ABC SERVES UP SOME POLITICAL PIZAZZ

Anyone who thinks that politics and entertainment don’t mix could take a lesson from some of ABC’s luminaries.

Consider that the duo of political reporters David Brinkley and Sam Donaldson was the most entertaining act yet seen during the all-network press sessions under way at the Century Plaza. And that “Dynasty” producer Esther Shapiro admits to creating a Reagan-era fantasy with the series’ message of pomp and glitz.

Or ponder the fact that Shapiro and Aaron Spelling, under whose banner “Dynasty” is produced, offerred the press their version of glasnost , in which they acknowledged for the first time how their internal legal squabbling contributed to the decline of the show.

Or that David Brinkley once played trombone. . . .

That admission came in answer to a question about the legitimacy of networks airing news during half-time at football games, a practice currently encouraged at both CBS and NBC.

“You have to do something at half time,” the host of “This Week With David Brinkley” responded. “Unless you want to see the high school marching band from the next county march across the field and play off-key. I can say that because I used to play trombone.”

Donaldson, the bad boy of White House reporting and a member of Brinkley’s Sunday morning round table, insisted, in response to another question, that TV journalists were not too soft on President Reagan prior to the Iran/ contra scandal.

“Did we give Ronald Reagan a free ride so the American people really had no way of knowing that he is an inattentive man who wants others to do the work and really doesn’t know what’s going on in his Administration? No.

“We brought you night after night the evidence. The fact that Americans did not choose to use it in a certain way is not my business.”

Brinkley put the scandal in perspective with this observation: “When there are scandals in the British government, they’re always about sex. When there are scandals in the U.S. government, they’re always about money.”

The dry--maybe even parched--humor of the 40-year news veteran is not unfamiliar to viewers of his Sunday morning show. Brinkley’s longtime appeal is proof, along with news shows such as CBS’ “60 Minutes” and the old “Overnight” show with Linda Ellerbee on NBC, that the presentation of real-life issues needn’t be dull.

Clips from “This Week With David Brinkley” even brought occasional laughter from the hard-nosed TV critics--this from a show that, as its host noted, has “no car crashes, no explosions, no shootings, no sex, nobody with his or her clothes off.”

But Brinkley and Donaldson denied that they are “performers or entertainers,” as one critic suggested.

“Many of the people who call us ‘performers and entertainers’ are in this room,” Donaldson said. “The public doesn’t see us that way.”

Another ABC show, the upcoming 14 1/2-hour “Amerika” miniseries, would seem to indicate that politics and entertainment mix about as well as Jane Fonda at a Republican fund-raiser. The Soviets recently reiterated statements that the airing of the show--about a Soviet takeover of the United States--could result in the closure of ABC news bureaus in the Soviet Union.

Brinkley, questioned after the group session, pooh-poohed the notion that ABC should respond to the Soviet threat.

“It’s not our job to entertain the Soviets or please the Soviets,” he said. Nor does he believe that the bureaus will be closed; the show, after all, is airing only in the United States, he said. But if they are closed, he said, ABC could always pick up news from the British.

“It’s a chance you always take, having a bureau shut down. They always open them up later.” ABC’s South African bureau, he noted, remains closed.

Brinkley said he personally had to back off from reporting news firsthand when he began drawing bigger crowds than the political candidates.

“Dynasty’s” Linda Evans and John Forsythe might not have that problem, judging from their reception by the press Thursday evening. The couple sat virtually silent for much of a one-hour session as reporters focused on the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Shapiro and Spelling.

Shapiro only recently dropped a pending lawsuit against Spelling. The dispute stemmed from Spelling’s taking his Aaron Spelling Productions public without the consent of Shapiro, who, along with writer-husband Richard, created “Dynasty” and owns a piece of it.

The in-fighting, Forsythe offered, was more interesting than “Dynasty’s” storylines in recent months. “We noticed it first in the scripts,” Evans added. “The attention to detail in the storylines wasn’t there.”

Shapiro and Spelling promised that problems with the show--on-camera and off--have been resolved. Shapiro also noted that the time has come for the show’s emphasis to shift, as the Reagan Administration winds down.

Though a political liberal by her own admission, Shapiro said that she and Richard “must have been tuned into the vibrations” of the Reagans before they took office. Just weeks before the Reagans came under close public scrutiny, the Shapiros fashioned a show about opulence and a family with a sensitive son and a strong-willed daughter.

Now that’s politics.