PRIME-TIME SOAPS : CUTTING COSTS . . . AND CASTS

“We’re talking some deaths,” said Jeff Freilich. “We’re talking some deaths, we’re talking some disappearances, we’re talking some escapes. And we’re talking some happy endings.”

Jeff Freilich is executive producer of CBS’ prime-time soap opera “Falcon Crest.” Like other nighttime soap producers, Freilich has had to think about death more than usual these days. And elopements, relocations to remote islands, irreversible comas and that popular, all-purpose favorite, the mysterious disappearance.

Although the season-ending cliffhanger is a staple of such series, a few more characters than usual will be falling over the cliff this year. And the reason is not to make things more exciting, but to save money.

In an effort to keep production costs from climbing, three prime-time serials produced by Lorimar Telepictures for CBS are reducing their number of actors. As the shows headed for their season finales this week, cast lists were being trimmed at “Falcon Crest,” “Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”

“With other costs going up, the most logical place to make cuts is the cast,” Freilich said. “You’re talking about a high-budget show (the budget for a one-hour prime-time soap is about $1 million), and at least one-third of that budget is cast.”

With the three shows already in production for next fall--they started filming more than two months early due to the possibility of a Directors Guild strike at the end of June--scriptwriters are at work pondering the most intriguing ways to terminate their characters’ glamorous lives.

The other two prime-time soaps, ABC’s “Dynasty” and “The Colbys,” produced by Richard and Esther Shapiro Productions in association with Aaron Spelling Productions, haven’t made any decisions along these lines. “With ‘Dynasty’ just beginning to develop story lines for next season, it would be premature to discuss just what changes will be made,” said a spokeswoman for the Shapiros. As for “The Colbys,” the staff doesn’t know yet if the low-rated show will be renewed.

While the Lorimar producers are generally remaining secretive about what actors will be departing in order to maintain suspense for next season, viewers can expect them to come from the ranks of minor characters. Core characters are not written out unless their contracts expire and they refuse to sign, or they are unable to come to terms on new ones--as happened on “Dallas” this season with Victoria Principal. She makes her final appearance as Pamela Ewing tonight.

Lesser players, however, may be eliminated to save the cost of their salaries, to avoid using an extra set or to refocus audience attention on the stars. And the night-time soap is one of few places where an individual may simply die because he’s boring.

Lorimar shows have announced some additions to their casts for fall: Red Buttons joins “Knots Landing,” Eddie Albert turns up on “Falcon Crest” and Andrew Stevens and Jack Scalia will appear in “Dallas.” But even these high-priced stars usually cost less than regular characters in the long run because they will appear in a limited number of episodes. And, since their presence is temporary, the company doesn’t have to provide the annual salary increases afforded to a regular cast member.

“We have lost some people in our regular cast; several of them will be missing in the fall,” said Freilich of “Falcon Crest,” the steamy saga of two rival factions of a wealthy family of Northern California vintners, which also serves up its season finale tonight. He won’t reveal which characters are getting the ax, however.

The decision stems from a desire by CBS and Lorimar to avoid increasing 1986-87 production costs next season, he said.

Barbara Brogliatti, senior vice president of corporate communications for Lorimar, confirmed that the company has asked producers of all of its shows to watch costs for the upcoming season, although “each case is different,” she said.

Ken Horton, vice president of programming for Lorimar, said that looking closely at production costs, including the price of cast members, is an ongoing issue in TV production, but added that “this year we may have looked a little more closely than before.” He stressed, however, that decisions to get rid of some characters and add new ones are made to “preserve the freshness” of the shows as well as for financial reasons.

Serial dramas such as “Dallas” and “Dynasty” traditionally fare less well than comedies and action shows on the syndication market--first, because no one really wants to see a cliffhanger twice and, second, because the shows can become tedious to watch on a daily rather than a weekly basis, as they were intended to be seen.

“Producers are concerned about finances; they’re getting less money than before on the syndication market,” Freilich said. “It’s natural for them to think, ‘How can we recoup our losses?’ ”

Given the choice of cutting back on the production value of the show or eliminating characters, Freilich chose the cast.

But, he added, the creative staff already had planned to knock off a few unlucky cast members before money became an issue. The reason: Story lines were getting too complicated. Freilich found audiences were tuning out when the story strayed from their favorite stars to the petty problems of minor characters.

“We had 14 regulars--it was like doing ‘Cats’ every week, or ‘A Chorus Line,’ ” Freilich said. “All shows of this genre are better served by smaller casts.”

Along with the cast, the show has been cutting the number of separate story lines. In the middle of the season, “Falcon Crest” had seven stories going at once; by the end of the year they had narrowed it to three.

“Ultimately, you don’t want to do eight stories that involve different characters,” Freilich said. “You want to do three stories that involve everyone in the cast.”

Kasha Lawrence, producer of “Knots Landing,” began arranging for the demise of a host of minor characters as much as two years ago. Like Freilich, he discovered that the “Knots Landing” cast, at that time the largest prime-time soap with 17 players, had grown unwieldy. The cast has since been pared to 10 core characters.

“The financial issue is coincidental,” Lawrence said. “They never said to us: ‘You must cut.’ ”

Still, untimely exits represent a financial boon for Lorimar. “Actors are very expensive,” he said. “When you have fewer cast members to deal with, you also have less houses, less sets to build, less places to go. Building is very expensive.”

Lawrence has planned ahead; a believable TV death takes time. He said the two actors (he won’t reveal which ones) who’ll be written out in the fall already know how many episodes they have left.

“You can’t just put everybody in a building and blow it up,” he pointed out.

There is a new commandment among “Dallas” writers, however: Thou shalt not kill a character and then, a year later, have this character pop out of the shower and tell the world it was all a dream.

Executive producer Leonard Katzman learned this the hard way last fall when “Dallas” brought back Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy), nice-guy brother of the infamous J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), in this less-than-satis-fying--and wildly expensive--way.

Because the preceding year was declared to have been a dream, those episodes cannot be sold in syndication.

“After Bobby’s magic return, we’re very leery of killing anybody off,” Katzman said. “It is always better to have disasters happen off screen, if possible. If the body hasn’t been discovered or stuck in the ground, it’s easier to have them come back someday.”

Plastic surgery may prove useful in reviving characters, added Katzman. “Anyone who goes under bandages can go in looking like Zsa Zsa Gabor and come out looking like just about anyone else.”

(Is that a hint about Pam Ewing’s fate? Said Brogliatti: “We have said Victoria Principal won’t be back in the fall. We didn’t say Pam Ewing wouldn’t be back in the fall. . . . “)

“Dallas” has one of the smallest, though most expensive, casts among prime-time soaps. Cast salaries constitute 45% of the budget. Although Katzman said “Dallas” staffers were concerned about costs, they had less to worry about than the other Lorimar shows because several core characters either left the show during the current season or were due to be written out of the fall season. Jenilee Harrison and Dack Rambo were phased out of the show during the past several months, and Susan Howard and Deborah Shelton, along with Principal, appear in their last episode tonight.

Katzman believes that mass murder of minor characters is not the long-term solution to financial problems, however. “They’re still going to find they need some new people this season,” he said. But, he added, “new people are cheaper to hire.”