TELEVISION : NBC NEWS : A NEW PRIME-TIME STRATEGY : After a year of red ink and the ‘Today’ show blues, the division regroups

Above the skaters twirling and slipping on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, the motto on the face of NBC’s New York headquarters building looks somewhat suspect: “Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times.”

It’s common knowledge at NBC News that launching a prime-time news program is a very risky proposition. After all, despite internal analysis of such successes as CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the NBC News unit has slipped up 16 times with attempts at prime-time programs.

And it’s probably wise to foresee that stability will be hard to find in the future, as the bottom-line mentality of NBC’s owner, General Electric, casts a long shadow over a softened advertising marketplace and the cost of covering the Persian Gulf crisis. The specter of war along with turmoil on the “Today” show left the news division about $20 million in the red last year.

A sense of unease runs through the division’s rank and file. Many are concerned that staff reductions at NBC News in recent years could continue--about 335 jobs have been cut since ’86.

And did you hear the one about only two broadcast news divisions surviving the decade? Well, no one at NBC is laughing.

All this doomsaying is dismissed by Michael Gartner, NBC News’ bow-tied, polka-dot-suspended, slightly round-shouldered president. Gartner has big plans to reposition the news division for the ‘90s. Under Gartner and executive producer Steve Friedman, “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” has begun moving in a more “populist” direction, and this month Gartner aims to dispel a number of perceived misconceptions about the division--and the gloomy impression many people have its president--with several new ventures that are adding $60 million to NBC News’ core budget of about $250 million for ’91. To describe this as a pivotal month is almost an understatement.

Tonight NBC News launches two shows in prime time that are partially a result of closer ties forged with the network’s entertainment division. “Real Life With Jane Pauley” is slotted at 8 p.m., and at 8:30 is the half-hour “Expose” series, featuring Tom Brokaw and the investigative reporter/producer team of Brian Ross and Ira Silverman.

What’s more, NBC News is gambling on what could be the first of several new daytime programs with a half-hour series, “A Closer Look,” which features Faith Daniels and begins Jan. 28.

The network is also attempting to strengthen sorely tested station affiliate relations with a brand-new 24-hour news service, dubbed the NBC News Channel and based in Charlotte, N.C.

And in the months ahead, Gartner says he is bent on forming a “video Associated Press of the world,” increasing the division’s so-called pooled coverage of news events around the world with its two chief rivals, CBS and ABC.

All the new activity means that NBC News has actually added about 100 extra positions in recent months. Sure, about 25 jobs have been phased out recently, and the division is under attack from the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians for allegedly downgrading the salary and responsibilities for 21 staff members, many of them over age 50. But NBC News is disputing those charges, and Gartner puts a bright spin on the overall staffing picture.

“There’s no reason to be scared at this division anymore,” he says. “We’re hiring. We’ll still weed out the inefficient and the unhappy. But the big stuff is over now, and it isn’t at ABC and CBS. There was a big outflow of people here a year ago. Some we wanted to lose, some we didn’t. But now the resume flow is coming our way.”

NBC’s employment and program opportunities come at a time when the other two broadcast networks’ news divisions are tightening their belts. The network with the leading evening newscast, ABC, has put plans for an overnight affiliate news service on the back burner. CBS is pulling the plug on its recently launched contender in late-night, “America Tonight.” And both networks have trimmed their staffs and news bureaus in recent months.

ABC News and CBS News are also making a profit, unlike their competitor. But their fiscal health can be at least partially attributed to something that has so far eluded NBC: successful prime-time and late-night news programming.

The timing is paramount for NBC News. The network’s first-place prime-time ratings are weakening, and its ratings performance is so poor in daytime--ranking third of the three networks--that it plans to turn over an additional hour of the daytime schedule to its station affiliates next fall.

“The climate’s right,” says Jeff Gaspin, who serves as NBC News’ director of new program development.

Gaspin explains that the profit potential of prime-time news programming can be very attractive. They are not only less expensive to produce than entertainment programming, but because successful news programs tend to last for many years, they can save a network millions of dollars over the course of years in developing shows for a given time slot.

Why will “Expose” and “Real Life” succeed where so many others have failed? Most of the unsuccessful series weren’t given enough time to establish themselves and build ratings, Gaspin says. This time around, NBC has committed to a year’s worth of episodes for each.

What’s more, the sacred wall separating the entertainment and news divisions at NBC has crumbled. That may worry some who fear that influence from the show-biz types could compromise the programs’ journalistic integrity.

Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes network news in a newsletter called the Tyndall Report, raises an eyebrow at an alliance between the entertainment and news divisions that manifested itself last winter.

When NBC Entertainment aired a two-part docudrama, “Drug Wars,” in prime time, it included a clip from one of Tom Brokaw’s newscasts and the news division produced a short special on the subject that aired after the movie. “ ‘Nightly News’ coverage of the drug issue was also much heavier than that of the other two network newscasts when the docudrama aired,” he says. Tyndall believes such synergies cross the line of journalistic integrity.

But Gaspin and Gartner say that the cooperative spirit is beneficial, as the news division attempts to expand into different times of the day.

Brandon Tartikoff, chairman of the NBC Entertainment Group, actually came up with the name for “Expose,” and was “really the instigator behind the series,” according to Brian Ross. “But he’s never said what kind of news stories we should be doing. He’s just come to believe that tough journalism can be a success in prime time.”

“We’ve actually been inviting them more than they’ve invited us,” Gaspin says, particularly as it relates to the program development process.

Gaspin spent much of last summer in NBC’s Burbank offices observing program meetings fly-on-the-wall style, held by Tartikoff and Warren Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment. And he came back with lots of new ideas.

For perhaps the first time, the news division is actually testing a pilot for the Faith Daniels program before putting the series on air, and “Expose” and the “Pauley” series were held back several months after their specials aired to allow more time for development. Before, that incubation period would never have occurred, Gaspin says.

For all NBC News’ emphasis on new ventures, Gartner’s attempts to redirect its programming, and repair relations with staffers and station affiliates have been large and somewhat painful concerns.

Since Gartner’s arrival 2 1/2 years ago, the NBC News rank-and-file has formed a rather polarized impression of their boss.

With a mailbox marked Daily Tribune outside his NBC office--he is still the co-owner of the Daily Tribune in Ames, Iowa--Gartner remains, to some in the broadcasting crowd, a print journalist. Running one of the largest television news divisions in the world may be a major part of his life, but it’s just part of his agenda--in addition to the Ames paper, he is a Wall Street Journal columnist.

While many express a high regard for Gartner, there is also a strong sense among many that if you’re not “on the team,” you’re likely to lose your standing--or your job.

Gartner has replaced almost every top executive at the division--often in a more abrupt fashion than many of his subordinates felt was warranted. “He isn’t known for his bedside manner,” remarks one NBC insider.

An exodus of on-cameras talent has occurred as well, with correspondents such as Connie Chung off to CBS, Chris Wallace, Bob Jamieson and Jim Bittermann now at ABC News and Ken Bode at CNN.

But perhaps the biggest talent shake-up of all occurred with some who have remained, most notably Jane Pauley’s wrenching departure from the “Today” show and her replacement by Deborah Norville.

Since the “Today” shake-up, the series has lost its longtime standing as the No. 1-ranked morning show to “Good Morning America,” and its share of the viewing audience has plummeted about 20%, when comparing November, 1990, and November, 1989, Nielsen Media Research results.

That has meant a $10-million advertising loss for the division, Gartner says. And he estimates that, collectively, his station affiliates have lost a similar amount. It will take a lot more time to repair that damage, Gartner says.

And maybe a little magic. Tom Capra, who left his news-director job at KNBC last January to become the show’s executive producer, says he believes in magic. A glittering green wand rests on his desk near an Etch-a-Sketch and a host of other toys in the submarine-like sanctum of the “Today” facilities.

Already, Capra notes, the show’s ratings have stopped their free fall. Since he’s arrived, Capra has altered the show in “little steps,” changing the set, adding Faith Daniels, Joe Garagiola and Katie Kouric along with a new senior producer. “You can’t blow up a place. You have to push it in the right direction,” he says.

The show’s different direction has also been affected by a change in the way news is gathered within the whole division. Rather than each news program acting as separate fiefdoms within the unit, sometimes working against each other’s interest to produce news segments for their own use, Gartner has set up a centralized news desk under the direction of one of his new hires, Don Browne, who is executive vice president.

“There’s a lot more cooperation now,” Capra says.

Coordination with other news shows like “Today” is just part of the battle for Steve Friedman, who became executive producer of “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” last summer. True to his somewhat bombastic image, Friedman has been making a lot of noise in the fight with CBS for the No. 2 spot in the ratings, occasionally nipping at the heels of the leading newscast, “ABC World News Tonight With Peter Jennings.”

Friedman, renowned as much for spearheading “USA Today: The TV Show,” one of the biggest disasters in syndication, as he is remembered for lifting “Today’s” ratings to No. 1 status when he was its executive producer in the early ‘80s, says that most of his changes on “Nightly” will be in place by the middle of this month. Then it’s just a matter of sitting tight to see if the ratings head up.

Most of his changes have attempted to steer the program in what Friedman calls a more “populist” direction. “I think we should give people a voice and get away from officials all the time. You know, the officials and the experts know very little,” he says. “Not one predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall.”

Stories that don’t effect Americans directly appear to be of little interest. There may be time for balancing Persian Gulf stories with lighter pieces on subjects like the buttoned-down set’s new interest in motorcycles. But there’s little room for issues like the famine in Ethiopia--a story that had a huge response from the American public when an earlier Ethiopian famine was first reported by NBC News (using BBC footage) a few years ago.

All three of the broadcast networks could be faulted for leaving significant pockets of the world, such as black Africa, largely uncovered. But “NBC covers overseas news much less than its two rivals,” according Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the Tyndall Report, which analyzes the evening newscasts.

“I keep count of the amount of time given to local and regional stories around the country, and in the first 10 months of 1990, NBC was devoting 15% more time to those stories than the other two on average,” he says.

This populist kind of coverage, which has become more noticeable since Friedman’s arrival, is likely to appeal to the twentysomething set--a gold-mine demographic that has so far eluded all of the national TV news operations.

News consultant Ron Tindiglia applauds Friedman for providing a “better-produced, quicker, less didactic and preachy” news program. But there’s a danger in the populist bent, according to some experts like Tyndall. By not focusing on international stories as keenly as before, he maintains, NBC could leave its audience unprepared for major events when they reach the boiling point.

“NBC (in late 1989) did a good job covering the changes in South Africa. They noticed that apartheid was coming apart much earlier than the other two networks,” Tyndall says. Such hunches aren’t surfacing as readily these days at the division, Tyndall believes.

The network’s disregard for so-called secondary stories is troubling to people like Garrick Utley, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, weekend anchor and host of “Meet the Press” and “Sunday Today.” “Of course it bothers me,” Utley says. “But we can’t be all things to all people. What you’re asking is a question of money, of the new realities.”

Part of the new realities mean competing with the growing number of sources for national news available to TV audiences, such as CNN’s up-to-the-minute reports, and local station newscasts.

For network news divisions to all survive the 1990s, Gartner and Friedman contend, they have to move beyond merely relaying the day’s events. It’s analysis and in-depth reporting that are key.

Part of that’s being done with daily segments on “Nightly News” covering topics of major concern to Americans, such as medical issues, packaged as “Vital Signs.” Part of it involves occasionally turning over most of an evening’s newscast to a single topic, such as one “Nightly News” program last fall that took an expansive look at “the state of America,” with one segment featuring average Americans asking Vice President Dan Quayle questions (which he failed to really answer). Friedman’s still fine-tuning that concept.

Part of it also involves freeing reporters to work on more enterprising stories by increasing the amount of pooled news coverage of events by the three networks and CNN--in effect creating a “video Associated Press of the world,” as Gartner puts it.

“Why are there 40 cameras set up when there’s a parade route with Bush and Gorbachev? That’s just dumb in my opinion,” he says. Gartner says that the four networks’ pooled election night coverage in November saved his unit about $5 million.

But satellite expenses paid to countries like Saudi Arabia as part of the division’s Persian Gulf coverage total hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. “I’m just being held up,” he fumes.

As Gartner redirects the network news coverage, he’s also attempting to strengthen relations with his affiliates by launching a service that will supply them with news stories around the country and the world on a 24-hour basis, the NBC News Channel.

At the start of his NBC News reign, Gartner was roundly criticized for his aloofness towards affiliate stations, with little attempt to understand their newsgathering needs. The shake-up on “Today” only exacerbated that problem. But now, station officials like Al Goldstein, news director of San Francisco’s KRON, indicate that impression has changed.

“I can’t think of three affiliates that are furious with me now,” Gartner says. “A year ago, I couldn’t find three affiliates that liked me.”

He may not store them in his personal mailbox, but Gartner has fan-mail letters from affiliates at the ready to prove that change.

Whether or not more fan letters will roll in as his new ventures begin from the stations--as well as his staff and the general public--remains a $60-million question. And then some.