New TV Season: Hard Labor in Hollywood : The Fall Schedule--Drop by Drop

In Ecclesiastes it is written that “to everything there is a season.” This has been especially true in network television, where news seasons usually begin at this time of year amid waves of wahoo.

But this may become known as The Season That Dribbled In, with production of new and returning series delayed by the 22-week writers’ strike that didn’t end until Aug. 7. The first series won’t begin appearing until early October; others will follow intermittently over the next two months.

Advertising executives say that viewer uncertainty about what’s afoot this fall probably will lead to lower overall network ratings in the new season.

Not so, say CBS and ABC officials. Too early to tell, says NBC.

But there is general industry agreement that:

--True competition of regular prime-time network programming won’t start until late October.

--The so-called “official” 30-week ratings season, about which so much is written by the news media, has little meaning to the industry, save for bragging rights for the victor--which again is expected to be NBC, winner of the last three seasons.

“It’s almost become sort of a media spectator sport,” ABC research chief Alan Wurtzel says of the tally, in which reporters using Nielsen estimates dutifully report each week how many households watched what network.

“Anybody who deals with the business realizes that household

ratings are simply not the way in which programs are bought and sold anymore. It’s demographics,” he said, referring to the age and gender breakdowns of who is watching the programs.

Nevertheless, the A.C. Nielsen Co., the show-biz trade publication Variety and NBC agree on next Monday as the official start of the new TV season, such as it is. ABC and CBS are balking at that date.

NBC likes the Sept. 19 start because its prime-time schedule between then and Oct. 2 consists of the Olympic Games telecasts from Seoul. Those ratings were expected to be strong even without the strike. Now, without major competition, they are likely to be even better, and NBC would dearly like them included in the official tally of the 1988-89 season.

ABC has not pegged a date for starting the season. But Wurtzel jokes, “I want the season to begin the first night of ‘War and Remembrance’ and end on its last night,” referring to the Nov. 13 debut of the seven-night, 18-hour miniseries about World War II.

More seriously, Wurtzel says he thinks it would be logical to mark the official start of the season on Oct. 31, just before the important November ratings “sweeps” period begins, because by then the networks “will have half of our schedules on the air.”

At CBS, where executives hope to escape a second consecutive season as No. 3 in prime time, research chief David Poltrack thinks the week of Oct. 24 is a “natural week to start looking at the new season” ratings.

He picks that week, he says, because by then, “60% of all regularly scheduled prime-time programs and 55% of all new programs will have premiered.”

More important than when they start counting the numbers is what those numbers will be. There is disagreement over how serious an impact the season’s late start will have on viewership.

“Nobody wanted the disruption, and I think we’re going to pay for that in some viewer confusion,” says ABC’s Wurtzel. “But, overall, I suspect that once people become aware the stuff is back, they’ll be there.”

In fact, he says, he thinks the three-network ratings for this year’s fourth quarter probably will be up from last year, because of NBC’s Olympics and World Series coverage and ABC’s baseball playoffs and “War and Remembrance” miniseries.

Some advertising executives are skeptical that the networks will rebound quickly.

The most dire prediction--a 10% drop in overall ratings by season’s end--comes from Richard J. Kostrya, executive vice president of J. Walter Thompson, USA, a major ad agency.

Because of competition from cable, independent TV stations and videocassettes, the networks have been steadily losing their share of audience for the past decade. Where once they collectively accounted for 90% of the viewing in prime time, they now are at the 70% mark.

The late start of the season may speed up that decline, Kostrya says.

“In the first two quarters of this year, we’ve seen the networks drop three share points, and it all went to cable,” he says. “With network erosion expected to continue, this type of thing (the delayed season) just accelerates things. It gives viewers a chance to try something else, and when they try something else, some portion of them don’t come back.”

Paul Isaacson, a senior executive at Young & Rubicam, won’t forecast, for competitive reasons, how much a ratings drop he thinks the late start will cost the networks, but he doesn’t believe it will be dramatic.

“I think NBC will do great with the Olympics,” he says. “I think it’ll be difficult for the other two networks to do anything, and I think alternative viewing--cable, syndication, pay cable, maybe even books--will get the benefit.”

Ironically, despite the expected audience “erosion,” as the industry calls it, the networks enjoyed record orders for commercial time in the new season during the so-called “upfront” buying period last June and July.

In making such purchases, advertisers get guarantees that their ads will reach a specified number of viewers--and promises that if the ratings fall below what has been promised, the networks will give them free time elsewhere.

This year’s upfront splurge came to about $3.3 billion, Isaacson says--about $300 million more than last season.

Why is the spending up when the networks’ audience shares are going down?

“The network still is the best bet in town,” Kostrya explains. “Even though its ratings are going down . . . it still is the most powerful (advertising) vehicle there is.”