BRESLIN DUMPS ABC; ABC DUMPS LATE-NIGHT FARE

ABC, which this year pink-slipped 600 employees because of lean economic times, was fired Monday by an employee--Jimmy Breslin.

His action came shortly before ABC announced that it will “temporarily discontinue” its late-hour program efforts, which since September have consisted of two one-hour shows aired twice a week, “Jimmy Breslin’s People” and “The Dick Cavett Show.”

Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, was unhappy that ABC stations, particularly WABC here, haven’t aired his “People” according to the schedule--Thursday and Friday, midnight to 1 a.m.--recommended by ABC.

He said that he was dismissing the network as of Dec. 20. That is the day after he tapes the 26th and final one-hour show he owes ABC under a contract calling for two shows a week for 13 weeks.

An ABC spokesman said that the final telecast of Cavett’s show will be on Dec. 30 with Breslin’s last-taped show scheduled to air Jan. 2. ABC said it would “return with a late-night entertainment program in the early spring” but did not say what the program would be. ABC said its “long-range goal” is to offer a full weeknight package of late-night entertainment programs by next fall.

Cavett said in an interview that he was informed the network would be giving the late-night slot back to its local affiliates to program.

ABC, which said that it was pleased with the quality of both shows, said that not enough affiliates would agree to air them at the original midnight-1 a.m. time slot that ABC had planned for them. The network said it also tried to notify Breslin’s executive producer, Woody Fraser, on Friday, but Fraser was on location in Arizona and was not notified till Monday.

By that time, Breslin had served notice that he had canceled ABC via a long Sunday column he writes for the New York Daily News and in a small ad he had placed on the front page of Monday’s New York Times. The ad said:

“ABC Television Network: Your services, such as they are, will no longer by required as of 12/20/86.--Jimmy Breslin.”

His agent, Sterling Lord, said that ABC had not notified Breslin that it planned to cancel his show, but “my guess is that would be their response: ‘You can’t fire us, we’ve fired you.’ ”

Cavett said that ABC called his agent Friday to announce that “the time slot is going out of business.”

“That was a little nicer than saying ‘you’ve been canceled.’ Now I know how Gimbels’ clerks felt.”

Cavett said that his portion of ABC’s late-night “wheel” would continue through Dec. 23, at which time his 13-episode commitment will have been fulfilled. He kiddingly surmised that he now has “a new freedom” on the shows, starting with an announcement he expects to make on the air tonight tuesregarding the cancellation.

But he noted that the late-night concept was probably “doomed just before it began” by flagship ABC-owned station WABC-TV, New York, when it committed to airing David Brenner’s syndicated “Night Life” talk-show at midnight. In that market, Cavett’s show aired at 12:30, a time slot that was nonetheless “infinitely better” than in Los Angeles, where local KABC-TV aired it at 2:30 a.m. Tuesdays and 2 a.m. Wednesdays.

Breslin’s agent emphasized that he too would fulfill his ABC contract. After that, Lord said, there is a possibility of syndicating Breslin’s series, which had been produced by ABC’s entertainment division.

Lord also said that a rival network has expressed interest, but declined to identify the company.

The series, similar in style to the wry, street-wise column Breslin writes three times a week for the New York Daily News, reports and comments on varied slices of life in the United States and New York.

Breslin, in a brief phone interview, said he didn’t suddenly decide to fire ABC. He said he had warned of it several weeks earlier in a column in which he took WABC here to task for airing his show at 1 a.m. on Fridays and at 1:30 a.m. on Monday, when few viewers would be awake to see it.

(In that column, Breslin recalled, he recommended that Bill Fyffe, manager of the ABC-owned station, “do the honorable thing and jump in front of a bus.”)

“I think I could’ve done very well with the show in New York if they (WABC) had put the energy and promotion into it,” Breslin said. He said he had no idea why the station opted to air it at a later hour--and in one case on a different night--than called for in ABC’s schedule.

Fyffe said that the shift of Breslin’s Friday-night show to Monday--where it followed David Brenner’s “Night Life”--had been requested by Fraser, Breslin’s executive producer. “Jimmy presumably was a party to that request,” Fyffe said. Fyffe declined comment on Breslin’s dismissal of ABC.

The series marked Breslin’s debut as star of his own network show, but it wasn’t his first attempt at regular work in television. In the mid-1970s, he briefly worked here as a commentator at NBC-owned WNBC-TV.

Cavett said that, unlike previous talk-show efforts--of which he’s been involved with many--this one was running smoothly almost from its first telecast, making the cancellation all the more regrettable.

The three-line front-page ad that Breslin placed in the New York Times cost him $540. An advertising order-taker for the paper said that a person can request the date that the ad run but that the date is not guaranteed.

While some within ABC’s executive ranks may have been startled by Breslin’s action, there was at least one exception--Richard E. Wald, senior vice president at ABC News and a longtime friend of the writer.

Until the newspaper folded in 1966, Wald was Breslin’s managing editor at the New York Herald Tribune, where the columnist gained a measure of fame by writing about such New York characters as Marvin the Torch, Fat Thomas and Klein the Lawyer.

Asked Monday if Breslin’s action surprised him, Wald replied: “Owing to the fact I know him very well, I’d best restrain my comments. No.”

Wald laughed when asked if the columnist had discussed the ABC matter with him. Yes, Wald said, adding: “Mr. Breslin has discussed this move with every person in the English-speaking world.”

Staff writer Morgan Gendel contributed to this story.