Two Networks Announce Mid-Season Changes : Television: NBC cancels ‘Generations,’ the first daytime soap featuring a black family. CBS drops comedy series ‘The Hogan Family.’

NBC has axed “Generations,” the first daytime soap opera to feature a black family on an ongoing basis, and CBS has canceled “The Hogan Family,” a long-running comedy series that until this season had been seen on NBC.

Those announcements were among a list of mid-season changes revealed Wednesday by the two networks. They included the unveiling of a daytime news program anchored by Faith Daniels for NBC and a new Nell Carter sitcom for CBS.

NBC said that “Generations,” the story of two affluent Chicago families, one black and one white, will have its last broadcast Jan. 25. The soap opera, which began in 1989, won critical acclaim for featuring black performers in dramatic roles, but has suffered low ratings.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People immediately urged NBC to keep the show on the air.

“We’re very saddened; ‘Generations’ was a breakthrough show,” Sandra Evers-Manly, president of the NAACP’s Beverly Hills-Hollywood chapter, said through a spokeswoman. She urged “Generations” viewers to write NBC asking that the decision be rescinded.

In Los Angeles, as in many other cities, the half-hour “Generations” aired against the second half of CBS’ popular “The Young and the Restless.” So far this season, “Generations” is attracting only 8% of the available viewers, compared with “Y&R;’s” 31%. NBC ranks third behind CBS and ABC in overall daytime ratings.

Sally Sussman, the creator, executive producer and head writer of “Generations,” said that the difficult time slot and lack of support from NBC’s affiliated stations ensured the show’s demise. “To be perfectly honest, as soon as the show went on the air, they were talking about canceling it,” she said in an interview.

Although the show has been canceled, Sussman said, 300 episodes have already been sold into syndication in France, and TV stations here and abroad have expressed interest in continuing it. “You don’t have to be on the network to be successful,” she said.

Brandon Tartikoff, chairman of the NBC Entertainment Group, said in a prepared statement that NBC Productions is exploring the viability of continuing to produce “Generations” for syndication.

Jorn Winther, senior executive producer of “Generations,” said that the show’s poor ratings performance will make the networks wary of new soaps featuring black core characters. “I can’t imagine it (a show like ‘Generations’) will happen again in my lifetime--I’m 57,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to see an integrated show again.”

As the daytime audience dwindles, NBC hopes to bring viewers back to daytime by introducing four new information series, and has another two in development.

The first is “A Closer Look,” a “woman-oriented” mid-day half-hour anchored by Daniels, to debut Jan. 28. Also to be introduced in the “near future,” NBC said, are “A.M. Assignment,” featuring an all-female news team assigned to “in-depth feature stories”; “Women’s Diaries,” a “real-life soap” about ordinary people and their problems, and “Trialwatch,” a “magazine” show using actual footage from courtroom trials.

Meanwhile, “You Take the Kids,” a comedy starring Nell Carter as the head of a blue-collar family, will join the CBS schedule at 8 p.m. Saturday, beginning Dec. 15.

“Lenny,” a blue-collar comedy that had been put on hiatus earlier this season, will rejoin the lineup that night too, at 8:30 p.m.

Leaving the Saturday night lineup following their Dec. 1 broadcast will be “The Hogan Family” and the first-year comedy “The Family Man.” The latter will return in the spring, CBS said.