ABC’s Top Gun Takes Aim at NBC : Television: Robert Iger, head of ABC Entertainment, is gunning for the top ratings slot with a slew of new series. It is a pivotal time for second-ranked ABC--and for his career.

It is a little after 8 a.m. Monday, and an aide hands Robert Iger, the president of ABC Entertainment, the overnight TV ratings for 23 major markets.

This is the daily report card and lottery all rolled into one for network executives--the measure of their worth and instincts. It’s the real payoff for as long as they can take the pressure.

Iger, 38, studies the numbers carefully. He is delighted. One of ABC’s new series, “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” has done well again. That is important to Iger because he is about to roll the dice for high stakes, and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” is part of his plan.

On Sunday, ABC, already loaded with TV’s most creative new series, will bid to increase its ratings power--pairing “America’s Funniest Home Videos” with “Elvis,” a musical drama about young Elvis Presley, in a weekly head-on challenge to CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote,” which has owned the night since the mid-1980s.

“America’s Funniest Home Videos,” which premiered Jan. 14 and is hosted by Bob Saget, defeated “Murder, She Wrote” in last week’s ratings, ranking a potent No. 7 among all shows. And now it awaits its teaming with “Elvis,” which got a special introduction after “Roseanne” Tuesday night in preparation for moving to the Sunday battlefront. With ABC placing five shows in the top 11 last week, a successful “Videos”/”Elvis” tandem could be a cornerstone of a subtle shift in network power, long dominated by NBC.

“I don’t know if I should be proud of ‘Home Videos’ or not,” Iger said in an interview in his Century City office. “ I’m proud of it because it’s a success on television. It would be unfair to put it in the same category as ‘thirtysomething’ or ‘The Wonder Years,’ but it nevertheless was developed completely under me.”

That also is important to Iger, who was appointed head of ABC prime-time entertainment only last March. For he is standing constant comparison to Brandon Stoddard, his predecessor, whose rapport with Hollywood’s creative community helped turn ABC’s image around with such series as “thirtysomething,” “The Wonder Years,” “Roseanne” and “China Beach.”

In addition, Iger has had to deal with ongoing reports that his boss, Thomas Murphy, the chairman of Capital Cities/ABC Inc., has had a strong hand in the shaping of ABC’s prime-time lineup, which is No. 2 in the ratings but regarded a potential threat to NBC, which has gone stale.

Stoddard, now head of the in-house ABC Productions unit, brought Steven Bochco, co-creator of “Hill Street Blues” and “L.A. Law,” to the network with a 10-series commitment. But Iger, a veteran business and program executive for ABC, now has landed another giant talent, James L. Brooks (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Broadcast News”), to create comedies for the network.

Declaring flatly that “yes,” the deal has been made although not formally announced, Iger indicated the kind of creative freedom that makes ABC so attractive to producers and writers: Brooks, he says, is not tied contractually “to churn out a specific series in a specific season and a specific year.” He wouldn’t confirm that Brooks’ initial deal reportedly is worth $30 million, but he says CBS also was after the producer, adding:

“I know it was my ability to negotiate that enabled us to get that deal. It had to be done very quickly.”

All in all, events are conspiring to make this a pivotal time in Iger’s career, which could take him to the very top of ABC. About half a dozen new series, some initiated under Stoddard but developed and scheduled by Iger and his right arm, Stuart Bloomberg, will arrive on ABC before the season ends this spring.

In addition to “Elvis,” they include the anxiously awaited “Twin Peaks,” a mysterious and highly atmospheric soap opera set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, directed by David Lynch (“Blue Velvet,” “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man”). So extraordinary is the interest in “Twin Peaks” that, even before its debut, it has been scheduled for a showing at the New York Museum of Broadcasting’s annual Los Angeles TV festival next month.

Also planned as ABC series are “Brewster Place,” starring Oprah Winfrey in a drama based on her past special about black women in a ghetto; “Equal Justice,” focusing on the lives and work of prosecutors in a district attorney’s office; “Capital News,” dealing with the reporters and editors of a Washington newspaper; “H.E.L.P.,” about a Harlem fire, police and paramedic unit, and “The Marshall Chronicles,” about the social pursuits of a 17-year-old New York boy.

And, aimed at the fall schedule, is Bochco’s “Cop Rock,” a musical rock ‘n’ roll drama project about Los Angeles police, with music for the pilot composed by Randy Newman.

Clearly, ABC is the most interesting of the Big Three networks at the moment. And it is a network in transition, too, with the announced resignation last week of Murphy, who will be succeeded as chairman in June by his No. 2 man, Daniel Burke. It was these two architects of Cap Cities who stunned the TV industry by buying the larger but extravagant ABC four years ago for $3.5 billion. The question is whether ABC will continue to have the same success with the change at the top, even though Murphy and Burke are close friends with similar philosophies in running Cap Cities.

For Iger, Bloomberg is “really the creative heart and soul” of ABC prime time. Murphy is known to have taken an active interest in programming because, as the head of frugal Cap Cities/ABC, he was concerned about the volatile nature of network television fortunes and the financial impact this could have on the company.

Still, Iger, though handpicked by Murphy for the ABC Entertainment presidency, is quick to deflate the notion that his boss is calling most of the major shots in prime time. In fact, Iger insisted on personally canceling Jackie Mason’s “Chicken Soup” despite the corporate opposition of Murphy and Burke, who finally yielded to him.

“Jackie’s appeal was more narrow than we needed it to be,” says Iger. But, he adds, Murphy and Burke feared “damaging the relationship” that ABC had with “Chicken Soup” producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, who also have TV’s top hit, “Roseanne,” on the network.

Murphy and Burke “were very vocal in expressing their desire not to take off ‘Chicken Soup,’ and I was vocal in the opposite direction,” Iger says. “They would have been a lot more comfortable if I had reached the decision to keep it on the air.”

His decision to replace “Chicken Soup” with “Coach,” another sitcom, has turned out to be a shrewd move in terms of ratings. And Iger firmly rejects any idea that he has to check constantly with Murphy on most such moves: “Sometimes I don’t talk to him in a given week. He doesn’t read scripts.”

Murphy, like other network heads, is definitely consulted on “big scheduling decisions like ‘Chicken Soup,’ pilots for the new season and the fall lineup,” says Iger, a native of New York whose wife, Susan, is a news producer for the opposition--KCBS Channel 2. But, asserting himself as a key player at ABC during this critical period for the network, Iger says that “Elvis”--which debuted Tuesday night--was an example of how his office operates independently:

“I told New York we were doing it, but I didn’t ask for permission. We don’t consult with anyone outside this department on decisions to go forward with pilots. No one. So that scripts are not sent, budgets are not reviewed, general direction is not presented in the hopes of getting some sort of approval from New York on any of this. ‘Cop Rock’ is an example. Did I tell Tom Murphy that Bochco had pitched a musical? Yes, sure, because it was interesting. But did I ask, ‘Tom, can we go forward?’ No. Did I send the script? No. Stu Bloomberg and I didn’t consult with anyone.”

Although he acknowledges that Murphy and Burke do have input and sometimes win, Iger is putting forth an attitude attractive to creators who despise corporate interference--a reported practice at last-place CBS, where corporate president Laurence Tisch and Howard Stringer, head of the company’s broadcast group, are regarded in some quarters as meddlers.

At the moment, ABC is widely regarded as the best-run network from the top down, perhaps because it is the only one of the Big Three still owned by broadcasters--a fact that undoubtedly reflects directly on the programs that make it to the home screen.

As at the other networks, there was a dreadful period when the new owners (Tisch at CBS; General Electric at NBC) cut their staffs drastically; it is always an ugly process, but it seemed messier and more dragged out at CBS than at ABC. It is little surprise that CBS is constantly reported on the block--with Disney frequently said to be a possible buyer--while ABC, under the lean, mean but efficient Cap Cities management, is rich and getting richer.

Though the youngest of the three major networks, ABC has turned out in many ways to be the smartest. For example, it has a true financial angel, Warren Buffett, an Omaha, Neb., media magnate who now reportedly is the nation’s second wealthiest person. A friend of Murphy and Burke, Buffett put up $519 million to help them buy ABC, and he has turned over his voting power in the company to Cap Cities, even after his death, thus assuring the network long-term protection against corporate raiders.

Iger can operate with that security. He doesn’t claim to create programs--”That’s what Stu Bloomberg is here for. I’m not an instigator of ideas. I’m a manager of them.” Stoddard, who developed an extraordinary amount of memorable programming in the 1980s--including “The Day After,” “Something About Amelia,” “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance”--was more of a creator, and Iger acknowledges that fact:

“Brandon created a very important atmosphere that I will clearly benefit from. And that was that this is a great place to work. The creative community was extremely desirous to bring its product here. And Brandon was responsible for that.

“I was supposedly Tom Murphy’s guy, the business-affairs type, cut from the Capital Cities cloth, all that.”

Well, Iger was Tom Murphy’s guy, but he seems to want to spread his wings. He does, however, definitely seem to be cut from Cap Cities cloth, if a natural frugality is any indication: “I don’t stay in hotel suites. I don’t entertain groups lavishly at restaurants--but that’s me. I could have a bathroom in the office, but I don’t.”

He just gets up at 5 a.m. and goes to work.