Will Viewers Stay Tuned for ‘Second Season’? : Television: The networks will introduce new shows and juggle time slots this month. Audience fragmentation and the failure of offbeat series worry executives.

Alexander the Great, a little crazy but very successful, obsessed on positive thinking. He made it a policy that whenever the Greek messenger boys showed up with bad news, he had them slaughtered.

It doesn’t displease those TV network executives who study the ratings every day for the bad news that Alexander’s management style has not persisted over the centuries. This season would have been especially messy for them.

What is hopefully, if anxiously, referred to as “the second season” begins Thursday night when NBC moves “Wings” to 9:30, following “Cheers.” On Friday night, CBS brings “Guns of Paradise” (nee “Paradise”) back from hiatus to 8 p.m. and debuts “Sons and Daughters” at 10. “Dallas” will move from 10 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Over the next four weeks the networks will introduce other new series and juggle days and times for several more. (See chart on F7.)

But what did we learn during the “first season” that began in the fall? The Times surveyed vice presidents of research of the four commercial networks about their numerations since autumn’s premiere weeks.

The mood is general dismay. It’s been the closest, most severe competition in history, with barely a sneeze separating the traditional top three networks.

Plus, there are no new big-hit shows to celebrate. For all the hoopla about the public’s desire for “creative,” “inventive,” “offbeat,” “cutting edge” shows, many such attempts clearly were/are being avoided. The good old shows just keep getting older, and there’s a fear they’ll soon be gone with nothing around to replace them. Meanwhile, cable TV is grabbing awesome numbers of viewers, and the broadcast-TV share seems to be diminishing forthwith.

Andrew Fessel, Fox Broadcasting senior vice president of research and marketing, tries to put a positive spin on the predicament: “I think what is most exciting is that there is lots of exploration being made of new executions within a genre, call it a mix of styles. The audience is actively sampling those shows.”

But others are not so sanguine.

David Poltrack, CBS senior vice president for planning and research, concludes that public taste hasn’t changed a whit: “The only program in the Top 20 that wasn’t around last year is ‘America’s Funniest People’ (ABC), which most people consider Part 2 of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ (ABC). There are no breakthrough shows, no ‘Simpsons’ (Fox) or ‘Twin Peaks’ (ABC) kind of unique shows that have jumped up on the charts--and the programs that are No. 1 and 2 are two of the oldest-tenure shows, ‘Cheers’ (NBC) and ’60 Minutes’ (CBS).

“So the tendency seems to be that the people are staying with the comfortable and the programs they adopted in past seasons.”

Allan Wurtzel, ABC senior vice president for marketing and research services, notes uncomfortably that the old kill-the-messenger days haven’t gone away. And he isn’t heartened by his readouts.

“It’s hard to make generalizations,” he says, “but the most cutting-edge program was ‘Cop Rock’ (ABC), and it was probably the greatest failure in terms of audience delivery.

“But I don’t think you can then conclude that the audience doesn’t want new things. They didn’t want that program, that new genre, that new approach. But when I look at the schedule on all four networks, I frankly don’t see programming that was really out on the edge. ‘Cop Rock’ was and it didn’t work.”

There also is some disquieting news about familiar hit shows losing favor, among them “Funniest Home Videos,” which, according to the latest figures, has drifted to its lowest regular-season ratings.

Bob Niles, NBC vice president for research, says that despite the incursions of cable TV, “the promise” is still there. “If we put on the good shows, people will watch over-the-air network television,” he said. “The two best examples to point to there would be Thursday night at 8--when you’ve got the real head-to-head with ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Cosby’ (NBC) and at the same time you’ve got ABC and CBS putting on shows (“Father Dowling Mysteries” and “Top Cops,” respectively) that are designed for an older audience. You’ve got over 80 share (percent of people watching TV) for over-the-air television Thursday night at 8.

“But if we had the answer as to how to manufacture those ‘good’ shows! People say, ‘ “Cheers” is a great show. Why don’t you have more shows like that?’ Well, that’s the tough part.”

So is the public disaffected?

“Certainly, viewing levels are down,” says Poltrack. “Generally, we’re the only network that’s up”--there’s surely some CBS chauvinism here, since the network remains in third place--”and the other two are down, NBC particularly, and Fox isn’t going anywhere. There seems to be a frustration on the part of the viewer. Normally, by this time we’ve got a pattern and can see where things are going. But we still see a lot of switching around.”

Niles sees a declining prime-time audience but cable ratings “jumping off the page.” But the latter phenomenon is due in major part to “continued penetration increases” in subscribers to cable networks.

Wurtzel acknowledges the “very fickle” audience and notes that the multitude of cable channels available is fractionalizing the audience mainly by programming off-network reruns that go back to the black-and-white era, “not what you’d call cutting-edge shows.”

There is evidence that the broadcast channels still have enough muscle to reach multitudes--their essential appeal to advertisers trying to reach a national viewership.

Fessel recalls a Fox prediction that there would be plenty of room for both “Cosby” and “The Simpsons” on Thursdays: “The issue we’ve seen that is most interesting--which confirms the powerful impact of network TV--is that viewing levels have gone up the whole prime-time period, as much as 6 percent among teens and 5 percent in the 18- to 34-year-olds.”

He says the arrival of the Fox network on Sunday nights also has increased the number of TV sets in use that night.

Saturday night is one of the knottiest program problems--except for NBC, whose comedies dominate then. Audience levels on the lowest televiewing night remain, in the words of Poltrack, “pretty dismal.”

Wurtzel sees some hope, albeit slim. Before this season he ordered new research on Saturday night and figured the problem might be that an 18-to-49-year-old audience was available but “the networks never programmed anything they were interested in really seeing.”

So ABC made a big noise about scheduling “China Beach” and “Twin Peaks” that evening.

“Well, clearly ‘China Beach’ didn’t work as well as we would have liked,” he says. “But the night has really reversed itself and taken on a younger profile. It’s like we demonstrated that the thinking we had was accurate, that the audience is available if you have the programming for it. We were not really able to deliver the kind of program that would get large audiences.”

What sort of program? “I think we demonstrated that there’s a lot of people who can’t get a date or are young or who are available--I’m being a little facetious here but the fact is that we did get some numbers for some movies and for ‘Twin Peaks’ on some episodes, that were rather respectable.”

“Under Cover,” a spy adventure series from the creators of “China Beach,” premieres with a two-hour pilot next Monday, then goes into a regular slot at 9 p.m. the following Saturday. But Wurtzel is uncertain about it: “It’s not what you’d consider a ‘Twin Peaks’ type of program, but we had to replace ‘China Beach.’ Our feeling is that it’s a good show and it will do respectably. Whether that’s the ultimate solution to Saturday night remains to be seen.”

Poltrack remembers earlier days, through the 1970s, when television promoted a movie habit on Saturday nights. Now that cable premieres some of its movies on Saturday nights, there’s heavy VCR taping. “Most every independent station in the country that is not a Fox affiliate is running classic movies on Saturday night,” Poltrack says.

The networks who lived by the movie are dying by the movie.

It’s cost-ineffective to run network movies on Saturday nights: “We’d be just one of many, many movies, and you can’t get the kind of ratings out of movies that support them economically,” Poltrack says.

“You might get an 8 or 9 rating or, if you’re lucky, a 10 on Saturday night,” Poltrack says. “On any other night of the week, you would get 13 to 15. So you can’t run top-quality films on Saturday night.”

However, as an interim step, CBS will air some Saturday movies during the first quarter of this year “because it appears you can generate a higher rating with movies than what we put there.”

Poltrack theorizes that there’s so many choices now on the TV landscape that viewers gradually settle to a selected number of shows they watch with regularity. “And shows that people are committed to and feel it’s superior programming, that gets a high qualitative rating with their audiences, those shows build slowly. And like a good product, once they convert someone, they convert them for life . . . . Then patience (on the part of the network) is rewarded and consistency in terms of scheduling is rewarded for these shows.”

His network, consequently, tries to pinpoint the shows that have such potential and makes a long-term commitment to them. “Take a show like ‘Evening Shade’ (starring Burt Reynolds),” he says. “Right now the early indications from all the qualitative research we have is that this show has that kind of hit potential.”

There is a wait-and-keep-counting attitude on some other new entries, he says. One is “The Flash.” “We think the ‘sampling’ has been reduced by the fact that it’s against the strong Thursday-night schedule of NBC. When those shows go into repeats, we expect to get more sampling.”

Niles remembers that first paltry 16 share when “Cheers” opened its run in 1982. Wurtzel likewise notes that “you have to understand that people are going to give you a couple of shots and that’s it, unlike the old days when shows like ‘MASH’ or ‘All in the Family’ or ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ or ‘Barney Miller’ took 13 episodes or 22 episodes or even more to find the audience and then became the classics.”

Niles notes the deflated NBC expectations over “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” but claims that it’s No. 1 in teen-age taste--”even a higher teen rating than ‘The Simpsons,’ ” he asserts--and it still has a chance at “breakout” status if it can get enough young adults.

Fox has fingers crossed over many series on its toddler network, among them Thursday night’s 9 o’clock high school romp, “Beverly Hills 90210.”

Giles Lundberg, a Fox research and marketing vice president, figures that its audience, although minuscule by the usual network volumes, nonetheless picks up in its second half hour following “Cheers” on NBC--paltry pickings considering that the show was 88th of 90 ranked in the latest Nielsen computations.

Of course, Fox thirsts for younger demographics, reminds Fessel.

“What’s really striking about us, as much as we’ve grown--more than doubled since we’ve been on the air--is that we still maintain a tremendously concentrated young-adult audience,” he says, finding the silver lining. “Eighty percent of our viewers over the age of 12 are under the age of 50. We did that the first year and we’re still doing that now, with our third season.”

In other words, Rupert Murdoch, 59, who owns Fox and multitudes of other media businesses, won’t be watching the network?

Fessel responds without a beat: “Rupert Murdoch watches all of our shows.”

NEW LINEUPS AT THE NETWORKS The Second Season: New Shows, New Times in Bold (With Date of Premiere) NBC SUNDAY 7-8 p.m. Sunday Best (Feb. 3) 8-8:30 p.m. Real Life (Sunday) 8:30-9 p.m. Expose (Sunday) 9-11 p.m. NBC Sunday Night Movie MONDAY 8-8:30 p.m. Fresh Prince of Bel Air 8:30-9 p.m. Blossom (Monday) 9-11 p.m. NBC Monday Night Movie TUESDAY 8-9 p.m. Matlock 9-10 p.m. In the Heat of the Night 10-11 p.m. Law and Order WEDNESDAY 8-9 p.m. Unsolved Mysteries 9-9:30 p.m. Night Court (Jan. 16) 9:30-10 p.m. Seinfeld (Jan. 16) 10-11 p.m. Hunter THURSDAY 8-8:30 p.m. The Cosby Show 8:30-9 p.m. A Different World 9-9:30 p.m. Cheers 9:30-10 p.m. Wings (New day) 10-11 p.m. L.A. Law FRIDAY 8-9 p.m. Quantum Leap 9-10 p.m. Dark Shadows (Jan. 18) 10-11 p.m. Midnight Caller SATURDAY 8-8:30 p.m. Amen 8:30-9 p.m. The Fanelli Boys 9-9:30 p.m. The Golden Girls 9:30-10 p.m. Empty Nest 10-10:30 p.m. Carol & Company 10:30-11 p.m. Dear John (New day and time) ABC MONDAY 9-11 p.m. ABC Monday Night Movie (Monday) TUESDAY 8:30-9 p.m. Davis Rules (Jan. 29) WEDNESDAY 10-11 p.m. Equal Justice (Jan. 9) SATURDAY 9-10 p.m. Under Cover (Jan. 12) CBS THURSDAY 9:30-10 p.m. Good Sports (Jan. 10) FRIDAY 8-9 p.m. Guns of Paradise (Friday) 9-10 p.m. Dallas (New time) 10-11 p.m. Sons and Daughters (Friday) SATURDAY 9-11 p.m. CBS Saturday Night Movie (TBA) SOURCE: Networks NOTE: No changes for Fox