RUINATION BY DEREGULATION IN D.C.

TV shows are not like buildings. When one is demolished, there usually are no remains, because another show immediately fills the empty space. In the nation’s capital, the space formerly occupied by “Panorama,” a vital, daily, local talk show, is now filled by reruns of “Alice” and “Value Television,” a syndicated home-shopping spree.

WTTG-TV, the Fox-owned station here, canceled “Panorama” only three weeks after the show giddily celebrated its 20th anniversary. A longstanding, civic-minded Washington tradition was snuffed out in a snap.

What happened to “Panorama” is symptomatic of what’s happening at other stations around the country, and at the networks too. As broadcasters cut back on costs, they are likely also to cut back on public service. And now there are no FCC rules discouraging them from doing so.

Throwing out rules was a policy of the FCC under former chairman Mark Fowler, the deranged deregulator. Fowler snidely referred to local public-affairs shows as “Dudley Do Good” programming. He thought stations should be free to put on all the “He-Man” cartoons and game shows they wanted and the heck with public service.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, director of the Media Access Project, says the fate of “Panorama” epitomizes the ruination that deregulation has wrought.

“What it represents,” Schwartzman says, “is that there is not the slightest consideration given any more to dressing up the schedule with some attention to news and public affairs. Now, if a program doesn’t make money, they feel no obligation to put it on.

“This is a direct result of the deregulation process. ‘Panorama’ is the victim of it.”

How many “Panoramas” in other cities will fall, or have fallen? There are stories of entire news staffs being fired and station news operations shut down upon the arrival of new owners. ABC just canceled “Our World,” a respected prime-time news hour, even though the network insisted all along that the show did make a profit because of its small production cost.

Another Washington station recently scrubbed virtually all its local production, including a daily community talk show called “Eye on Washington.” New owners of the station incurred huge debts in making the purchase. So to cut costs, they cut service.

On Capitol Hill, a movement has begun to undo some of the damage of the Fowler years, to correct some of the factors that led to the death of “Panorama” and shows like it in other cities. Two pieces of current legislation address a TV station’s responsibility to its home town.

In both the House and Senate, there are bills to reinstate the public-affairs programming requirement that Fowler threw out in 1983. Perhaps more significant, Rep. Al Swift (D-Wash.) has introduced the Broadcast Ownership Stability Act of 1987, a bill that would restore the anti-trafficking provision that Fowler and crew abolished in 1982.

The anti-trafficking rule required the purchaser of a TV station to hold onto it for at least three years before selling it. The idea was to encourage an owner to put down roots in a community, to make a long-term commitment. When the rule died, trading in TV stations, and their selling prices, escalated wildly.

Enormous debts are incurred in such a game, and new owners, frantic to recoup funds, look for low-profit items on a station’s agenda that they can junk. Typical low-profit (or no-profit) item: public-affairs programming.

On the House floor, Swift said in February that if the present mania for trading TV stations “like pork bellies” were to continue, the public-service mandate would be trampled in the dust.

“There will only be an opportunity to get in, get out, and try to make a fast buck,” Swift said. “It won’t take long for the public-interest standard to disappear altogether. The process is well under way already.”

Such measures as Swift’s bill are part of a growing drive to return broadcasting to the broadcasters and wrest it away from the investors. It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.

Fowler always bragged that his deregulation tonic would foster more diversity in programming. Part of its dismal failure is that it did just the opposite. TV stations within a city, and among different cities, look more and more alike, as if they were fast-food restaurants, airports or Ramada Inns.

When local shows like “Panorama” die, an important part of American broadcasting dies with them.