Curtin In, Alda Out as NBC Plots Fall Strategy

Alan Alda won’t be on NBC next fall in a regular series as planned. But Jane Curtin, who wasn’t expected to return to series television, will. So will a new, big-budget, prime-time version of “Dark Shadows,” the Gothic serial.

These were some of the announcements made Thursday by Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, in a press conference in Los Angeles.

Tartikoff also announced that NBC will counter-program baseball’s league playoffs and World Series next fall with four to six hours of made-for-TV movie versions of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel books, to which the network recently obtained rights.

NBC lost the rights last year to major league baseball in a bidding war with CBS. Tartikoff said this is NBC’s answer. “We’re not taking it lying down. . . . No one’s ever seriously counter-programmed the World Series, but we are.”

When asked if he would watch movies based on Collins’ books, “Lucky” and “Chances,” or watch the World Series, Tartikoff said, “I have a VCR.”

Tartikoff also announced that “Fall From Grace,” a made-for-TV movie based about Jim and Tammy Bakker’s television ministry, is going into production. And two miniseries--one about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the other based on the “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” best-seller--will be filmed for next season on NBC.

Tartikoff explained the loss of a regular series starring Alan Alda next fall as being the result of a decision by Alda not to return to weekly television. The plan for the series was Alda starring as a middle-aged man facing mid-life crisis.

Alda had completed one script, which Tartikoff said NBC will own and might produce with another star in the lead.

“What’s happened for Alan, though,” Tartikoff said, “is that his directing career is in high gear. Disney has a major motion picture they want him to get involved in. And nobody knows the demands of weekly series television better than Alan.”

He announced no details of the comedy planned for Curtin but said that “Dark Shadows”--which is still a cult series after a daytime run years ago--will premiere as a two-hour movie featuring some members of the original cast next fall. Dan (“War and Remembrance”) Curtis, creator of the original series, will be executive producer.

In other developments at NBC, “The Ann Jillian Show” has been pulled from the schedule and is going in for a major overhaul with new producers. “My Two Dads” will return Sunday evenings starting Jan. 21.