Free Offer of ‘Designing Women’ Reruns : Entertainment: Columbia hopes to give away old episodes of the hit comedy series in return for the right to sell some advertising time.

Columbia Pictures Television, in a risky marketing move, has begun giving away the reruns of the hit comedy series “Designing Women” to TV stations in exchange for the right to sell almost half of the commercial advertising time in the show.

The strategy is significant because it signals that the studio, which historically has been among the most successful in the lucrative syndication business, determined that it faced a difficult time selling reruns of “Designing Women” in a recessionary market.

Until a couple of years ago, hit prime-time comedies were virtually guaranteed of generating more than $100 million in syndication revenue. Some, such as “The Cosby Show,” eventually yielded about $730 million in rerun profit.

But a flood of comedies entering syndication in recent years, together with an inability among local TV stations to continue paying escalating fees, has forced the major studios and independent distributors to slash their asking price.

Stations that have bought “Designing Women,” including KTLA-TV in Los Angeles and KPIX-TV San Francisco, will get the reruns for free for a two-year license period beginning in the fall of 1992.

Columbia will sell three minutes of commercial advertising time per episode, leaving the stations to sell 3 1/2 minutes locally. Customarily, local stations buy network reruns for periods of four to five years and pay cash license fees, allowing them to sell all the advertising time.

“This is the best way to maximize revenues in today’s marketplace,” said Barry Thurston, president of Columbia Pictures TV. “A lot of TV stations are saddled with fixed debt and have less cash available for new programming.”

Industry sources said Columbia rejected an offer from the cable channel Lifetime to buy the reruns for more than $40 million. That offer included a window when the reruns would simultaneously have been sold to local TV stations.

Analysts said Columbia’s strategy on “Designing Women” is risky because there is little way the studio can project what sponsors are willing to pay to advertise in the show. In addition, it will require substantial promotional dollars to attract viewers to the less-watched late afternoon time periods that it needs in order to get premium ad rates.

Columbia, more than other studios, is under pressure to generate substantial syndication revenue because it has gone on a spending spree over the past couple of years to hire the most expensive producers and writers in Hollywood.

Thurston acknowledged that the marketing strategy on “Designing Women” posed risks if the economy does not rebound or if other popular reruns enter the marketplace when the series comes up for renewals in two years. “But we don’t see any shows coming up like that,” he said.

Tribune Broadcasting, a Chicago-based subsidiary of the Tribune Co., which owns KTLA-TV, will sell the advertising time in “Designing Women” for Columbia. Columbia keeps about 30% of the rerun revenue and the balance goes to the producers, the husband-and-wife team of Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.