concern” about “The Atlanta Child Murders.”

“This movie contains inaccuracies and distortions, and among other things it presents tragedy as entertainment” and “can cause unnecessary stress on America’s children,” the telegram said in part.

The telegram didn’t ask the advertisers to withdraw sponsorship of the movie, if they had any commercials scheduled to appear during the broadcast, according to Thomas Offenburger, Young’s spokesman.

He said the telegram only asked advertisers “to communicate your opinion on such programming” to CBS, and to “share your views on this serious problem with us.”

(On the same day the telegram was sent, Mann and his co-producers on the film, Gerald Rafshoon and Bill Finnegan, stoutly defended the program in full-page advertisements in the two leading show-business trade papers here.

(The ads, in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, described their movie as “towering drama” and said “it is the attention to fairness and accuracy, the amazing balance of fact and drama, that is the real achievement of ‘The Atlanta Child Murders.’

(“Frankly, we’re damn proud to have done it,” they added.)

There didn’t seem to be a major public reaction against the film after its Sunday telecast, according to CBS. The network said that its New York office got about 40 telephone protests. A spokeswoman for CBS-owned KCBS-TV in Los Angeles said the station received no protests and that the network’s offices here received only “10 or 15” calls protesting the film.

WAGA in Atlanta had expected a barrage of protests and had set up special phone lines, said Paul Raymon, station vice president and general manager. But “we were kind of surprised,” he said Monday. “We only got about 150 calls” against the movie.

Raymon, who said he personally thinks the movie was inaccurate but whose station hasn’t editorialized against it, said WAGA plans to air a live, half-hour discussion program about “Murders” at 11:30 p.m. (EST) today after the final chapter airs.

He said the program, in which Mann will be interviewed by satellite from Hollywood, will be broadcast from the courtroom in which Williams’ trial was held. It will be offered live by satellite to any CBS station that wants to air it, either live or on videotape.

Raymon said that this follow-up program is an attempt “to set the record straight, and separate the drama from the docu.” He said eight stations so far have accepted WAGA’s offer, one in the Midwest and the rest in the South.

KCBS-TV in Los Angeles won’t be carrying the program, a spokeswoman said.