Panel Finds TV Technologically Daring, Conservative in Content

Although the television industry will soon offer fresh challenges to writers by launching new technologies such as interactive TV, the networks are becoming more conservative when it comes to what the writer may include in the script.

That was one conclusion to be drawn from the comments of writers, producers and other entertainment industry figures on the panel at Saturday’s “Future of Television” seminar at USC, sponsored by the Writers Guild and the USC Cinema-Television Alumni Assn.

The day-long program began with encouraging words to writers and would-be writers about the limitless creative possibilities of interactive TV--in which the television set will merge with computer technology to allow viewers to control the plot of a comedy or drama--but the seminar ended with writers and writer-producers bemoaning a resurgence of conservatism when it comes to what the networks will allow on the screen.

Steven Bochco, executive producer of “L.A. Law” and “Hooperman,” was the strongest voice of protest against a recent trend toward more interference by network standards and practices departments, which he blames on viewer backlash against the current spate of “trash TV” programs.

Bochco added that the networks are run by “corporate entities that have no history of involvement with television,” and those companies have “imposed a corporate blanket” over controversial material. And, although network budget cuts have resulted in smaller standards and practices departments, smaller does not mean more lenient, Bochco said.

“I think the networks are very scared,” Bochco said. “The fundamental instinct now is just to take cover. . . . I’ve had more fights (with the networks) in the past year than I’ve had in the last six to eight years put together.”

Bochco noted that, although he believes that trash TV shows are on their way out, “in the short term, they have devastated us.” In trying to mitigate protest over those shows, “the networks, in the process, have clipped everybody’s wings,” he said.

Heide Perlman, executive producer of Fox Broadcasting’s “The Tracey Ullman Show,” said the same holds true at Fox, despite boasts by the fledgling broadcasting service that it is willing to push the envelope. Fox recently took a public beating when Michigan mother Terry Rakolta wrote to advertisers asking them to boycott the Fox sitcom “Married . . . With Children.”

“I think it’s all a crock,” Perlman said. “It (interference) has gotten worse over the time we’ve been on the air. I don’t think they’re going for anything but to be successful. They started off talking about the difference (between Fox and the networks), but that is not the reality.”

Bochco scoffed at the suggestion that such shows as the Emmy-winning “thirtysomething” do not get censored. “If they (the producers of “thirtysomething”) don’t deal with (standards and practices) before the fact, they’ll deal with them after the fact,” he said. “They’ll just go into a room and cut your stuff.”

Questions of corporate interference also surfaced in the discussion of interactive TV, a phenomenon that panel members predicted will be as popular as the VCR within three years. David Riordan, director of Interactive Entertainment Group, Cinemaware Corp., envisions the stereo, TV and computer being merged into one unit soon, with computer software providing viewers an opportunity to take a program’s action in a variety of different directions. He expects the first such hardware to be available for the 1990 Christmas season.