FRED SILVERMAN BACK IN THE THICK OF IT

The first things you notice about Fred Silverman, former NBC president turned independent producer, is that he’s thin and tan--and still chain-smokes.

“That’s the last of the vices,” he says, lounging in a sport shirt and shorts on the patio of his new Bel-Air home. “I intend to stop.”

With or without the eternal cigarette, there’s a certain calmness to the one-time frenetic and overweight TV programmer. Figure in the loss of pallor and poundage and you could almost give him a complete bill of health.

“I’m about 55 pounds less than I was at NBC,” he says. He laughs when asked if he could have lost the weight while employed by that network, which he left in 1981 after three failed years trying to bring it out of its last-place rut.

“No,” he says with a laugh. “No, I’d be dead.”

Now, almost five years later, Silverman finally has some successful projects behind him.

Which is to say there’s a chance he won’t always be remembered as the independent producer who gave the world “Thicke of the Night” and “We Got It Made,” the two big clinkers of his post-network life.

“I think at the height--or the depth--of the ‘Thicke of the Night’ experience, when I had Thicke over here (in syndication) and ‘We Got It Made’ over there (on NBC), I was saying, ‘How did I end up with these two turkeys?’ I’d put those on the same level as ‘Me and the Chimp’ and ‘Pink Lady’ “--shows he approved while at CBS and NBC, respectively.

“I feel pretty comfortable now. It’s taken awhile to have things that appear to be working.”

Most notable among them are NBC’s new Perry Mason made-for-TV movies that Silverman is executive-producing along with writer Dean Hargrove for Viacom Productions. Last December, “Perry Mason Returns” brought Raymond Burr back to the title role he essayed for series TV from 1957 to ’66 and earned the highest TV-movie rating of 1985. Silverman now has orders for three more two-hour installments, beginning with “The Case of the Notorious Nun” on May 25. Spinoffs of Mason’s success could lead to two other Silverman-Hargrove projects on NBC: “Perry Mason’s Kids,” a weekly series focusing on a sleuthing 17-year-old who lives with Mason while his father, a judge, is away; and a TV-movie series pilot based on the Father Dowling stories and starring Tom Bosley of “Happy Days” fame as the crime-solving priest.

The lawyer-as-detective genre may also be extended to the “Matlock” series starring Andy Griffith that Silverman and former “Columbo” writer Hargrove have pitched to NBC. As with “Perry Mason,” that one would be a natural follow-up to the success of a TV movie, “Diary of a Perfect Murder,” that earned high ratings when it aired in March.

There’s also “Morningstar/Eveningstar,” which he and Earl Hamner executive-produce for Lorimar and CBS, nearing the end of a six-episode run; three half-hour sitcoms in development at Paramount, Viacom and MGM, and a movie development deal at Disney.

And then there’s Silverman’s secret antidote to the variety show problem: Big Trouble, a six-woman band fronted by a former Miss Georgia. The sextet plays songs, performs comedy and happens to look great on screen.

Silverman doesn’t manage the group--he owns it.

The idea is to get Big Trouble its own syndicated TV series. Gleaned from a pack of 150 young women who auditioned for Silverman and two partners, the group has already appeared as regulars on the syndicated “Mack and Jamie Comedy Break,” is represented by the William Morris Agency and is about to sign a record deal. (Silverman mentions the name of the producer involved and it is, as promised, a Big Name--but not to be released until signatures have been traded.)

Silverman is reminded that variety shows are dead, and he reminds back that family sitcoms were dead, too, before “The Cosby Show.” “Nah, it’s not true. I don’t believe it. If you put the right personality on, it works.”

Alas, the personalities qualified for such a task today, Silverman says, are stars like Lionel Richie, Bette Midler and Kenny Rogers--all of whom are beyond a TV producer’s budget. Hence the need for some tailor-made hosts.

Only time will tell if Big Trouble can fill the bill--or if this is another programming scheme on a par with “Thicke of the Night.”

But the programmer in Silverman, if not the producer, may have been on the mark even on that one. The notion behind “Thicke of the Night,” which starred Canadian host-musician-comic Alan Thicke (most recently seen as star of ABC’s successful “Growing Pains” series), was that there is room on TV for a young, fresh alternative to Johnny Carson.

“I believe there still is,” Silverman says, and the proof may lie in the fact that others are at work on similar shows to capitalize on the youth audience. “I thought we would have had it. Strangely enough, the show Alan did in Canada was terrific. I don’t know what happened when he traveled south. . . . “

Some other Silverman observations:

On network TV’s shortcomings: NBC, CBS and ABC should all be finding new faces to develop into major stars “and they’re not, and it looks like they’re not even attempting. Television should have found Whoopi Goldberg, not the movies. NBC developed all that talent on ‘Saturday Night Live’--twice--and then they lost all these people to the movies.” The Jane Curtin route--stardom on a successful series (“Kate & Allie”)--doesn’t always work, “but they should have tried.”

On how long Johnny Carson will remain late-night king: “As long as he wants to. He’s as good now as he was 10 years ago--if not better.” Ultimately, Silverman says, the 11:30 slot might be offered to David Letterman, “but I still think he’s a 12:30 show.”

On cable TV: Most of basic cable programming is “garbage” and the only pay service of distinction is the Disney Channel. “Disney five years from now will be the biggest pay service. They’re the only ones really programming for the family market. There isn’t anyone in the country who wouldn’t say it isn’t worth $10 a month to have this kind of service for their kids.”

You can almost see Silverman putting on the programmer’s cap and seeking out the gaps in the network schedules waiting to be filled.

It’s a talent that served him well at CBS and then ABC, where, as chief programmer, he became known as the canny strategist behind such success stories as “The Waltons,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Rhoda” and “Kojak.”

Among his legacies at NBC--where, for the first time, he assumed full responsibility for a network--was the show that originated with this Silverman one-liner: “Let’s do a serious Barney Miller.” Translation: “Hill Street Blues.”

Corporate powers, however, thought of Silverman more as the leader under whose regime profits were sliced in half. They have since risen to record levels under his successor, Grant Tinker, with programs scheduled by Silverman’s one-time protege Brandon Tartikoff.

But Silverman’s supporters always maintained that he was better at sensing viewer trends than he was at organizing a behemoth corporation. So Silverman understandably believes he had a certain inside track as a producer who knew the inner needs of a network.

“Absolutely. The problem is, I may know I’m right, but it’s very difficult to talk the guys sitting at the desk at the networks into it. I can suggest . . . but they don’t work for me.”

(One of those very guys, he says, has asked him for advice “occasionally. And I won’t say who.”)

Silverman maintains, however, that he never said it would be easy. “This is a different side of the business. I know what a dubbing stage looks like now. I know how film is made. It’s like anything else--it takes time.

“God knows I’ve made my share of mistakes.”