U.S.-Soviet Show Pioneers New Process

David Niles starts work Wednesday on a TV show called “Moscow Melodies.”

True, this sounds as if the leading lady might cry, “Hey, kids, let’s put on a collective!” But the musical comedy, described as a look at Soviet life, is unusual in two regards.

Niles is taping it in the much-publicized process called high-definition television, or HDTV, which many consider video’s sharper, brighter, clearer future.

And he’s taping it in Moscow. It’s the first of what he says is a series of 13 high-definition co-productions with the Soviets on a variety of projects, including a theatrical film.

Why?

“Well, the Soviet Union has an enormous television system; it spans 11 time zones,” said Niles, who last year helped CBS tape the first American network drama done with the HDTV system--”The Littlest Victim,” slated to air later this season.

“These (Soviet) people produce an incredible amount . . . and they think the audio-visual medium is very important,” he said. “They like very much the kind of pictures we make, the stories they tell. And they’re interested in 1125.”

He referred to the number of video “scanning” lines that one Japanese-developed version of HDTV offers. That’s the version used by his New York-based company, 1125 Productions, of which he is president.

Conventional TV sets in the United States only have 525 scanning lines, which, like the dots of a newspaper photograph, make up the picture viewers see on their TV screens. TV sets in Europe and the Soviet Union have 625 lines. The additional lines offered by HDTV provide sharper images.

While the ability to produce HDTV programs exists, the technology for broadcasting and receiving it has not been perfected. Japan’s NHK network will start a daily one-hour test of the new process in April, but the National Assn. of Broadcasters predicts that it won’t be available in the United States until 1993. The Federal Communications Commission is studying at least 16 proposals for establishing HDTV standards.

Niles, however, whose HDTV credits include a sitcom pilot, “Norman’s Corner,” for Home Box Office, thinks the new process “is going to be available here in America in the next two years, right after Japan and Canada.” But not necessarily on broadcast television. Instead, he said, viewers may see it first via cable, satellite transmissions, videocassettes or laser discs.

Two weeks ago, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of a House subcommittee considering the potential financial impact of HDTV on the U.S. electronics industry, came to Niles’ spacious office suite here to see a demonstration of the new technology.

“He was really here to see what the other side of the story was,” Niles said, “because up until now, we in America have only been looking at a bunch of broadcasters and manufacturers who are yelling, ‘The Japanese are coming, the Japanese are coming, we’ll lose our industry.’ And I was hoping to say to him, ‘There’s another side to this that’s much more important.’ ”

That side, he said, is developing both new markets for HDTV and the ability to make HDTV programs.

Which apparently is what the Soviet Union is interested in at this point. It held international conferences on high-definition television last September and in January, where the 25 broadcast and motion-picture officials in attendance agreed that tests should be held of three proposed HDTV production standards, including the 1125-line Japanese system.

The Soviets said that the tests, to be overseen by an expert from Italy’s RAI broadcast system, will start in March and conclude “in the shortest possible time span.” The results will be made available to all interested parties but won’t carry a recommendation.

Niles’ “Moscow Melodies”--which will have a Soviet cast and will be taped both in Russian and English-language versions--won’t be part of those tests, however. Nor will the other Soviet shows his company co-produces.

“The shooting is not connected,” he said, even though it will occur at the same time as the tests. “It’s the product they want.”

The productions simply are being shot in HDTV to make use of the available technology. The results will be shown in theaters and on TV in the U.S.S.R. and then sold in the West, Niles said.

Niles began negotiating what became his co-production agreement with officials of the U.S.S.R. State Committee for Television and Radio while attending the HDTV conference in January. According to a Soviet press release, among the other American delegates to the high-tech summit were representatives from CBS, NBC and Universal Studios.

The CBS representative, Joseph A. Flaherty, vice president and general manager for engineering and development, said he thinks the Soviets’ interest in high-definition production probably has more to do with movie theaters at this point than television sets.

There aren’t a lot of color TV sets in the Soviet Union, he said in an interview, so movie houses in the cities and towns across that huge nation “are still a much more important part of everyday life than here.”

With that in mind, he considers it significant that Soviet officials “have talked for a number of years about electronically delivered cinema.”

The Soviets actually have done some experiments in which they electronically distributed television programs by satellite for showing in theaters on large-screen projection systems, he said.

High-definition video discs, each weighing only a few ounces, might be another means of delivery, Flaherty noted. They would replace the film prints that grow progressively more battered as they wend their way from theater to theater across the country.

Each theater would have to be converted to include a large-screen projector to show high-definition TV, he said, but at that point, the theater “is in the live (broadcasting) business. You can have a satellite on the roof for real-time events, and can program your theater to do big (sports) games (live) or whatever you think is saleable.”

Such applications also could be made in the United States, he said.

“Everything is a special carry-in lashup, very expensive, and the big-screening quality is rather marginal. But if you have a (HDTV) projector installed, the theater can be in the live business. . . . So there are some new opportunities that start unfolding.”