ABC Girding for Possibility of Actors Strike, Stoddard Says

Still reeling from the blows dealt to program development by last summer’s Writers Guild of America strike, ABC is gearing up for a possible strike by the Screen Actors Guild this summer.

Brandon Stoddard, the third of the major network entertainment chiefs to address national TV writers and critics gathered here for the networks’ annual winter press tour, said that ABC is already in discussion with the studios about strike plans. These include the possibility of extending production schedules in the spring to begin shooting series episodes for next season, or of going back into production early for next season’s shows.

“We hope and pray the SAG strike doesn’t happen,” he said. “The effects of the writers strike won’t be over for a year, it’s still a blow to development. . . . The quality is hurting, and it’s going to take a long time for us to recover.”

Despite strike-related delays that kept some of its shows off the air until November and early December, ABC has emerged as the No. 2 network in prime time this season--and Stoddard expressed some understated pride in the network’s progress.

“I think we’ve made a little headway,” he said. “I’m relatively happy.”

ABC’s upswing began last winter, when its Winter Olympics coverage earned solid ratings and gave the network a chance to promote new mid-season programs, including “The Wonder Years.” ABC’s luck continued with a double Emmy win for the 1987-88 season: “The Wonder Years” was named best comedy series, and another first-season entry, “thirtysomething,” won as best drama series.

Despite ABC’s recent morale boost, there are two things Stoddard might be relatively un happy about: trouble on the set of the new hit series “Roseanne” and low ratings for the November broadcast of the first half of the $110-million “War and Remembrance” miniseries.

Stoddard said that, while “we’re keeping an eye on it,” he believes that the problems on “Roseanne” have been solved. Matt Williams, creator and co-executive producer of the series, in which Roseanne Barr stars as a wife, mother and blue-collar worker, recently departed the show, saying that Barr had refused to work on the final nine episodes of the season unless he left.

Stoddard dismissed the suggestion that Barr’s temperament might prove the undoing of the show.

“I think Roseanne is extremely sensitive as a performer about her character, and I don’t blame her,” he said, adding that Barr’s unusual contract with the production company--which gives her creative control of her character--was designed so that she could protect the trademark persona she has developed through her stand-up comedy routines.

The ABC executive acknowledged disappointment at the low ratings for “War and Remembrance,” which the network rushed onto the air last November to fill the programming gap left by the writers strike. He blamed neither the rescheduling nor promotion for its performance, however, pointing instead to the program’s failure to draw the under-55 audience.

“I was a little bit disappointed,” he said. “I think ‘War and Remembrance’ is a hell of a piece of film. The people who saw the movie were the ones who knew a lot of those scenes in the first place. We were certainly aware of the vulnerability of ‘War and Remembrance’ with the younger audience.”

Stoddard said the second half of the miniseries, which will be 12 to 12 1/2 hours long, will air as scheduled in May, with no special effort planned to attract the younger audience this time. He joked that the more upbeat second half should improve the ratings: “We have this great surprise ending--we win the war,” he said.

Asked about the controversy that has greeted the Jan. 23 rerun of “The Day After,” exploring the effects of a nuclear holocaust, Stoddard said the decision to trim the movie by 23 minutes and 18 seconds was not an effort to sabotage the film. The decision was prompted, he said, by a promise he made to the network’s affiliated stations that “we would never have a made-for-TV movie that went past 11 o’clock.”

Nicholas Meyer, the film’s director, has protested the alterations and has asked to have his name removed from the credits.

Stoddard said that he did not think the film suffered from the cuts, which he said included such extraneous scenes as someone driving a car.

“As a movie, I don’t think it was the best movie we ever made,” he said. “I’ve seen the recut movie and it’s fine--believe me, if it wasn’t, (I’d be) a very unhappy human being.”

He said the film was extraordinary as an event, but not as film making--and was not damaged or improved by the cuts of “a few seconds here, a few seconds there.”

Inevitably, Stoddard turned to the topic of “trash TV” or “tabloid TV,” one of the press tour’s hotter topics. During the CBS portion of the press events last week, CBS Broadcast Group President Howard Stringer gloated over the critical drubbing NBC took last fall for airing Geraldo Rivera’s “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground” and the TV movie “Favorite Son,” the story of a vice presidential candidate running on looks rather than ability. Stringer added proudly that CBS immediately turned down the opportunity to purchase future Rivera specials when a Rivera representative approached the network.

When Rivera and company approached ABC, Stoddard said, “We listened in our polite, quiet way, waited one day--and then turned them down.” He added that ABC’s reason was as much due to having had too many specials in development already as distaste for Rivera’s style of reporting.