LORIMAR IN SERIES DEAL WITH CHINA

“Falcon Crest” and “Knots Landing” may soon become part of the television viewing diet of 300 million Chinese under a milestone agreement in which Lorimar-Telepictures will swap its shows in exchange for commercial air time on one of the nation’s three state-run networks.

“Dallas,” whose international distribution is handled by another firm, will not be included in the deal Lorimar has made with China’s Shanghai Network, company executive Michael Jay Solomon said in New York.

But the Chinese will get “The Jane Fonda Workout” and their pick of the 7,500 hours of Lorimar programming, with the exact choices to be made in the next 60-90 days. What the Culver City-based conglomerate will gets in return is air time on the Chinese network which it can sell to other companies for advertising their products.

With a ratio of 10 Chinese viewers for every TV set, it’s not clear what this increasingly consumer-oriented audience of 300 million will be worth. But this unknown doesn’t worry Solomon.

“The fact that we have gotten our foot in the door. . .will lead to very substantial dollars,” he said.

He added that he does not know how much programming the Shanghai Network will decide to take. In addition to being interested in shows such as “Falcon Crest,” the Chinese are considering “Hunter,” “Alf,” the animated “Thundercats” and the 19 series Lorimar has in production, he said.

Besides a Chinese-dubbed version of “The Jane Fonda Workout,” he said, Lorimar plans to produce an exercise show with “a (local) Chinese Jane Fonda.”

Lorimar also will produce American acts to tour China, the first being the Jan & Dean Friendship Tour, now under way in China. These tours will be filmed and marketed in the United States. The reverse also will take place, with Chinese shows touring the United States.

There are two other television programmers in China--the Peking and Canton networks--but Lorimar’s deal is only with the Shanghai Network by means of an agreement arranged by the Shanghai Cultural Bureau and a Santa Monica-based liaison group called China Amusement and Leisure, he said.

Solomon views the agreement as nothing less than vintage “cultural exchange.”

“We look forward to bringing the best of Western culture to the People’s Republic as well as the finest of Chinese arts to the United States,” he said.