NIELSEN RATES ‘57TH’ NO. 40

Praised and panned by critics, CBS News’ flashy, well-publicized “West 57th” news-magazinegot off to an unimpressive start in the ratings last week. Its debut was ranked 40th out of 64 prime-time shows aired, A.C. Nielsen Co. figures showed Tuesday.

The series, which features four young reporters and a fast pace, has been called a venture in “Mod Squad news,” an attempt to primarily appeal to well-heeled yuppie viewers--young urban professionals. CBS News emphatically denies this.

“West 57th,” which is getting a six-week run on CBS’ Tuesday schedule and will return later next season with 13 more programs, faced only reruns of NBC’s “Remington Steele” and ABC’s “MacGruder and Loud” in its Aug. 13 debut.

But the CBS program, its stories reported by Jane Wallace, Meredith Vieira, Bob Sirott and John Ferrugia, was third in its one-hour time period, seen in about 8.9 million homes its first time out. ABC’s repeat, seen in 11.5 million homes, won the time period, followed by NBC’s “Steele,” seen in an estimated 10.9 million homes.

(The week’s most-watched program was a repeat episode of NBC’s hit “The Cosby Show,” seen in 18.4 million homes. The least-watched was a rerun chapter of CBS’ canceled “Dukes of Hazzard,” viewed in only 5.3 million households.)

Reviews for the first installment of the new CBS series were decidedly mixed. Critics for the Associated Press and the Washington Post heartily approved of the effort, with the Post hailing it this way:

“The program shakes, rattles and rolls the cobwebs out of the magazine format and reinvigorates prime-time journalism with irreverent and ambitious inventiveness.”

The nay-sayers included Howard Rosenberg of The Times, who said “the premiere was carried off with penetrating superficiality,” while the New York Times critic said the program brings to mind “a supermarket tabloid set to music.”

Surprisingly, former CBS News President Richard S. Salant, a self-professed news traditionalist, was optimistic about the future of “West 57th,” even though he initially had worried that it would be all flash and no substance.

“I expected something much worse, something like a cross between ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘PM Magazine,’ ” he said in a phone interview shortly after the debut of “West 57th.”

“Its only trouble was that it didn’t know how to tell its stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s nothing in it that can’t be fixed by letting Wallace and Vieira just be the excellent reporters they are, and maybe adding somebody like Bruce Morton.”

Morton is a veteran CBS News correspondent based in Washington.

“This was their first shot out and maybe they’ll do better,” said Salant, who retired from CBS News in 1979 after 15 years as president. He noted that other network news magazines also have had less than auspicious beginnings.

He cited “Who’s Who,” a CBS News series that Dan Rather anchored. It started badly in 1977, then improved, but still flopped, Salant said. It was a spinoff of “60 Minutes,” which “wasn’t very good” either when it began in 1968, he added.

That series initially tended to be lightweight, “and then we hardened it up a little,” he said. Now airing on Sundays, the program has become one of CBS’ top-rated shows.

Salant also cited ABC’s “20/20,” which had a jazzy, fast-paced debut in June, 1978, but, unlike “West 57th,” was unanimously panned by critics. Completely revamped in a week by ABC News President Roone Arledge, it now gets solid ratings and “is a fine program,” Salant said.

If CBS News can find a middle ground between NBC News’ slow-paced new “American Almanac” series that premiered two weeks ago and what was the opening “West 57th” effort, “they’ll have a damn good magazine,” Salant said.