NBC EXPANDING ‘TODAY’ SHOW TO SUNDAYS COME SEPTEMBER : New Program Will Be Competing Against CBS’ Kuralt and the More Profitable Video Sermons

On the seventh day, Steve Friedman usually has rested. But that ends this fall, when the executive producer of NBC’s top-rated “Today” show commences a new venture--a Sunday edition of the 35-year-old morning program.

As the new kid on the Sabbath block, the 90-minute “Sunday Today” will face an array of rivals both secular and sacred--from the gentle “CBS News Sunday Morning” to ABC’s wry David Brinkley to the vigorous video sermons of the Rev. Oral Roberts.

A major problem, however, may be getting time from those NBC affiliates now airing religious programs featuring electronic evangelists such as Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart--programs that are lucrative and convenient for the stations because they sell the time outright to the ministers and don’t have to worry about hawking the commercial spots or finding replacements if the ratings sag.

Even though the expansion is being undertaken at what NBC officials say was the request of the affiliates’ board of directors, NBC’s Friedman expects that only about one-third of NBC’s 207 affiliated stations may carry “Sunday Today” initially, with the others taking a wait-and-see-how-it-develops position.

Still, the matter of starting the new show is easier than most such efforts, because Friedman already has a successful weekday morning franchise and a staff at battle stations. At least, that’s what he says.

“Basically, all we’re doing is another day, a slightly different type of show with some different people,” said the producer, whose “Sunday Today” is scheduled to debut on Sept. 20.

The top candidates to host the new show are said to be NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver, formerly of “The CBS Morning News” and of NBC News’ now-defunct “1986,” and Boyd Matson, also an NBC staffer. Other names that have been mentioned include Connie Chung, Deborah Norville, John Hart (a “CBS Morning News” anchor from 1970 to 1973) and Bob Kur. All are NBC News staffers.

The winning team may be disclosed shortly, depending on how negotiations with agents go.

Friedman sees as his main competition the literate, stately “CBS News Sunday Morning” that Charles Kuralt has anchored since January, 1979.

“You cannot out-Kuralt Kuralt,” he said. “What they do well, they do well, and to put on another show doing the same thing they do is stupid.”

Therefore, he said, the pace of his show will be brisker than that of CBS’ effort, and “we’re going to try for a contemporary look, a contemporary program that reflects the news of the day--which Kuralt doesn’t.”

In addition to two “hard news” segments, the new show will have weather reports, sports news and a sports anchor, and perhaps analyses of pop music, leaving the jazz and classical concessions to Kuralt & Co.

Generally, Friedman said, “what we’re going to try to do is a program telling you what is going to happen (in the coming week). We’re going to make Sunday the first day of the week, not the last.”

CBS’ program is famed in part for its closing moments--wordless, gentle pastoral scenes, shots of birds singing, brooks babbling, flowers blooming.

Friedman, asked how he plans to close his new show, just smiled. “Music videos,” he responded. He was not kidding.

NBC News, which is producing the new effort, still is awaiting a final tally on how many of its affiliates will put the show in their Sunday-morning lineups. “We’ll do all right on it,” said news division President Larry Grossman. “I’m confident.”

Friedman said that he hopes from 70 to 80 stations will take it initially.

That would be repeating history--at least the history of “CBS News Sunday Morning,” which, according to its first executive producer, Robert (Shad) Northshield, only had about 70 takers when it began.

Now aired on about 180 stations, “it took a couple of years to build up station clearances,” said Northshield, who helped create the program but left it last February to develop a new prime-time CBS News series.

The reason for the slow acceptance of CBS’ 90-minute Sunday show by affiliates?

“Religious programming, mostly, because that makes a lot of money for the local stations,” Northshield explained.

That reluctance to drop or move paid religious programs to new times “is going to be a concern” for NBC, confirmed James Lynagh, president of Cincinnati-based Multimedia Broadcasting and head of NBC’s affiliates’ board.

Lynagh, whose company owns NBC affiliates in Cincinnati and St. Louis, noted that some stations would find paid religious programming hard to replace as a revenue source.

“Paid religion, like the toy business, is a specialized category,” he said.

However, while “Sunday Today” may start slow, its prospects for wide acceptance are good, Lynagh said, because “I think there is an absolute need for a Sunday-morning informational program on NBC.”

Pep Cooney, president of KPNX-TV, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, Ariz., agreed. “We think there is a real market out there for it,” said Cooney, who pushed for the new program when he was on NBC’s affiliate board last year.

His station currently airs two paid religious programs on Sunday mornings--one local, the other starring Oral Roberts. He plans to move those programs to earlier time periods to make room for “Sunday Today.”

What to do with such religious broadcasts are a major concern among the affiliate executives with whom he has talked, Cooney said, but he thinks that eventually most will do what he’s doing, rejiggering the Sabbath lineup.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem,” he said.

“There are so darn many (paid) religious programs out there that if one guy” objects to being shifted to a new time period on Sundays, he said, “there’s another who will take whatever time you have.

“I mean, if Oral said, ‘No, I don’t want to go that early,’ I’d say, ‘Well, see you around,’ because there are two other guys who’d love to have that earlier time.”

Grossman said that he’d also like to have a Saturday morning version of the “Today” show too. But that remains just a wish right now.

He noted that NBC’s Saturday-morning cartoons-for-kids lineup currently is first in the ratings, which means profits for affiliates, “so you want to tread lightly on that. But I know stations are very interested in it (a Saturday “Today”). . . . “

Friedman is optimistic as well as interested.

“I think it’s logical to say that once Sunday is a success, the next logical step is Saturday,” he said, predicting that if “Sunday Today” proves a hit, “Saturday will be the next target”--possibly by September of 1988.