NBC Will Pitch Miniseries Against Baseball : Television: Entertainment President Tartikoff outlines network’s counterprogramming strategy.

Alan Alda won’t be joining NBC for the 1990-91 season--but Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, Jane Curtin, Richard Roundtree and a TV movie about Jim and Tammy Bakker will.

In an effort to compete with CBS’ televising of baseball’s playoffs and World Series in the fall, NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff told a news conference Thursday that three novels by Steel and two by Collins will be developed into miniseries to counterprogram the games, which were wrested from NBC by CBS in a bidding war last year.

“We were the bride left at the altar,” Tartikoff said. “We’re not going to take this lying down.”

The Steel best-sellers “Daddy” and “Fine Things” will become two-hour movies, and “Kaleidoscope” will become a four-hour miniseries. They are the first of her books to go into production as part of a long-term exclusive contract between Steel and NBC, Tartikoff said.

“We have 26 (books) available, and if these are successful, we don’t have to wait for her to write a new book,” he said.

Collins’ books “Chances” and “Lucky,” about an Italian gangster, will be combined as a six-hour miniseries. Tartikoff predicted that “the running Mafia theme” would lure both male and female viewers away from baseball. When it was mentioned that the last miniseries based on similiar material, CBS’ adaptation of the Judith Krantz novel “I’ll Take Manhattan,” garnered disappointing ratings, Tartikoff said, “It (success) really depends on the subject matter.”

Alda, who had had an hourlong series in development for the network in which he would have starred as a judicial system employee facing midlife crisis, has “just begged off” because of a movie deal with Disney and other feature-film directing commitments, Tartikoff said. He added that Alda’s recent appearance in Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” has injected some life into Alda’s feature career.

Tartikoff joked that he would not reveal too many details about Alda’s original script for NBC because “there is still time in this development season for some people who are relative newcomers” to network TV to steal the idea. He was referring to new CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky, one of Tartikoff’s former programming lieutenants. Tartikoff added that NBC might develop the series with another star.

While Alda is no longer cooperating with NBC, Jim and Tammy Bakker are. “Fall From Grace,” the authorized story of the demise of Bakker’s ministry, will go into production, Tartikoff said, although no air date was announced. He maintained that the endorsement of the Bakkers will not soften the story.

“We’re not going to show them collecting stamps,” Tartikoff said. “It’s not going to be a love poem to this couple.” Bernadette Peters will portray Tammy Bakker; the role of Jim Bakker has not been cast.

Following last season’s flurry of advertiser boycotts of controversial TV projects, including NBC’s “Roe vs. Wade” and “The Tracy Thurman Story,” Tartikoff said that the network has set aside money to cover any loss of advertising it might incur with the Bakker movie. He called such budgeting a standard procedure, and added that the network expects the Bakker story to be “a big ratings-getter.”

Two other miniseries--”A Woman Named Jackie,” about the life of Jacqueline Onassis, and “The Oldest Living Confederate Tells All,” based on the best-selling book about a Civil War widow--are also in development for fall, he said.

“Shaft” veteran Richard Roundtree will join the cast of NBC’s newest daytime soap, “Generations,” Tartikoff said, and Jane Curtin, the former co-star of “Kate and Allie” and “Saturday Night Live,” is set to star in a half-hour comedy for next season.

Meanwhile, Tartikoff is tinkering with the existing schedule. “My Two Dads” will return to NBC at 8 p.m. Sundays beginning Jan. 21; “Ann Jillian,” currently airing in the time slot, will be pulled until March, to be re-tooled by a new set of producers.

Following a fall season that created no big hits for NBC--or the other networks--Tartikoff was asked if he found himself looking over his shoulder at the competition more now than in recent years, particularly with a new man in charge at No. 3 CBS and some of NBC’s biggest successes, including “The Cosby Show” and “Cheers,” aging. He replied that NBC expects some of its current shows, including “Dear John,” “Quantum Leap” and “Midnight Caller,” to develop into Top 10 shows if the network nurtures them as it did “Cheers,” which faltered in the ratings during its first seasons.

Of Sagansky, Tartikoff said he “is a talented, resourceful and creative programmer and broadcaster. They (CBS) were lucky and fortunate to get him, and if they give him enough free rein to do what I know he knows how to do, I think they’ll see some improvement.”

After the press session, however, a tongue-in-cheek Tartikoff revealed a “secret” about Sagansky that Tartikoff said he had politely been keeping under wraps: The 1983 series “Manimal,” a stunning flop about a young professor with the uncanny ability to transform himself into jungle animals in order to help the police solve crimes--for which Tartikoff has heretofore accepted blame--was actually Sagansky’s idea.

Tartikoff said that, after years of taking the rap for “Manimal,” it was time to reveal the truth: “It was his idea. He brought it to me, and I said, ‘This is horrible !’ ”