See Jane Work in Prime Time : With ‘Today’ Behind Her, Pauley Looks Toward Tomorrow

Jane Pauley, Act II: When we last saw our heroine, she was leaving the “Today” show after 13 years in a send-off marked by an outpouring of affection from viewers--and an unprecedented 52-week commitment from NBC to develop her own prime-time news magazine series, plus do TV specials and appear on “NBC Nightly News.”

Dressed in a white sweater, tweed jacket and pants on a recent day, Pauley happily taps into her computer in a quiet new office that has no name on the door.

“I’m bracing for the inevitable reality check--I haven’t seen my name in print when it hasn’t been in the context of the ‘beloved, late Jane Pauley,’ ” she says. “When I’ve been traveling lately, people say, ‘When are you coming back?’ I have this sense that people think I’m on life support somewhere until I get a show,” she adds jokingly. “But I’ve never been happier in my work.”

Having more concentrated time for both her work and her children, Pauley notes, is one of the important factors in enjoying her new job.

On Tuesday, Pauley will anchor a prime-time special on a subject she says she’s learned something about: change. When viewers responded to the seating of Deborah Norville side by side with Pauley in what looked like an “All About Eve” scenario, Pauley found herself in a newly powerful negotiating position with NBC executives.

“After childbirth, it was the most vivid experience I’ve ever had,” says Pauley, who has three young children with her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau. “I’ve always been an ensemble player, but now I was making decisions for myself. I’d been uncomfortable with the idea of ‘clout,’ but now I was wielding a little bit of it. I was able to do something that would have been incomprehensible before.”

Her own experience, Pauley says, inspired the TV special, “Changes: Conversations With Jane Pauley” (10 p.m. Tuesday, Channels 4, 36, 39). She interviews several people whose lives are in transition, from comedian Louie Anderson, who talks about his alcoholic father and his own new resolve to lose weight, to a Chicago couple who quit their jobs and went to live and work for $10 a week in a homeless shelter.

Although Anderson is a celebrity, Pauley notes, the other subjects are not. “My thesis was that there are extraordinary moments in ordinary lives,” she says. “The stories we tell, including Louie’s, are unfinished, without neat endings.”

While this is the second of Pauley’s recent specials (the first was a highly rated look at the ‘80s in December) and she recently substituted several times for Tom Brokaw as anchor on the “NBC Nightly News,” NBC seems to be moving more slowly than anticipated on Pauley’s prime-time series.

When Pauley extended her NBC contract, she said that she thought her new weekly prime-time series would start in June or July. “That’s what I was told last fall,” she says. Now, NBC executives say, the series will start with the next fall season or possibly as late as January.

Is NBC backing away from its commitment? Pauley says she doesn’t think so, although she recently spoke with NBC News President Michael Gartner about it.

“I realize that’s how it might be perceived because . . . I was wondering about it myself,” Pauley concedes. “But now it seems to me to be a sound strategy not to go on the air with something before we’re ready. I see how hard it is to make a one-hour news magazine work--Connie Chung is learning that at CBS, and Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer are learning that (with “PrimeTime Live”) at ABC.”

At NBC, a small staff of producers has been assembled for the specials, which are expected to air about once a month, beginning this spring. Pauley--who also is planning occasional series as a reporter on “NBC Nightly News”--is looking over a list of prospective executive producers for the magazine series, with one expected to be named in the next few weeks.

Tom Brokaw (who co-anchored the ‘80s special with Pauley) had been mentioned as a possible co-anchor for the magazine series. But, says Pauley, “He explained to me why he was going to say no and mean it. He pointed out that he had enough on his plate, and he didn’t just want to step in and put on a microphone and read some copy. The last thing he wanted to take on was a 52-week-a-year assignment.”

With no executive producer yet, Pauley was reluctant to discuss possible concepts for the magazine series. But, she said, NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff has offered his own suggestion for a concept for the series. “I think they’re very serious about this,” Pauley says.

Since Pauley’s departure on Dec. 29, the ratings for “Today” have dropped from first to second place against ABC’s “Good Morning America.” If she has any childish urge to say “I told you so” to executives at NBC who underestimated her ratings draw, Pauley is far too diplomatic to express it.

Pauley frequently stops by the “Today” green room for morning coffee, but she says she’s never discussed the ratings with Bryant Gumbel and Norville. “I feel very awkward with an assumption that there is some cause and effect there. What that does to me is anything but inspire glee. It pins me with a responsibility that is too much for one girl from Indianapolis to take. The success of the show is important to people who are close to me, and I wish them well.”

Will prime-time success spoil Jane Pauley? “I’m too old to change my dance steps,” she says. “Besides, it’s not as if I’ve won the Nobel Prize.”