DISNEY WILL TURN PEOPLE MAGAZINE INTO TV PILOT

People magazine, already noticeable on TV with its slick, fast-paced commercials, may be turned into a half-hour, daily television show by Walt Disney Studios. Executives of Disney and People on Tuesday jointly announced an agreement to produce a pilot show that could lead to a syndicated series for fall, 1987.

In a separate move, Disney executives said that film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert will move their popular movie review show to the company’s TV syndication division in the fall for distribution under a new title, “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies.” Their show, which began as “Sneak Previews” on PBS, currently is called “At the Movies” and is seen locally on KABC-TV Channel 7.

Tuesday’s deals further established Disney as a producer in first-run syndication, an arrangement by which new shows are produced for direct sale tolocal stations, rather than to ABC, CBS or NBC. Disney’s top executives achieved success in first-run when they were at Paramount Pictures, where they developed such shows as “Entertainment Tonight” and “Solid Gold.”

Like “Entertainment Tonight,” the proposed video version of “People” would be fed to local stations by satellite, with half-hour editions on weekdays and a one-hour edition for the weekend.