Network Television 1990: A Light That Dimmed : Culture: No Big Three show today is as influential as ‘Today’ or ‘All in the Family’ have been. The rowdy cable arena will have the most future influence.

The worst thing about TV in 1990 is that it produced no new series that can be called truly influential to the future of the medium.

“The Simpsons”? Unique and successful, but one of a kind. It will not change the course of TV, except, perhaps, for the inevitable imitations. As someone said, imitation is the sincerest form of television.

“Twin Peaks”? You don’t make this show twice.

“Cop Rock”? The greatest potential, by far, to influence TV--if it had succeeded. Music would have returned to TV with new dramatic vistas. But the show’s failure probably killed prime-time musicals for years.

Thus TV, half a century old in America--a classic case of middle-age burnout.

It’s one thing to be a hit show on TV, quite another to influence its course. “Columbo” was brilliant but changed little or nothing on the tube.

Several years back, we were asked by a TV show to list what we thought were the 10 most influential series of all time. That is, of course, impossible, because there are more than 10.

But here’s what we listed, in no particular order:

* “Today.” Its influence on morning television speaks for itself.

* “The Tonight Show.” Its influence on late-night television speaks for itself.

* “60 Minutes.” The quintessential TV news magazine that inspired countless others.

* “All in the Family.” The most significant sitcom ever in terms of opening the door to subjects once taboo on TV.

* “Playhouse 90.” It set a standard for TV quality.

* The nightly news (on all three networks). A habit for millions, the greatest source of current events for many Americans and a format that is the backbone of virtually every TV station.

* “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” A zany and topical breakthrough, its social impact was vast as it cheerfully ignored TV’s no-no’s with an incomparable cast.

* “Cagney & Lacey.” TV’s first feminist drama. A new attitude for a new era.

* “The Ernie Kovacs Show.” It showed what was possible, and television comedy is still stealing from it.

“Real People.” The granddaddy of TV infotainment.

Clearly, one can disagree with this list, or add other influential shows to it.

“I Love Lucy” set up decades of other sitcoms. “Mary Tyler Moore” and “MASH” carried weekly comedy to a bracing level of adult wit.

“Late Night With David Letterman” brought a new, intimate relationship with TV to a generation raised on it. “thirtysomething” dramatically probed the thoughts and feelings of that same generation.

“Roots” opened the floodgates to miniseries. “Miami Vice” injected the vast influence of pop music into the television mainstream.

But what of this year?

It’s no small thing that “Life Goes On,” which debuted in 1989 and features an actor with Down’s syndrome, is having an impact in breaking TV ground for people with disabilities.

And it’s no small thing that a black-oriented satirical comedy series, “In Living Color,” erratic though it may be, is taking TV in new directions.

But there is very little else currently on the networks that can be regarded as genuinely influential--an arrow to TV’s future directions. Even the best shows--”Cheers,” for instance--don’t necessarily qualify.

“Cheers,” a soul mate to the old “Barney Miller” series, is nothing but excellent. Yet “Married . . . With Children” may be more influential in pointing up TV’s angry, even nasty, new edginess toward traditional values.

With the networks stagnating, where were TV’s truly influential forces in 1990?

On cable. For in the new, specialized and revolutionary world of alternative TV, many viewers have taken to watching channels more devotedly than they watch individual shows. Cable is the equivalent of a magazine rack, and there seems to be something for everyone--a clue to what we can expect more of from TV in coming years.

If MTV is the most blazing example and is aimed at the young generation, well, then, we now have choices for folks a little older--the Nostalgia Channel, for instance, and American Movie Classics and TNT, which feature vintage films.

The nice thing about such channels is the subtly influential appeal to all age groups to cross over and sample what the other generation is watching, which is a fine and natural way to foster understanding of past and present.

Madonna and John Wayne are only a zap apart in this new TV world, with its ultimately healthy bonding of who we were and what we are.

Everyone knows about the influence of such cable news channels as CNN and C-SPAN, the sports outlet ESPN, and the cultural networks Bravo and Arts & Entertainment. But viewers are also being lured and hooked by the growing and often fascinating trend of personal-service cable channels.

It is nice to know that when the Big Three networks are offering another plastic-wrapped episode of another plastic-wrapped series, you can flip over to the Travel Channel and find out about the latest hot spots and prices, or to the Weather Channel and learn how things are in London, Bangkok or Lincoln, Neb.

Once primitive services, these channels are clearly offering more varied programming, and it is still, for the most part, refreshingly unslick.

Some of the personal-service cable channels--like the home shopping outlets--are easy targets for ridicule, and yet, watching them, it is easy to see why they are irresistible to many viewers. The influence here is television’s long-promised interactive relationship with those watching. For this inveterate browser, the most stylish home shopping channel is J.C. Penney’s.

I’m not ashamed. I like raw TV--that is to say, programs with as little window dressing as possible.

I can’t say I’m crazy about all the new infomercials--those often-lunatic, program-length ads that may, for instance, show audiences applauding a cleaning fluid as it gets the spot out of a shirt. There are moments when one begins to have serious doubts about democracy.

It is significant that infomercials seem to be in an explosive period of growth. Freak shows they may often be. “Playhouse 90” they are not. But what became increasingly clear in 1990 is that future influences on TV will come less from the networks and more from a rowdy competitive arena that, with all its faults, is excitingly dangerous and much more intimate with viewers.

Television is being re-invented.