HEARINGS RATE HIGH ON 1ST DAY

Despite strong preliminary ratings for the opening testimony in the Iran- contra hearings, the three major TV networks said Wednesday that they have no plans to air live broadcasts of the hearings on a regular basis.

Network officials reiterated that decisions on whether to air live broadcasts of the Washington hearings will be made on a day-to-day basis, depending on the expected news from each day’s testimony.

All three were staffing the hearings, however, and said they would be taping key portions for broadcast on their regularly scheduled evening newscasts.

The start of testimony Tuesday by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord did surprisingly well in the ratings, according to preliminary three-network estimates compiled by ABC researchers.

The ratings, released Wednesday, showed that the three networks’ live coverage of Secord’s testimony from 2 to 5 p.m. EDT combined to attract 42% of the viewing audience in 14 major cities. The share was slightly higher in Los Angeles--46%. National estimates won’t be available until next Thursday.

The Iran- contra hearings before a House-Senate committee are being held in the same Senate caucus room in Washington where Sen. Sam Ervin’s Senate Select Committee opened its probe of the Watergate affair 14 years ago this month.

Then, as now, live network coverage of the start of testimony drew loud complaints from those whose soap operas and game shows had been preempted. But Watergate soon caught on as popular viewing--an industrial-strength daytime drama.

That continued even after the networks--which lost as much as $10 million in advertising revenue--began rotating live coverage of the Watergate show among themselves on a one-network-a-week basis near the end of May, 1973.

This time, though, only Cable News Network, which didn’t exist in 1973 but which now serves 39.3 million homes, is daily airing live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings, which may involve as many as 50 witnesses and could last until August.

Public TV, which aired the Watergate hearings live, albeit only on the East Coast, is emulating the major networks this time to some degree. Although it went gavel-to-gavel Wednesday with Secord’s second day of testimony, officials for the noncommercial network said they would do so only as testimony warrants.

When it doesn’t, taped excerpts of the day’s hearings will be aired at night on PBS’ major newscast, “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”

That the Iran- contra show is not as compelling to the commercial networks as were the Watergate hearings in 1973 was indicated Wednesday. Only NBC and CBS aired live coverage of Secord’s second day of testimony, and then only for half an hour in the morning.

But a veteran of the Watergate coverage thinks that even if the networks did televise all of the proceedings live, the Iran- contra hearings would not command the same national viewing interest as those that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon.

“I don’t think there is the smell of blood today that there was with Nixon,” said Wally Pfister, who headed ABC News’ coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1973. “There seemed much more excitement then.

“There was the burglary (of Democratic National Committee headquarters) that was so botched. And you had that cast of characters (testifying). It was such that it was almost as good as the soap operas . . . if not better.”

But might not testimony on the tangled web of dealings in Iran, Swiss bank accounts and furtive support to the contras prove a better mystery story than Watergate, and thus more fascinating viewing?

“It might be,” Pfister said. “But I don’t think all the details are going to come out the way they did with Watergate. . . . With Watergate, you had a lot of amateurs bungling things up and making mistakes.”

But in the Iran- contra affair, he said, “You’re dealing with more sophisticated people . . . a highly sophisticated group of people who were trying to do what they thought was right, I’m sure.”

Pfister wasn’t able to watch the opening day of the Iran- contra hearings. He had just returned from Japan and was busy at the company he founded here after leaving ABC News in 1978.

The firm, Executive Television Workshop, teaches business executives how to handle themselves on television, be the occasion a press conference or the third degree from Mike Wallace. It also teaches them the arts of testifying before governmental hearings, be it a zoning matter or a congressional committee in Washington.

Pfister was asked if any of his clients are scheduled to appear in Washington’s Iran- contra show.

“Not that I know of,” he cheerfully replied. “But I know they’d be superlative if they did.”

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