Chief of TV Unit at Paramount Is Bowing Out : Entertainment: Mel Harris is the highest-ranking executive to leave since Brandon Tartikoff took over.

Mel Harris, president of the Paramount Pictures television group, on Sunday became the highest-ranking executive to leave the entertainment firm since TV wizard Brandon Tartikoff took over earlier this summer.

In a move described by a Paramount spokesman as “amicable,” Harris will leave Oct. 1. He apparently has no immediate plans.

“I believe Brandon should be able to build his own team,” Harris said in a joint statement with Paramount. “I am going to make up for a lot of vacation days I bypassed in the last decade.”

Harris, an up-through-the ranks veteran considered greatly responsible for the current success of Paramount’s TV enterprises, has been with the company 14 years. No successor was named.

“He built an innovative team here that created top-quality, highly popular programming,” Tartikoff said in the statement, “ . . . and Mel has been very helpful during my first few weeks here at Paramount.”

Other shifts since Tartikoff arrived include the departure of Robert Pisano, executive vice president and general counsel, and M. Kenneth Suddleson, executive vice president in charge of business affairs. Both were in the office of former Chairman Frank G. Mancuso, ousted by Martin S. Davis, chairman of the entertainment concern’s parent, Paramount Communications, this spring.

Mancuso charged in a $45-million lawsuit against Paramount, since settled out of court, that he was fired after Davis named producer Stanley Jaffe to the new job of president and chief operating officer, over Mancuso. While Paramount denied any wrongdoing, Mancuso said that by contract he was to report directly to Davis.

“You’ve seen a number of people in different areas (at Paramount) moving on, moving out, moving over,” said Jeffrey Logsdon, managing director of Seidler Amdec Securities Inc., who follows the entertainment business. “It probably shouldn’t be surprising that a high-level executive is making a change.”

Industry observers saw Tartikoff’s experience and success in television prompting Harris to conclude that it was time to move on. Harris had been mentioned as a possible successor to Mancuso, but the nod went to Tartikoff.

Harris, who rose through Paramount’s home video unit rather than network television development, pioneered the concept of the so-called sell-through market, in which movies are sold directly to the public on cassettes. In the early 80s, he was among those who accurately predicted that dropping the price from around $50 to current prices of less than half that would create a market. Paramount has since done particularly well in that area.

In Paramount television shows, Harris is most closely associated with the development of the highly successful, decade-old “Entertainment Tonight.” Paramount’s television division produces such programs as “The Arsenio Hall Show,” “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” “MacGyver” and “Cheers”--the highest-rated series on TV in the 1990-91 season.