TV And Radio in the Eighties : Dealing With Reality : Television: Programming changed dramatically, with the proliferation of 'infotainment' shows, prime-time soaps .

By HOWARD ROSENBERG

Dec. 27, 1989 12 AM PT

TIMES TELEVISION CRITIC

Is television a true reflection of society?

If so, Americans in the 1980s were obsessed with sex. We were also a thoroughly polarized nation consisting of either criminals or victims, a people at once violent and subjected to violence. What’s more, our wealthy class was neurotic, miserable and scheming, our poor an insignificant, almost-invisible minority.

Nahhhhh .

On the other hand, the above is shorthand for the decade’s two programming trends that loomed above all others:

One is the misnamed “reality” revolution, dominated most recently by the terrible tabloids and seeded in the decade-ago emergence of a goofy little NBC series called “Real People” as one of the success stories of the early ‘80s.

The other is prime-time soap operas, the legacy of the still-surviving CBS series “Dallas,” which caught fire not long after debuting in 1978 and only now is flaming out.

It was “Laugh-In” creator George Schlatter who gave us “Real People,” which lasted through part of 1984. It introduced viewers to “real” Americans--searched the land for them and then put them on camera and even brought some of them into the studio so that the show’s patriotic hosts could stand beside them and applaud their accomplishments.

It gave you a chill. These people weren’t phony-baloney Hollywood creations. No sir, they were the salt of the land, honest-to-goodness real folks whom Charles Kuralt missed, people who did such honest-to-goodness things as . . . uh . . . eat dirt and walk backward. As it turned out, many of them were real bizarre people.

Well, Schlatter always did have a sense of humor.

Given the success of “Real People,” its cloning was inevitable. On came the short-lived spinoff, “Speak Up, America.” On came “That’s Incredible!” which inspired “Those Amazing Animals.” Were these reality? They were someone’s reality, no doubt, but perhaps no one whom you’d care to meet.

Incredible? Amazing? These shows of the early ‘80s were nothing compared to what the second half of the decade was to bring, the onslaught of programs that came to be known as “infotainment.”

Whether such syndicated talk shows as “Oprah” and “Geraldo” or such syndicated magazine shows as “A Current Affair” or “Hard Copy,” most have been heavier on “tainment” than “info,” and have consistently blurred the two. Just as significantly, they are heavily tilted toward sex and crime.

Nor are sex and crime foreign to the decade’s other dominant programming trend--the prime-time soap opera.

“Dallas” was not the first prime-time soap opera. Witness “Peyton Place,” which ran on ABC from 1964-69. Unlike “Peyton Place,” however, “Dallas” inspired a generation of like-minded, rewardingly trashy programs that were to dominate much of prime time for years and teach us that having money was not necessarily fun. As for the poor, well, who wants to see soap operas about them?

The miserable moneyed were TV’s hot ticket. “Flamingo Road” and “Midland Heights” died swiftly. Although winding down, however, “Falcon Crest” and “Dallas” spinoff “Knots Landing” became hits and still survive on CBS, as does “Dallas” itself. And ABC’s late “Dynasty” was one of the giant series of the ‘80s, even though its own spinoff, “The Colbys,” was short-lived.

Not to be underestimated either is the influence of “Dallas” on such other significant dramatic series of the ‘80s as NBC’s “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere” and ABC’s “thirtysomething,” which although dramatically different in tone, incorporated some of the serial-style elements of J. R. Ewing and company.

In fact, “Dallas” and “Dynasty” were so popular through the ‘80s that their central characters (especially Larry Hagman’s J. R. and Joan Collins’ conniving Alexis on “Dynasty”) became cult characters whose commercial influence extended far beyond TV.

Television of the ‘80s amounted to much more than a couple of prime-time trends.

Just as NBC has far and away been the network of the ‘80s when it comes to dominance in the ratings, so has its comedy, “The Cosby Show,” been the decade’s dominant series in the Nielsens since premiering in 1984.

On a more cosmic scale, the ‘80s also saw the flowering of cable.

In its early stages, cable was little more than a vehicle to improve TV reception in rural areas. However, more than half the nation is now wired for cable, which has not only steadily chipped away at the audiences of over-the-air television but helped expand and redefine the telecasting of news, sports and music a la CNN, ESPN and MTV respectively.

Initially ridiculed by many competing news executives, it was the visionary Ted Turner’s CNN that began the decade as a stumbling infant, only to ultimately grow into America’s network of record by telecasting news and information around the clock. For breaking news, CNN was your primary source in the ‘80s, not ABC, CBS or NBC, whose main business was entertainment, not information.

Meanwhile, the almost-all-sports network known as ESPN has become the symbol of cable’s growing presence in telecasting such major sports as major league baseball, the NFL and the NBA (now available on Turner’s TNT network), as well as college football and basketball.

Through its much-copied format of rock videos, moreover, MTV helped energize the music industry as it exposed many Americans to a genre of music they otherwise might not have experienced.

The television landscape did indeed change significantly in the decade, and another of the prime gardeners was America’s President through most of the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan.

Over-the-air TV’s increase in flesh and gore was no accident. It was Reagan’s two-term crusade for deregulation in all areas of government that, among other things, freed over-the-air TV to grubbily indulge in as much gratuitous sex and violence it felt it needed to compete with cable and win back viewers.

It was not only cable that was drawing viewers from the Big Three networks, however. The emergence of Fox Broadcasting as a quasi-fourth network also increased viewing options in the late ‘80s and promised an even wider menu in the ‘90s. Is it just possible that a comedy as raunchy as “Married . . . With Children,” the first Fox series to become truly competitive with the other networks, will be recalled as a landmark of the decade? It boggles.

In addition to CNN, meanwhile, several other programming developments of the ‘80s stood out in the area of news:

* First was the birth of ABC’s “Nightline” (and Ted Koppel’s emergence as a star) from the ashes of the Iranian hostage tragedy, giving news analysis a substantial chunk of late-night turf in creating what may have been the decade’s most significant public-affairs program.

In a decade where networks have increasingly favored unevenly executed prime-time network news programs that offer a potentially high return for a relatively low investment, “Nightline” has been a beacon of intelligence and relevance in the wee hours.

* If “Nightline” was, in effect, shaped by international politics, just the opposite occurred in connection with coverage of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on the evening news.

Here was a clear-cut instance of TV pictures helping shape political developments, as action-lusting TV’s visual depiction of this conflict--Arab stones vs. Israeli bullets--resulted in a Palestinian public-relations coup that was to have wide reverberations that surely will endure into the ‘90s.

* When it came to domestic politics, the ‘80s was the decade in which television and electioneering became virtually inseparable. Politically speaking, in fact, the most successful program on television was not a program at all, but a man. He was more famous even than J. R. and, to his followers, more endearing even than Bill Cosby.

In the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan not only had a lot to do with shaping the course of television, he was also its biggest star.

THE BEST OF THE ‘80s Howard Rosenberg’s Top-20 TV Programs of the Decade

1.”Nightline,” ABC

2.”Late Night With David Letterman,” NBC

3.”SCTV,” NBC and syndication

4.”Hill Street Blues,” NBC

5.”The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” NBC and Lifetime

6.”The Wonder Years,” ABC

7.”Moonlighting,” ABC

8.”Buffalo Bill,” NBC

9.”Frank’s Place,” CBS

10.”Tanner: ‘88,” HBO