How Much Is Bob Worth to CBS? : Television: Newhart’s camp and MTM blame each other for demanding tough terms from CBS. No one at network stepped in to resolve the situation.

Where have all the showmen gone?

The case in question is that of Bob Newhart and how much he’s worth to CBS.

A lot.

In two series that brought nothing but style and honor to CBS for 14 years--first “The Bob Newhart Show” and now “Newhart”--he’s delighted viewers with wit, taste and belly-laughs.

But now, quibbling that reportedly involves the comedian’s contract and studio, MTM, has killed “Newhart.”

It isn’t coming back for a ninth season--though it could have--because the accountant mentality has taken over TV.

The case is a mess, with Newhart’s camp and MTM blaming each other for demanding impossible terms from CBS--accusations that have caused deep bitterness between both sides.

And no one at slipping, rudderless CBS, which, after all, is the ultimate buyer of the series, has stepped in with real authority and used network muscle and showmanship to assure Newhart’s return.

The ultimate loser: TV viewers who are seeing Hollywood politics wipe out one of their favorite shows.

Let’s talk business.

Is Newhart worth as much as baseball stars Rickey Henderson and Paul Molitor?

They’re getting $3 million a year.

And that’s what MTM executive Mel Blumenthal says Newhart’s representatives demanded that CBS come up with for next season. He claims it’s about a one-third pay raise and made it impossible to bring back the show--because MTM’s costs would have skyrocketed by having to give others in the series comparable wage hikes.

He also claims that Newhart’s side made specific demands about time slots and that networks insist on reserving those decisions for themselves.

Newhart’s camp isn’t commenting on that for the record--but counters with the jab that “demands made by MTM . . . complicated the deal.”

One report said MTM insisted that CBS give the production company a six-episode series separate from “Newhart” to assure his return.

Too bad this kind of fierce inside maneuvering didn’t make its way into “The Famous Teddy Z,” the CBS flop about dealings at a Hollywood talent agency. It affects what we see. But all that Newhart’s admirers want is to have him back on the air, and it was up to CBS to knock heads and make it happen.

Let’s say the $3 million price is correct.

Life’s not perfect, and it’s not fair. Teachers, cops, nurses and others who do the really important jobs are underpaid while athletes, TV news anchors and show business stars are wildly overcompensated.

But that’s the way it is. It’s simply a matter of what the market will bear.

So is $3 million too much? You decide:

Baseball star Will Clark gets $3.75 million a year. Outrageous, right? But by this standard, someone like Newhart looks like $10 million in comparison.

Anchors Paul Moyer and Jerry Dunphy earn about $1 million annually. Is Newhart only worth three times as much?

Deborah Norville and Paula Zahn also get in the $1 million range as news anchors on the network morning shows. Are they worth even one-third of what Newhart gets?

Don’t ask.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world, and nowhere more so than in wheeling-dealing TV.

But Newhart is one of the great stars in TV history, and if he asked for $3 million for 22 episodes next season, that breaks down to about $136,000 a show.

Tom Selleck reportedly got $220,000 an episode for “Magnum, P.I.” Other series headliners, including Larry Hagman of “Dallas,” have earned more than $100,000 a show. Bill Cosby can’t even count his money. Same thing for Oprah Winfrey; we’re talking reportedly $30 million to $40 million a year. Alan Alda wasn’t close, but he was way up there in “MASH.”

Newhart is probably embarrassed that the whole matter came up. He’s got one of the great personal images in TV, and it’s well-deserved. A gentleman.

CBS wanted “Newhart” back. He wanted to come back. He apparently put in a bid for a specific time slot, but an associate says, “Those were his druthers, not his demands.”

The network’s entertainment chief, Jeff Sagansky, isn’t commenting on negotiations. Newhart may return in another CBS series in the next few years.

But the comedian’s statement announcing the end of the series was a subtle reminder of how CBS bumped his show around the prime-time lineup.

“The audience,” he said, “was wonderfully loyal, following us as we moved around the Monday night schedule.”

“Newhart” started the season at 10:30 p.m., a tough hour for sitcoms. It’s now on at 10 p.m., not much better. Last season it was on at 8 p.m. The year before that it was 9 p.m. And it still manages respectable ratings.

MTM’s Blumenthal has his own perspective. A pay raise for Newhart, he says, would mean the same percentage hike for others on the show, “which is what we did this year.”

And that, he says, would take the half-hour show “above a million dollars to do an episode. This year, it’s in the mid-to-high $700,000s.”

He says the series is currently operating at a deficit of about $130,000 to $160,000 a show, and that the jump in costs probably would have escalated the figure “to the high $200,000s.”

The network pays a “license fee” covering most of the cost of an episode. Production companies take the deficit risk, hoping they make a killing in reruns, the big payoff.

Blumenthal says MTM has enough episodes for reruns--184--and that some stations have a limit “on how many they take” in a deal. If episodes “aren’t sold in syndication, it’s hard to recover the investment.”

Let’s wait a minute here.

Suppose Newhart wants a raise. Suppose the whole deal winds up costing MTM, as Blumenthal has suggested, nearly double its deficit--let’s say about an extra $140,000 a week. For 22 weeks, a whole season, that’s maybe $3 million.

Is it worth it for CBS to cover the cost, a rather piddling amount--roughly the price of four 30-second Super Bowl commercials? In many cases, no. But for Newhart, you bet.

It’s a complicated matter, and maybe that wouldn’t solve things. MTM frankly has separate pilot projects in the works for “Newhart” performers Julia Duffy and Peter Scolari, as well as for producers Mark Egan and Mark Solomon--which, Blumenthal concedes, “await the end” of the current series.

Blumenthal says that MTM also suggested doing 13 segments of “Newhart” next season “to bring costs down,” and then following it with six to eight episodes of a spinoff with Duffy and Scolari, who had a baby on the parent series this season.

Was this the separate series MTM reportedly wanted? Anyway, says Blumenthal, it turned out there “wasn’t enough time” to pull off such a show.

Deals. Welcome to Hollywood.

MTM is reported under financial pressure from its new British owner, TVS Entertainment, which bought the company of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Hill Street Blues” in 1988.

But for CBS, few deals are more important than those that keep its trademark stars like Newhart--who define the network--from drifting away.

CBS already has lost Bea Arthur and Betty White to NBC’s “The Golden Girls.” It lost Carroll O’Connor to NBC’s “In the Heat of the Night.” Carol Burnett is also doing a series for NBC, and Alda came close to an agreement with the same network.

Angela Lansbury of CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” threatened to quit until she got a terrific deal. Victoria Principal, a star of CBS movies, has quit and signed to do two series and at least one movie for ABC.

On the news side, Andy Rooney showed the impact of star power when his return from a brief suspension from “60 Minutes” in a controversial dispute led to an upswing in the show’s ratings.

Sagansky doesn’t have much to work with in his attempt to rebuild CBS prime time. But Newhart was a major plus.

He also had one of those intangibles that help create a network’s image:

Class.

CBS, the one-time Tiffany network, just lost another diamond.