10 TV Clinkers That Made the Biggest Clunks in ’88

Into every television year a little rain must fall. Sometimes even a downpour.

Hence, here is the “10 Worst” list for 1988, to be followed Friday by the “10 Best.”

--KNBC-TV Channel 4 News Goes to the Olympics. There they were, the Channel 4 anchors in all their grinning, windblown, wisecracking, self-serving, joined-at-the-hips glory, simply having the time of their lives reporting about Southern California.

From Seoul.

Is this what’s known as serving the public interest? Yes, hearing about the weather in Santa Monica or gridlock on a Los Angeles freeway from someone in South Korea made perfectly good sense--but only if the purpose of the newscast was not news, but good old-fashioned promotion. And that was the purpose, as Channel 4 flew its goofy little crowd to Seoul with the idea of sunning its anchors in the brightness of NBC’s Summer Olympics coverage.

It was not very newsy, but like all good jokes, it was very, very funny.

-- “Favorite Son . “ It was gratuitously sexy, gratuitously violent, exploitative and stupefyingly banal. And those were the best qualities of this adaptation of Steve Sohmer’s book that aired on NBC.

In its advance publicity, NBC sought to encourage speculation that the story’s handsome vicepresidential aspirant protagonist was analogous to Dan Quayle.

Not in Quayle’s worst moments.

“Favorite Son” revealed far less about the political process than it did about about the prime-time process of a network whose once-high standards seemed to have been reduced to two words: Anything goes!

-- “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground.” More from NBC, only this time the source was Geraldo Rivera in a prime-time documentary (unconnected to the network’s news division) preaching that a Satanist lurked under every bed.

Shame on NBC for allowing Rivera to commandeer the network for two hours of wild hysteria on a topic that demanded calm and reason, but turned out to be a heavily slanted exercise in ratings worship.

-- Geraldo Gets Nose Broken When Riot Breaks Out as Roy Innis Tries to Break Neck of John Metzger . This episode of “Geraldo” (on KCBS-TV Channel 2) will be remembered as one of the most revolting hours in TV history, the entire fracas being set up when “Geraldo” invited Innis, the publicity-seeking black civil rights leader, and Metzger, the publicity-seeking white supremacist, to share a stage in front of a volatile studio audience.

When Metzger used obnoxious language, Innis tried to choke him, setting off a brawl in which Rivera’s nose was smashed by a flying chair. All of it was on camera, of course, the resulting record ratings prompting a repeat of the segment, while other programs exploited the incident by rerunning portions of the brawl footage.

There are two message here. One is that shows predicated on confrontation are so combustible that one of these days someone will be killed. The other message is that, if the ratings are good, no one will care.

-- Sally Jessy Raphael Gets Real Mad When She Gets Hoaxed . Re-e-e-e-e-e-eal mad! When it was revealed that several guests who had appeared on “Geraldo,” “Oprah” and “Sally Jessy Raphael” were phonies, Raphael invited two of them back to explain how they had the audacity to commit such a dastardly deed. Predictably, the hoaxers-explain-why-they-hoaxed show got huge ratings.

Raphael was upset all right, but not so upset that she didn’t mind exploiting the exploiters herself when it suited her.

-- “Goddess of Love . “ Yes, it was Vanna White’s long-awaited dramatic debut, on NBC, playing a statue come to life, in a performance that was, well, marblesque.

Some saw “Goddess of Love” as a requiem for Vanna’s acting career. Others saw it as a real break-out performance from an actress with a real future doing the classics. As Lady MacBeth, perhaps? “Out, out darned spot.”

-- “Moonlighting” Dec. 6 Season Premiere . Here is a once-great series that should go quietly into retirement before the old is totally eclipsed by the new. David as a fetus in Maddie’s womb, with a bow in his hair? Enough said.

-- “The Woman He Loved.” Mating tuna display more passion than Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour did as the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson in this moribund pre-World War II love story on CBS that revealed absolutely nothing about its characters or the fascinating politics that shaped their courtship and marriage. How bad can docudrama be? This bad.

-- “Bluegrass.” One part wasn’t enough. CBS felt two were required to dribble out the multicrisis saga of a Kentucky horsewoman played by Cheryl Ladd. Maude Sage Breen was loved by one man, but seduced by another, who was manipulated by the woman who was the wife of the man who raped Maude when she was a child. Just like in your neighborhood, right?

-- Phil Wears a Dress. It was he, all right, the star of “Donahue” all decked out like his guests for a transvestite fashion show and wardrobe seminar.

“Survival is the name of the game,” Donahue has said in congenially defending his decision to play dress up. He may be right. But what a shame, and what a reflection on TV, that he feels he must take such drastic measures to remain viable in syndication.

There was no better hour on TV than “Donahue” before “Oprah” became nationally syndicated and immediately began destroying “Donahue” in the ratings in many key markets.

And then came “Geraldo” and the other shows that placed a greater premium on being outrageous.

So now Phil is wearing dresses and interviewing mud wrestlers in order to survive. But at what price?