CBS Affiliates Are Optimistic, but Also Yearn for Hit Series

At their annual convention in Los Angeles last year, many representatives of CBS’ affiliated stations believed that innovative new programming such as “Tour of Duty,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Frank’s Place” could launch the then-No. 2 network into first place.

At this year’s three-day convention, which ended Tuesday, the affiliates again had high hopes that new fall programming would improve the prime-time ratings--but this time around, that optimism was tinged with desperation.

Despite last fall’s eight hours of new prime-time programming, CBS ended the TV season in third place for the first time. And the affiliates gathered at the Century Plaza this week seemed determined to believe that when you’re that far down, the only way to go is up.

Possibly because they had no other choice, the representatives of CBS’ 206 affiliated stations were willing and eager to buy the promises of CBS Inc. President Laurence A. Tisch, CBS Broadcast Group President Gene Jankowski and CBS Entertainment President Kim LeMasters that the fall schedule would solve the problems that plagued the network in 1987-88.

“It was just a bad year,” offered Ed Delaney, promotions manager for KDFW-TV in Dallas. “Nobody is very happy about being in third place, but (1988-89) looks like a good season.”

Bruce Lewis of KMEG-TV in Sioux City, Iowa, admitted that “we’re not real happy” about last season’s dismal finish. “When you get right down to it, we haven’t had a hit in five years,” he added. “We’re really in a pit. We’re in a hole right now.”

But Lewis expects better times in 1988-89. “We are concerned, but we have heard things (from CBS management) that calmed us down,” he said. “Now, we’re saying: ‘Prove it.’ ”

In the final session of the conference Tuesday morning, CBS News President Howard Stringer suggested that the affiliates had not hesitated to share their concerns. “This has not been a polite conference,” he said.

But Stringer said contention between network and affiliates is a healthy sign. “From a polite conference comes a polite network,” he said. “And we will certainly never have a polite news division.”

For his part, programming chief LeMasters immediately acknowledged in his introduction of the new fall programs Monday that last season’s entertainment schedule suffered from too little youth appeal and a haphazard promotional campaign.

And, in an earlier news conference, Tisch readily took the blame for putting pressure on the entertainment division to try out a new slate of Tuesday-night comedies last spring in lieu of the Tuesday movie; those comedies were yanked after only a few weeks when ratings for the night sank to an all-time low.

Katy Baetz-Matthews, promotion manager of Detroit’s WJBK-TV, was encouraged by management’s honesty. “I think they’re being pretty up-front about (the problems),” she said. “I’ve heard presentations in the past where they’ve whitewashed a very large problem, but they haven’t done that here.”

Baetz-Matthews, like most affiliates interviewed, was cautious about predicting a speedy return to the top of the prime-time ratings. “It’s not going to happen within a year; it’s going to take a lot longer than that,” she said. “Who knows? That depends on what ABC and NBC have up their sleeves.”

Lewis Moore, owner of KXGN-TV in Glendive, Mont., said: “We’re going to have a good year. I got a good feeling out of the meetings that I have gone to, where great progress is being made.

“Last year, we lost our head of programming right in the middle of our year,” Moore continued, referring to the resignation last November of B. Donald Grant, who was replaced by LeMasters. “We got a little mixed up. I have a feeling of better communication this year.”

Peter Orne, general manager of WISH-TV in Indianapolis, Ind., called the affiliates’ mood “inquisitive” rather than negative. Despite the network’s ratings slide last season, Orne praised LeMasters, 38, for his attempt to develop more youth-oriented programs.

The affiliates were particularly pleased with the pilot episodes of three new fall shows: The as-yet-untitled Mary Tyler Moore comedy, in which Moore plays a divorcee who marries a widower; “Murphy Brown,” a sophisticated comedy starring Candice Bergen as a tough Washington TV journalist, and “TV 101,” an hour drama from GTG Entertainment about a high school journalism class exploring their lives and those of their friends by making documentaries.

Some affiliates expressed disappointment, however, in “Van Dyke,” a comedy starring Dick Van Dyke and his son, Barry Van Dyke, as co-owners of a struggling regional theater, and in “Almost Grown,” which confused some of the affiliates by bouncing from decade to decade as it explored different phases of the relationship of high school sweethearts who later attend college together, marry and raise a family.

Affiliates’ opinions were mixed about “Paradise,” a Western about a professional gunslinger who unexpectedly inherits four orphans, and “Dirty Dancing,” based on the hit movie set in the early 1960s, about a sheltered young woman who learns about life and love through contact with the working-class dancers who teach and perform at a summer resort.

Some of the affiliates did not understand how the young woman’s coming-of-age, the crux of the movie, could happen on a weekly basis. Others were afraid the series’ suggestive title wouldn’t play in Peoria.

“I’m hearing a lot of resistance to that name; I’m not sure it’s going to go over too well in the hinterlands,” said John VonReuden, general manager of KXMB-TV of Bismarck, N.D. “One thing like that can do a lot of damage.”