THE FINAL TEST OF ‘AMERIKA’ IS THE RATINGS

“Never,” sighed an ABC publicist, “has so much been said about something of which so little has been seen.” But this is “Amerika,” where anything can happen. Even ABC calls its show “provocative.”

Preceded by escalating controversy and attendant publicity, the nearly 15-hour, seven-night, $41-million drama of a grim, oppressed United States under Soviet rule in 1997 finally will premiere Sunday night.

At last, the moment of truth, not to mention the probability of high opening-night ratings. At last, viewers finally can see for themselves what all the shouting’s about and decide if “Amerika” is:

--Insufficiently realistic about life under Soviet rule, as some on the right contend.

--Cold War propaganda, as some on the left contend.

--A potentially interesting idea that came down with an undramatic case of plot gout, as some critics who’ve seen portions of it suggest.

In any event, to make things perfectly clear to viewers, each episode will bear this notice: “This series is fiction. The institutions and organizations depicted are not intended to bear any resemblance to today’s counterparts.”

Vague, but ABC means in particular the United Nations, which since last fall has been protesting the show’s depiction of a brutal, Soviet-controlled U.N. force occupying America. The Soviets also have criticized the program.

ABC has emphatically denied that its miniseries engages in bashing either the United Nations or the Soviet Union.

The United Nations on Wednesday got the support of an American straight from the very heart of “Amerika.” Co-star Kris Kristofferson came to the world agency’s towering, glass-walled building here to tape a 30-second announcement.

In it, a spokesman said, Kristofferson talked about the real-life work of U.N peacekeeping troops and noted that 700 of them have died to keep the peace. The United Nations said it would make the spot available to any station requesting it.

Although a U.N. spokesman said the announcement makes no mention of “Amerika,” it nonetheless represented a small video counter-campaign by the world agency against ABC’s program.

The United Nations has not yet been successful in its efforts to persuade ABC to broadcast some sort of discussion program for debating the issues raised in the miniseries. Several other organizations also have been asking for such a program, among them Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media (AIM), whose views are conservative, and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal group.

ABC News has said that it is considering airing an edition of “Viewpoint,” its occasional late-night series dealing with media-related issues, but neither the program’s topic nor a broadcast date has been decided, despite press reports to the contrary.

Irvine, who in 1983 criticized ABC’s nuclear-war movie “The Day After” as part of a Soviet propaganda campaign to block deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, has seen only two hours of “Amerika” but read the entire script.

“My reaction to it is one of grave disappointment,” he said. “I think they (ABC) had an opportunity to show the American public what life under communism is really like . . . and they muffed it. It’s a pretty benign occupation.”

Jeff Cohen, FAIR’s executive director, disagreed. He calls the program another example of Soviet-knocking of the kind seen in the “Rambo” and “Red Dawn” movies, in some commercials and in some TV series.

Aware of these contrasting concerns, ABC in recent weeks has been screening initial parts of “Amerika” to what it calls “special-interest groups” in Los Angeles, Washington and New York.

The screenings have produced at least one moment of real-life drama.

Last week, five invitees from a group that says it opposes Reagan Administration policies--the People’s Anti-War Mobilization Committee--briefly delayed the start of a screening of the first two chapters of “Amerika” in a theater at Lincoln Center.

They climbed on the stage without invitation and, holding anti-”Amerika” banners and posters, chanted: “Jobs, yes! Star Wars, no! Pentagon lies have got to go!”

The five--whose group calls ABC’s show “a hard-sell for massive nuclear buildup and military aggression” and doesn’t want it aired--were peacefully led away. No arrests were made.

A media critic for a rival network was suspicious. Were these protesters perhaps somehow linked to ABC’s publicity works? An ABC official emphatically told him no.

The screening, ABC said, was attended by 165 persons from 40 varied groups, including a man from Pravda and two from the United Nations Assn., a nonprofit organization of U.N. supporters.

Others represented at the event ranged from Performing Artists for Nuclear Disarmament to the 187th Regimental Combat Team Assn., composed of Army veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The association’s president, retired Col. Bill Weber, was later asked what he thought of the four hours he had seen.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think either the right or the left has any justifiable cause for complaining, at least about the part of it that I saw,” he said. “I don’t know what the rest might be like. But what I saw certainly was not extolling the virtues of the communist system, nor was it denigrating the virtues of the democratic system.”

Doesn’t all this furor simply add to the hype, the publicity?

That had been a concern of former Kennedy Administration special counsel Theodore Sorensen, who was hired by the United Nations to seek from ABC a disclaimer and air time for discussion of the show.

When he saw the first two hours of a six-hour “Amerika” screening, he said, he feared “that the U.N. had made a terrible mistake” because it seemed to him that the show’s “references to and depictions of the U.N. forces in those first two hours are minimal.”

But after watching the sixth hour, he said, he felt that the U.N. was “totally justified” in protesting scenes in which Soviet-controlled U.N. forces destroy a refugee camp and talk of raping a woman.

“I think,” he added, “that the (real) U.N. peacekeeping forces constitute one of the bright spots in the disappointing history of the U.N. . . . and to see them trashed this way, I felt, was offensive.”

Warranted or not, the publicity has convinced many in the television industry that “Amerika” will do very well in the Nielsen ratings on opening night as people tune in out of curiosity. A falloff after that is thought to be likely. How large it will be is the big question, particularly for ABC, which is badly in need of a boost as it staggers through its third season of running third in the prime-time ratings.

Even if it turns out to be a big hit, however, “Amerika” and another ABC miniseries--the $92-million, 30-hour “War and Remembrance” that is due to arrive in 1988 debut--probably represent the last of their kind at the financially pinched network.

That’s not because of the controversy over “Amerika,” ABC-TV president John B. Sias said, but simply because of “the economics”--the miniseries’ high costs at a time of flat ad revenues. It’s just not worth it to make such long-play programs anymore, he said.

“It has nothing to do with whether they’re controversial or not,” insisted Sias, who said it is “highly unlikely” that ABC will commission any miniseries longer than six hours in the future.

But this doesn’t mean the end of controversial dramatic programs, he maintained--”absolutely not.”