TV’S CRYSTAL GAZER HAS EYE FOR LOSERS

A year ago, while other media buyers were eyeing CBS’ “Falcon Crest” Fridays at 10 p.m., Paul Schulman insistently championed NBC’s “Miami Vice” on behalf of his clients, advertisers who spend a total of $150 million a year on network TV commercial time. The show went on to become a hit for NBC, emulated this year by at least two new series.

Schulman currently is touting “The Golden Girls,” a sitcom about three middle-aged roomies--also set in Miami and also from NBC--as the only sure-fire hit of the fall season. And “Miami Vice,” he predicts, will outdraw “Falcon Crest.”

“By the way, we’re the only agency that says that,” Schulman said with a grin.

It’s not so much that he’s crazy about Miami. The setting of his two favorite series is pure coincidence.

But it won’t be a coincidence if Schulman’s prognostications come true--including his forecast that NBC will overtake CBS to become No. 1 in the ratings for 1985-86.

Schulman is president of the Paul Schulman Co., a division of Advanswers Media Programming, and his single most important task is to pick each TV season’s hits and misses well in advance of their fall starts. He claims a “79% success rate in picking programs” over the last 1 1/2 decades, noting matter-of-factly that “the networks are not anywhere near that.

“We can tell you what won’t work. We can also tell you what will work. To sit down and say ‘Golden Girls’ is the only one of the 20 new programs for next season that’s gonna be a hit--you’re not gonna get too many agencies that will say that.”

Because he was the first to finger “Miami Vice,” Schulman said, he was able to buy clients such as Ralston-Purina and Firestone Tire and Rubber a year’s worth of 30-second spots in that show for less than $40,000 per spot. They’re still running at that rate, even though more recent buyers are paying as much as $170,000.

He has little use for the scientific surveying and testing he said the networks employ in creating their prime-time schedules. Instead, he relies on his gut feelings, his evaluation of competing shows’ relative performance and information gleaned from meetings with producers and programmers. And of course, there’s his knowledge of viewing habits, honed over his 24 years in the business.

He also employs his own somewhat unscientific sampling: “I have some friends and neighbors whom I bring over to look at pilots,” he explained. “The first year or two I let people see pilots, I totally discount their opinion because of the fact that it’s such a big deal for them to see something that hasn’t been on yet. So I let them see it, but they don’t count in my sample.”

Schulman said he showed “Golden Girls” to “about 20 different families--58, 60 people. Everybody, every age from 6 to 73, has loved it.” The show would seem to skew toward an older audience--Bea Arthur, Betty White and Rue McClanahan star as two widows and a divorcee in their “golden years.” But Schulman is convinced the show will attract a young audience as well, because “kids will love Estelle Getty” as Arthur’s wildly outspoken mother.

Some other prescient observations:

--Don’t expect much from two new attempts at family sitcoms a la NBC’s “The Cosby Show.” “Growing Pains” (ABC, Tuesday at 8:30) is “pathetic . . . simply proof (why) Alan Thicke couldn’t work in syndication and now it will show he can’t work on the network.” “Charlie & Company” (CBS, Wednesday at 9 p.m.) “is on the air simply to prove that Gladys Knight and Flip Wilson didn’t age well. Six weeks and then it’s out.”

--Pencil in a dismal forecast for clones of NBC’s “Miami Vice” too. Schulman described as “dreadful” the pilot of “Hollywood Beat” (ABC, Saturday, 8 p.m.), about two undercover cops assigned to Hollywood Boulevard. He gave slightly higher marks to “The Insiders” (ABC, Wednesday, 8 p.m.), about a free-lance investigative journalist and his ex-con pal. “Both prove how hard it is to do ‘Miami Vice.’ The money’s there; it just doesn’t look like it. It’s a bad, bad copy.”

--Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” (NBC, Sunday at 8 p.m.) may not live up to expectations, in part because the heavyweight behind-the-scenes talent has little appeal for “the people with the 12-inch black-and-white sets.” Another problem is the limited promotability due to Spielberg’s resistance to advance previews. “Every week you promote the same two words, ‘Steven’ and ‘Spielberg,’ and I’m afraid that makes it second in the time period, not first.”

--”The Colbys” (ABC, Thursday at 9 p.m.), the “Dynasty” spinoff due to start later in the season, likewise “is not a sure-fire hit.” Schulman cites its competition from “Simon & Simon” on CBS and “Cheers” and “Night Court” on NBC. “I bought ‘Colbys’ for the first two nights because I figured there will be a lot of cross-pollination with ‘Dynasty,’ but after that, I don’t want it.”

--Robert Wagner’s new high-style action show, “Lime Street” (ABC, Saturday at 9 p.m.), “is a lemon . . . and will get squeezed,” he said. But a factor that helped tip the scales so heavily toward “The Golden Girls” (NBC, Saturday at 9 p.m.) is that Wagner has the juice to keep the show going regardless of ratings. “So if ‘Lime Street’ fails, ‘Golden Girls’ is going to be fine for a long time. . . . “

--Other shows en route to a ratings graveyard: “Family Honor” (ABC, Tuesday at 10 p.m.), about conflict between a family of cops and a family of criminals; “George Burns Comedy Week” (CBS, Wednesday at 9:30); “Stir Crazy” (CBS, Wednesday at 8 p.m.), based on the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor film; “Misfits of Science” (NBC, Friday at 9 p.m.), about a band of superpowered freaks, and “227” (NBC, Saturday at 9:30 p.m.), a new comedy that Schulman predicts will be replaced by either “Valerie,” the new sitcom due from Valerie Harper, or “All Is Forgiven,” from the creators of “Cheers.”

--Making strong showings, though not necessarily winning their time slots, will be “Moonlighting” (ABC, Tuesday at 9 p.m.); “The Equalizer” (CBS, Wednesday at 10 p.m.), about a middle-aged ex-secret agent now in private practice; “The Twilight Zone” (CBS, Friday at 8 p.m.) and “Hell Town,” Robert Blake’s new show (NBC, Wednesday at 9 p.m.).

--Look for “American Almanac,” from NBC’s news division, to replace “Hunter” (Saturday at 10 p.m.) in January. Schulman reached that conclusion because he can’t find another time period in which NBC could put “Almanac,” to which it is committed for 1986.

In addition, Schulman said, “MacGyver” (ABC, Sunday at 8 p.m.), about a scientist-adventurer, and “Spenser: for Hire” (ABC, Friday at 10 p.m.), marking Robert (“Vega$”) Urich’s return to series TV, are “two good shows in bad time slots.” If they do well enough against killer competition, Schulman said, they might get reprieves in better time periods.

Tally it all up, and Schulman awards top marks to NBC for four nights: Monday, when “NBC Monday Night at the Movies” will have sufficient appeal to women to help it beat ABC’s “Monday Night Football”; Tuesday, when “The A-Team” and “Remington Steele” remain strong draws; Thursday, with the knockout comedy lineup beginning with “The Cosby Show,” and Saturday, when another NBC comedy lineup includes “Golden Girls.”

CBS, he said, will take Sunday, a night that includes three of the network’s biggest hits--”60 Minutes,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Crazy Like a Fox.” Wednesday goes to ABC, whose “Dynasty” was last year’s No. 1 show in the A.C. Nielsen ratings. And Friday is up for grabs, with all of the three major networks commanding a third of the evening’s prime time. (ABC leads off Hour 1 with “Webster,” followed by the less successful “Mr. Belvedere”; CBS takes Hour 2 with “Dallas”; NBC and “Miami Vice” steal Hour 3 from “Falcon Crest.”)

Schulman,45, and by his own assessment a far less intense individual than network executives, grins widely when talking about the ratings race. “Winning the season, being first in the ratings race and all that good stuff--that’s terrific for the TV columnists,” he said.

“Nobody buys a whole network. If I can pull off a buy with ‘Dynasty,’ ‘Sunday Night Movie,’ ‘Moonlighting’ and ‘20/20’ in the summer, those ABC shows are better for me than anything I could buy at NBC,” he explained. “And NBC could be No. 1 and ABC will definitely be No. 3.”

Even buying the top show in a given time slot is not always the best strategy. Schulman eagerly bought time in NBC’s “Misfits of Science,” fully expecting it to die a quick death at the hands of “Dallas.” Once the show goes off the air, he gets to renegotiate his deal, possibly trading the low-priced “Misfits” spots for a better show. “We bought that time period with the thought in mind that the replacement could be Steve Cannell’s show, ‘Last Precinct,’ which we think will be good.”

Too, sheer ratings points do not alone determine appropriateness for his clients. “The demographics have to work for what we’re trying to go after,” he said. “Wednesday, 8 to 9 p.m., we would go with ‘Moses of Malibu’ (his pet name for Michael Landon’s “Highway to Heaven”) for Ralston-Purina, but MGM would advertise on ‘The Insiders.’ ”

There is also the “marquee value” of certain shows, which translates roughly into allowing a corporate executive to nudge his buddies and say, “Did you catch ‘Hill Street Blues’ last night? Yeah, that was my commercial!”

And there is the question of taste as well: “I couldn’t picture, in ‘The Atlanta Child Murders,’ a couple of Puppy Chow commercials,” he said.

By contrast, Schulman seemed almost gleeful as he ticked off Ralston-Purina’s coming cat food commercials in “Golden Girls”: “Lotta Cat Chow. Lotta Tender Vittles. Lotta Variety Menu.”

The glee in this office, as in so many others on Madison Avenue, usually has to do with money; specifically, saving lots of it for appreciative clients. If you get a bargain the network doesn’t even realize you’ve gotten, all the better.

Though he won’t discuss the details of his negotiations for NBC’s air time, he hints that he made the lovely “Golden Girls” out to look like dogs in order to secure a better rate. “In our negotiations,” he said, “we try to be talked into programs that we wanted to buy to begin with.”

So if Paul Schulman is so smart, why isn’t he working for one of the networks, applying his 79% success rate to their schedules?

He’s had offers, but he’s turned them down. “I like my current job,” he said. Plus, he has more job security than any four network executives. That’s because he’s his own boss, but he also buys all of the network TV time for Advanswers as well as for Gardner Advertising, which owns Advanswers, and he buys some of the time for clients of Wells, Rich and Greene, the ad firm that owns Gardner. “So I would have to get fired four times,” he explained.

Though Schulman is at a loss to explain the networks’ poor track record in picking shows, he does know that he likes things just the way they are. “Because when they (CBS programmers) make a commitment to a Flip Wilson at 9 o’clock on a Wednesday night, it allows me to buy the hell out of ‘Hell Town’ and ‘Dynasty’ and hope they stay with their mistake for a long time.”