CABLE-TV GETS STATIC FROM INDIES

While viewers in cable-TV households have merrily punched the appropriate buttons and tuned in independent stations’ offerings of old and new shows, movies and early news, they’ve inadvertently fueled a war between two competing factions.

That war erupted in a one-sided round of name-calling Thursday, as members of the Assn. of Independent Television Stations ripped the cable-TV industry as a “parasite that threatens to devour its host” and blamed it for many of the non-network broadcasters’ current woes.

“By consent of the Congress, (cable) is a primordial monolith with unlimited leeway to do as it chooses, what it chooses and how it chooses,” keynote luncheon speaker Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, told the station association’s annual convention at the Century Plaza Hotel.

Valenti was merely stating in his colorful fashion the concern that plagues most broadcasters not affiliated with NBC, ABC or CBS: How do they stay in front of viewers if cable operators have the right to drop their signal or move it to the far reaches of the cable channel box?

Under federal deregulation that went into effect Jan. 1, cable operators no longer have imposed on them “must-carry” rulings that for years required them to carry all broadcast signals within their area.

At the same time, Congress has allowed to stand a “compulsory license” ruling that, in effect, allows cable to distribute programs without having to share in their costs.

The tenor of this year’s 14th annual convention, set largely by the cable deregulation issues, stands in marked contrast to last year’s, when the availability of fresh syndicated programming and the promise of new networks to compete with the Big Three seemed to heighten the independent TV boom.

But the growth in the number of independent stations--tripled since 1976 and still rising--was tempered in 1986 by a slouching advertising sales market.

Cable--itself struggling for a slice of the home-screen pie--is an obvious target of independent stations’ slings and arrows.

Charles L. Edwards of Gaylord Broadcasting, chairman of station association, kicked off the first full day of general sessions Thursday by comparing cable to a parasite but denying that his group is strictly an anti-cable organization.

“What we really are is an organization that wants to have some say about its future,” he said.

That attempt has taken the association to the halls of Congress, where association president Preston R. Padden and his staff lobbied for a review of “must-carry” rulings. There is a “one-way leverage (that) cable enjoys” with Congress, Padden told association members.

Padden has forced a reconsideration of rulings favoring the controversial “A-B switch,” which would require cable operators to install a toggle by which subscribers could readily shift control of their sets from the cable box to the TV dial. That might seem like a move in the independent stations’ favor, but it’s “not the answer to restoring competition,” Padden said, if it means cable systems can drop independents from their lineup.

The association’s efforts have had some effect directly on the cable industry, which has backed off somewhat from the move to re-position stations on the cable box. As now allowed, Los Angeles cable operators theoretically could move local KTLA Channel 5 to, say, position 22 on the box--if they kept it at all--while placing the USA Network cable channel at the No. 5 position.

The association is also attempting to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to apply a “syndicated exclusivity rule” to cable operators, preventing them from competing in any given city with an independent that paid for exclusive rights to a particular show. As an example, it would force cable operators to black out coming syndicated reruns of “The Cosby Show” when they picked up signals from New York superstation WOR, which will carry the show.

Cable, however, cannot account for all of independent TV’s headaches.

“There’s been tremendous change in the past year,” said James Dowdle, president of Tribune Broadcasting. “With the networks changing hands, the mergers and acquisitions. . . . Whenever you have that kind of change, something slips through the cracks. Business is soft.”

Tribune itself was an example of the change in independent-TV’s complexion in 1986. Tribune, which operates a broadcast station group as well as producing and supplying programs, took control of KTLA, the nation’s oldest independent.

Last year was also the year in which 20th Century Fox owner Fox Inc. established the Fox Television Stations, including local KTTV Channel 11, and kicked off a quasi-network effort with its “Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” seen only on independent stations.

For small stations like WXNE in Boston, which recently was acquired by Fox, the change has to be good. “It had no sports franchise, no identity,” said Tom Neeson of competing WLVI in Boston. For Neeson, however, the Fox group represents increased competition.

At the same time, however, the big-station groups have stimulated the creation of fresh programming for independents. First-run syndicated shows, such as the all-new “One Big Family” and “What a Country,” or resurrected series like “Charles in Charge” and “9 to 5” have blurred the distinction between independents and the Big Three, traditionally the home of new shows.

The station association, in this regard, gives a preview of the new shows that will be hawked at the National Assn. of Television Program Executives convention later this month in New Orleans.

Wednesday night, Daniel Wilson Productions trotted out Stacy Keach, touting him as star of the soon-to-be-produced “Hemingway” miniseries for independents.

Exhibition booths that open today on three floors at the Century Plaza will offer a look at plans for series like “Dinosaucers,” an animated show from Coca-Cola Telecommunications, and all-new half-hour episodes of two action classics, “Sea Hunt,” to star Ron Ely in the Lloyd Bridges role, and “Rat Patrol” with Robert Forster, both from MGM/UA Television Syndication.

That kind of program production spree explains why Valenti, who represents Hollywood’s major motion picture-and-television studios, cozied up to the convention crowd with comments like: “Independent television stations are to the creative and distribution world I represent as fresh water is to green meadows.”

WLVI’s Neeson offered this rough translation, as it pertains to the state of independent TV: “The biggest bonus is for the independent producers in California and New York.”