Mania’s Missing From Sweeps Month Saga

It’s just about the scrawniest sweeps in years as TV’s annual May ratings shootout reflects the hard financial times at the networks.

Yes, there are special TV films with such stars as Julie Andrews, Ann-Margret and Richard Chamberlain--the king of sweeps--as well as another spooky delivery from writer Stephen King.

But the mania of past sweeps months--the main ones are in May, February and November--is clearly missing, even though the ratings help determine ad rates for local stations.

And maybe it’s a good thing too, because sweeps programming is usually so unrepresentative of the remainder of the year that those ad prices are essentially based on a false premise.

Not so this May. While the Nielsen sweeps, which began Thursday and run through May 22, offer a stronger-than-usual collection of specials, they’re a pretty modest group, much closer to regular programming.

There are, indeed, several sweeps miniseries. NBC’s four-hour “Switched at Birth,” which begins Sunday, stars Bonnie Bedelia, Ed Asner and Brian Kerwin in a tale of babies somehow swapped in a hospital nursery and reared by the wrong biological parents.

ABC, meanwhile, has a four-hour murder tale set among Los Angeles’ elite, “An Inconvenient Woman,” airing May 12 and 13 and starring Jason Robards, Rebecca de Mornay, Jill Eikenberry, Peter Gallagher and Roddy McDowall.

One of the mysteries of the sweeps is whether “Dallas,” which used to draw huge audiences but has dropped off, will go out on top when it ends its 13-year run on CBS Friday with a two-hour finale. It’s surely a TV occasion, even though it won’t match the enormous tune-in of the famous “Who Shot J.R.?” episode.

ABC’s May 19 drama starring Andrews and Ann-Margret has a provocative plot as they play women whose sons are lovers. One of the sons is dying of AIDS.

Chamberlain, meanwhile, turns up May 5 in an ABC remake of the great 1955 film “Night of the Hunter,” playing the part of a bogus preacher etched unforgettably by Robert Mitchum.

As for King, he’s represented by CBS’ “Sometimes They Come Back,” with Tim Matheson in a tale of a man confronted by demons when he returns to his hometown after 30 years.

Among the sweeps’ other TV movies is NBC’s May 5 Loni Anderson vehicle, “White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd,” a terribly titled exploration of the long-fascinating story of the death of the old-time film star.

But while TV movies and miniseries usually highlight any sweeps month, spring is now a critical period for testing new series and shoring up old ones as the networks decide within weeks what the fall schedules will be.

At ABC, for instance, the much-honored but shaky ratings entry “thirtysomething” plans to close out its season with a string of provocative episodes that it hopes will assure it of renewal.

The aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, meanwhile, will be touched on in Monday’s episode of “Designing Women” and the May 13 broadcast of “Major Dad,” both on CBS. The network is also trying to boost its new “Evening Shade” series May 6 when the character played by Burt Reynolds becomes a father. CBS is also pinning future hopes on its increasingly popular drama “Northern Exposure.”

The networks’ jockeying for the upper hand is particularly important during the sweeps after an official ratings season that found NBC, ABC and CBS bunched more tightly than they have been in years. Thus, each is looking for an opening--especially a hot series--that could make it a clear winner next season.

ABC, for example, this week introduced the series “My Life and Times,” which will run through the sweeps with its running story of an 85-year-old man in the year 2035 who looks back on the key moments of his existence. It’s not the kind of show that draws huge ratings, but ABC hopes it will set people talking.

In another tryout this spring, ABC is taking the reality route with “American Detective,” a series about the professional and private lives of police officers.

NBC’s “Amen” tries to get a quick shot in the arm May 11 when soul singer James Brown visits. The same night, NBC’s “Empty Nest” hopes for a lift from a guest appearance by Shirley Jones.

And the same network’s “Midnight Caller,” on thin ratings ice, offers Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy as a power broker who tries to meddle in an election in the series’ May 10 season finale.

The courageous tale of actress Jill Ireland, who died of cancer, will be brought to the screen by NBC May 20. It is titled “Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story,” and it stars Jill Clayburgh.

While NBC offers this noteworthy attempt to create a significant portrait, it also is the perpetrator of a May 19 film that brings back David Hasselhoff in “Knight Rider 2000.” It takes place in the year 2000, picks up where the “Knight Rider” series ended, and that’s probably all you have to know.

With stars finding major employment in TV films, the sweeps package isn’t that different from many months throughout the season. There’s a May 16 CBS entry, “Jailbirds,” with Dyan Cannon and Phylicia Rashad as a couple of female convicts on the lam.

And there’s another CBS presentation May 19, “Seduction in Travis County,” with Lesley Ann Warren as a dangerous woman obsessed with a married lawyer (Peter Gallagher). The network is touting it as a kind of “Fatal Attraction” story.

And of course there’s a beauty contest--the Miss Universe Pageant on CBS May 17.

It’s sweeps--and they’ve rounded up the usual suspects.