A NEW ABC TEAM SEEKS ITS PRIME-TIME COMEBACK

Toward the end of April, ABC executives, like those at NBC and CBS, will decide which new and current series, miniseries and TV movies will be on the prime-time roster next fall. Advertisers will get the word shortly thereafter, and so will network affiliates.

For producers and executives alike, it’s an annual, high-anxiety, megabuck rite of spring. But this time out, third-place ABC has a new team in the game, a team created before and after Capital Cities’ $3.5-billion takeover of the company Jan. 3.

Its new leader is a newcomer to network television--John B. Sias, 58, a lean, athletic, joke-loving ex-paratrooper. He was named president of the ABC division after 14 years as a top executive at Cap Cities’ publishing arm. He has eight prior years of broadcasting experience, at Westinghouse and Metromedia. But his dossier lists no network time.

That shouldn’t prove a major problem, says Robert Bennett, a colleague of Sias’ during the latter’s years at Metromedia: “I can tell you that while the rest of us are sleeping, he’s up studying. And he’s a quick study.”

That will stand Sias in good stead, as he has much to study quickly. He faces a variety of important pending items, including contract talks with two major broadcast unions (see separate story) and Hollywood’s uncertainty about how he’ll operate as head of ABC.

But restoration of ABC’s prime-time fortunes heads his list of priorities--and that of his respected programming chief Brandon Stoddard. It also is the No. 1 concern of ABC’s affiliates, whose network was No. 3 in prime-time ratings last season and will doubtless be there when this season ends.

The head of ABC’s affiliates board, Joseph T. Jerkins of KVUE-TV in Austin, Tex., says that affiliates were “quite pleased” when Stoddard was appointed to his new job last November by then-ABC Board Chairman Frederick S. Pierce.

They thought that a good start, he says, and are equally pleased that “they (ABC’s new owners) have committed both privately and publicly to the affiliates that Stoddard will have the funds” and time needed to get ABC out of third.

But neither Jerkins nor any other industry officials recently surveyed think this will happen until the season of 1987-88, despite Stoddard’s track record of such hit miniseries as “Roots,” “Winds of War” and last fall’s “North and South.”

“I think some progress can be expected next fall, but I would be surprised if the 1986-87 season moved ABC into a strong second,” he says. “I’d be delighted, but I’d also be very surprised.”

Sias hasn’t publicly talked about this or other ABC matters yet. But then, his style is a far cry from that of Grant Tinker of first-place NBC. Tinker has been remarkably accessible to the press almost from the day in 1981 he took charge of the then-ailing company.

Not so ABC’s new chief. As far as reporters are concerned, Sias has been the Lamont Cranston of network executives since taking office. He won’t do interviews, saying he’s too new on the job and still feeling his way.

“Maybe next year,” he breezily told a Times reporter who briefly spoke with him in January at a four-day, closed-door summit conference of Cap Cities and ABC executives in Phoenix.

(Stoddard also declines to be interviewed, saying he prefers that his programs and schedules speak for themselves. But in a January press conference, his first as ABC’s chief programmer, he made a loud, clear, Tinker-like call for quality and programs that have “more respect for the audience.”)

One thing is known about Sias and Cap Cities: their reputation for a taut, no-frills operation in which definite goals are set and key executives are then given great autonomy to achieve said goals. Woe betide the key executive who fails--or worse, tries to duck the blame.

That Sias is high on Stoddard is without question. At the Phoenix conference, Sias, chatting with two ABC executives about the network’s prospects for a prime-time comeback, enthused about him thusly:

“I’m proud to be associated with Brandon. . . . It may take a couple of years, but if we believe in Brandon and hang in there, I think we’ll make it.”

But it remains to be seen whether Cap Cities’ tight-with-a-buck reputation and Sias’ relative inexperience in dealing with Hollywood producers and their red-ink lamentations will prove a major obstacle in ABC’s comeback attempt.

“It’s true that they (ABC’s new bosses) don’t know networking, or network-type production, per se,” says former ABC Vice Chairman Elton Rule, now a producer here. However, he adds, “I think they’re smart enough to know they have to be flexible” in dealing with the Hollywood community, and “they have a hell of a lot of confidence in Brandon.”

“I don’t expect to see any real changes” in spending for TV movies and miniseries, says one studio executive, who like many interviewed by The Times declined to be identified. However, he adds, the Sias-led team, with Cap Cities’ philosophy of fiscal austerity, may prove less willing to take a gamble than in ABC’s past years.

ABC’s costly “North and South,” approved by the former management last year, “was a real gamble and it paid off for them in the ratings this season,” he says. But Cap Cities’ approach “seems to be more conservative, and those kinds of risks are going to get a harder look by them.”

It should be noted that so far the new team has approved what will be TV’s lengthiest miniseries--”War and Remembrance,” the 30-hour, $60-million sequel to “Winds of War.”

It also has OKd the controversial “Amerika,” although that miniseries--after deliberations begun before Sias took charge--was cut from 16 hours to 12 hours and its budget reportedly reduced from $40 million to about $32 million.

Despite the go-aheads for these high-cost items, one veteran series producer thinks that ABC’s rookie chief remains a big question mark in Hollywood: “I haven’t heard anybody yet say to me, ‘This guy Sias is good, bad or indifferent.’ ”

Another big question mark: ABC’s future dealings with Aaron Spelling, the producer whose lavish, spare-no-expense “Dynasty,” “Love Boat,” “The Colbys” and “Hotel” currently are on the network’s prime-time schedule (his new “Hollywood Beat,” on ABC’s roster this fall, beats no more, due to low ratings).

Spelling, who has made more than 100 TV movies and whose series accounted for nearly a third of ABC’s prime-time lineup in 1983, has been under exclusive contract to ABC since his “Burke’s Law” in 1963, according to an ABC spokesman.

Spelling’s lucrative pact is up for renewal in April, 1988. One rival producer says that under the new ABC regime, cost-conscious business affairs types are certain to be giving that contract--and comparable others--a long, hard look:

“I’m sure they will be asking, ‘Why do we need these deals?’ ”

Spelling was unavailable for comment. A spokesman quoted him as saying he was “drowning in the pilot season,” or in other words, readying various series pilots or proposals for same for scrutiny by ABC.

(In an Associated Press interview in late January, the producer said he wasn’t certain that he wanted to renew his ABC contract: “I don’t want to quit television; it’s just that I don’t know whether I want to be exclusive to ABC.”)

A major worry of all producers, industry sources say, involves the negotiations between them and ABC’s new owners on so-called “license fees,” the money networks pay for financing a series, miniseries or TV movie.

All three networks have been tightening up on those fees in recent years, citing double-digit costs at a time of single-digit earnings caused by a softening of the economy.

Many producers, contending that networks still somehow manage to make a buck, say producers are losing money until their programs are sold overseas or in syndication.

They say increased production costs have greatly increased their pre-syndication deficits, with the deficit problem far more critical than in those happy years when one could, say, make a sitcom episode for a mere $100,000 (in contrast to $400,000 and up now).

Network business affairs types are known to question such complaints. Who is right depends on whose method of accounting is accepted. That can get mighty complicated with something called the ITC, or investment tax credit, thrown into the calculating process.

But in the opinion of David Gerber, a longtime producer who now heads MGM’s television division, “license fees are already too low. If they (ABC’s new management) pay less than what everyone else is paying now, no one will do business with them.”

No sounds to that effect have been heard thus far in Hollywood. Nor is there a consensus yet that producers have in fact found it harder to deal with the new bottom-line brigade at Cap Cities/ABC than the brethren at CBS and NBC.

But one industry observer thinks that the Sias-run team will prove the hardest bargainers: “Absolutely. I think they’re going to have 90 guys in three-piece suits watching them (the producers).”

Even before Cap Cities’ official takeover of ABC, there were other worries, these by ABC employees who feared mass layoffs by the cost-conscious new owners.

The fears were fueled last year when then-ABC President Fred Pierce, readying the company for the takeover, laid off 350 of ABC’s 13,000 employees--the figure covers all the company’s divisions--and eliminated 250 other jobs. It was of no comfort to those fired that financially troubled CBS was making similar cuts, citing a faltering economy.

Rumors of additional ABC layoffs this year persisted, particularly of a “Valentine’s Day Massacre” involving perhaps as many as 1,000 more axings. The rumor was denied. Valentine’s Day came and went with no firings. But few doubt that more layoffs are in store.

Indeed, ABC executives last week were told to review the staffing of their departments to see where and if cuts can be made.

An ABC spokeswoman emphasized that no specific number of staff reductions has been set, nor is there a target date for layoffs. The only overall goal, she said, “is to have the company leaner and more efficient by the end of the year.”

“We’re basically talking about a handful of people right now,” she said.

Most of the doomsday speculation on job cuts involves corporate and financial offices, where the Cap Cities/ABC marriage has resulted in a certain amount of duplication. But other areas--news, sports or entertainment among them--also could be involved.

So far, though, there has not been the executive-suite housecleaning at ABC that some had predicted when Cap Cities took charge and Sias began putting his own team into place (a task that ABC says has been largely accomplished).

True, ABC chief Pierce, with the company nearly 30 years, resigned just six days after the takeover and was succeeded by Cap Cities’ Sias (Pierce insisted that his exit was purely voluntary).

There also have been two other retirements and five other resignations by high-level ABC executives, with two resignations--by ABC Broadcast Group President Anthony T. Thomopoulos and chief attorney Everett H. Erlick--announced well before Cap Cities’ actual takeover on Jan. 3.

But only three Cap Cities executives to date have been brought in by Sias to run key ABC profit centers--the radio division and the ABC-owned television stations division.

The others he has named to major ABC positions were ABC executives before he took charge. The most prominent of them: Roone Arledge, who wore two hats as president of both ABC News and ABC Sports before the takeover.

Sias appointed him Jan. 27 to a newly created post--group president of ABC News and Sports. In the process, Arledge gave up the ABC Sports presidency he’d held since 1968, with Sias naming an ABC veteran, Dennis Swanson, to head the money-losing division. Arledge retained the presidency of ABC News, which he has run since 1977.

There is no doubt that regardless of whether his executives are ABC holdovers or Cap Cities newcomers, Sias will bear down hard on them to get the job done, to get profits raised, costs lowered and the bureaucracy trimmed.

“They really are lean and mean folks,” one middle-level ABC executive says of the company’s new owners. “If they hire you to do a job, they aren’t going to let you hire two or three people to do it for you.

“But in this business, oddly enough, that kind of attitude is going to be refreshing.”

Times staff writer David Friendly contributed to this report.