CBS, NBC Pinch Hitters to Go Up Against ABC’s World Series : Television: Other networks will air movies and specials with ‘female appeal’ against the games. But beating the Bay Area series may be ‘nearly impossible.’

CBS and NBC are trying to topple the national pastime.

But neither precedent nor the American disposition are in their favor as the two networks prepare to broadcast programs they hope will pull viewers away from the World Series on ABC.

Beating the series, which starts today, will be “nearly impossible,” says Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment.

Speculation that the Oakland-San Francisco matchup will limit interest in the Series elsewhere around the country is dismissed by those who study TV viewing habits for a living. It is dismissed by those who remember the solid ratings captured by the trans-Missouri World Series of 1985, which pitted St. Louis against Kansas City.

“It’ll get big (ratings) numbers no matter who’s playing, unless they’re Canadian teams,” says Peter Tortorici, vice president of planning and scheduling at CBS. “The World Series is the World Series. It’s more than just a baseball game.”

“I think the World Series is an entity unto itself,” Tartikoff says. “It tends to gain a momentum unto itself. But you can always hope for a four-game sweep. So whoever wins the first game, that’s who I’m rooting for.”

Team NBC and Team CBS have assembled counterprogramming strategies designed to bring respectable ratings. With the goal of attracting women not caught up in the post-season frenzy, both networks have jiggered their normal schedules to boost the number of movies and specials that have what the TV professionals call “female appeal.”

“We basically tried to give people an alternative,” says Tortorici.

Here on the West Coast, the baseball games will air at 5 p.m., not at 8 p.m. in prime time as they will for much of the rest of the country. So the counterprogramming moves may not effect local viewers. Still, for those who appreciate competition, the networks’ strategies are not unlike the strategies employed in other sporting events. The inclusion of such pinch hitters as “An Eight Is Enough Wedding” on NBC and a “Women of the 21st Century” special on CBS is not much different than bringing in a lefty relief pitcher to throw to a lefty batter.

For the first game of the Series today, and for the sixth game next Saturday, if it’s necessary, CBS and NBC will stay with their regular schedules. “We couldn’t have stronger counterprogramming than our normal lineup, which skews female,” Tartikoff says of the network’s strong “Golden Girls” night. (Although Game 1 of the 1987 St. Louis-Minnesota series on ABC easily won the ratings contest that night, it lost during the half hour “The Golden Girls” aired.)

Game 2 on Sunday will meet CBS’ power hitter “Murder, She Wrote” and then the feature film “The Big Easy.” NBC will run the “Eight Is Enough” reunion movie.

“Two years ago we beat (the World Series on ABC) in Game 2 on a Sunday night with the first ‘Eight Is Enough’ reunion film,” Tartikoff says. “So being brilliant and innovative, we ordered a sequel.”

With no game on Monday, CBS is maintaining its normal schedule of six comedies. NBC, which airs movies that night anyway, has scheduled “Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer,” about the highly publicized Pulitzer divorce case. Tartikoff said he normally would have saved the TV movie for the important sweeps period, but decided to use it now to build ratings.

For Game 3 on Tuesday, CBS and NBC see an opportunity to make inroads because that night is ABC’s biggest anyway. ABC has little to gain from running the World Series in place of its stellar lineup of strong female-appeal programs, including the top-rated “Roseanne.” A lot of women who would normally watch ABC that night are expected to be out roaming the television dial looking for something that’s not baseball.

“Given the big numbers of younger female viewers who will be making a choice they normally don’t have to make,” says CBS’ Tortorici, “we’ve made an attempt to give them something to watch that might not otherwise be there.” CBS has scheduled the movie “When He’s Not a Stranger,” about acquaintance rape at college.

NBC, employing nearly the same philosophy, will stick with the usual “Matlock” at 8 p.m. and then will air the movie “Stuck With Each Other,” a comedy starring Tyne Daly and Richard Crenna. Tartikoff believes the older-skewing movie will “comfortably inherit the ‘Matlock’ audience” while attracting the same sort of viewers who would normally be watching ABC.

CBS has scheduled another movie, “Trenchcoat in Paradise,” to take on Game 4 on Wednesday. NBC will stay with its regular schedule on Wednesday and wouldn’t dream of altering its powerhouse “Cosby” night lineup on Thursday. CBS will compete against Game 5 on Thursday with “Women of the 21st Century,” a special that the network descirbes as a look at “women who are committed to fitness, good health and reaching their phsycial peaks.”

Regardless of whether a sixth or seventh game is needed next weekend, CBS and NBC will keep their regular schedules intact.

For Tortorici, there is solace in knowing he won’t have to program against the World Series again for at least four years. CBS spent $1 billion for the exclusive network rights to televise Major League Baseball for that period--including all the playoff and World Series games.

The CBS baseball deal marked the end of an era for NBC. The first televised game--during the 1947 World Series--appeared on NBC, and the network has aired the Saturday “Game of the Week” every year but one since 1957. During the past six years, NBC and ABC have shared the baseball rights package, rotating the playoffs and series between them.

Tartikoff, a baseball fanatic, seems to have taken the loss personally. He already has decided how he will program his network against the baseball post-season contests next year. NBC has purchased the rights to make a 6- to 8-hour miniseries from the Jackie Collins novels “Lucky” and “Chances.” The miniseries will be produced for the express purpose of airing against the 1990 playoffs, he said.

The NBC executive said he also is about to close a deal with another best-selling author for the rights to make another female-oriented miniseries to run against the World Series.

Tartikoff appears almost apologetic about his plan to battle the sport. “You can’t anticipate the drama that these games can produce,” he says, “and that’s the wonderful thing about sports and why it’s so sad that we lost baseball. But nobody will be trying harder next season to make the CBS baseball deal look like the worst deal ever made.”