ABC CHIEFS SORT OUT THE ISSUES

“It is in our best interests,” Capital Cities/ABC Chairman Thomas Murphy was saying to Hollywood’s top TV producers, “to work together rather than beating each other over the heads.”

“We need Hollywood’s help; we need it terribly,” added Daniel Burke, the company’s president, at their first meeting before Hollywood at large.

With those statements, ABC’s still relatively new corporate heads covered a multitude of current problems in the TV business in general--and especially at third-ranked ABC--during Tuesday’s appearance before the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.

Advertising revenues are down across the board, thanks to disinflation, but at ABC they “hit a brick wall,” Burke noted. All three networks changed leadership in 1986, making Murphy and Burke, in office only since January, the “senior network veteran heads,” as ABC program chief Brandon Stoddard introduced them.

And Hollywood’s major studios and independent producers are all wary of the three networks’ potential to create and own their own programming once federal regulations expire in 1990.

On that point, Murphy offered some reassurances. “For the years ahead that I can see, the vast majority of all programming that you see on all three networks will come from the production community and independent (producers) who are in the audience here,” he said, with a nod to the record lunchtime attendance at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Reaction was generally ho-hum from the Hollywood crowd. One studio head commented about himself that he was “a good sport” to even show up at the luncheon event only two weeks after ABC, NBC and CBS all rejected a compromise proposed by the studios on the issue of network program ownership.

In fact, Murphy’s and Burke’s speeches closely resembled remarks they made last spring, during their first meeting with representatives of ABC’s affiliate stations.

But the duo clearly scored points in putting a good-humored face on their “lean and mean” corporate image.

Murphy recounted how during Capital Cities’ first year in the broadcasting business--more than 30 years before it merged with ABC--the company grossed $364,000 “but our expenses were such that they lost $360,000.”

“We’ve come full circle,” he said with deadpan delivery, wringing sustained laughter from the lunchtime crowd. “Only the number of zeroes are different.”

(Cap Cities/ABC recently reported third-quarter net income of $18.4 million, down 45% from the previous year. The trade newspaper Variety reported Wednesday that the ABC network division could lose as much as $60 million annually in 1986 and ’87.)

Murphy also told of how, when the original Cap Cities headquarters in Albany, N.Y., needed painting, he opted to paint only the two sides that could be seen by the public.

That remark, too, got a laugh, primarily for its serious underpinnings. Murphy and Burke entered ABC’s New York headquarters with a reputation for being tight with the purse strings and began a round of corporate cost-cutting that all three networks have joined.

Only last week, NBC President Robert Wright--who replaced Grant Tinker as chief executive shortly after the company’s purchase by General Electric--issued a memo calling for trims in all departments. (NBC’s cutback began this week; see related story on Page 12.) The network began massive layoffs earlier this year to compensate for the huge expenditure required to fight off last year’s takeover attempt by Ted Turner; a restructuring of the organization continues under new acting chief executive Laurence A. Tisch.

But Murphy restated ABC’s oft-heard new credo, which is to offer the top producers a home where they can make quality shows. “We have done nothing while we were down-sizing the company,” he assured, “to do anything that affects the quality of product in news or entertainment that goes on the tube.”