Network May Have Sleeper of an Idea

They say the television networks are not what they used to be. They say the networks have lost the power to “define” us.

That may be. But up in Sacramento, they’re giving it one last try. Beginning this week, the NBC affiliate is beginning a little experiment with its prime time. And if this experiment proves to be successful, it will suggest that we--we of California, that is--are not exactly who we believed ourselves to be.

The experiment operates like this: Station KCRA will take its entire prime-time schedule and shift it forward by one hour. So, at this station and only at this station, viewers will be treated to a prime time starting at 7 p.m. and ending at 10 p.m. The rest of California will continue at the usual 8 to 11.

This means that the late news will appear at 10 p.m. rather than 11. And Johnny Carson will start at 10:30, not 11:30. KCRA will keep this up for 8 1/2 months and see if they catch more viewers than before.

For KCRA and NBC, this is a big deal. NBC mulled it over for years before it went ahead. And the change required a special waiver by the Federal Communications Commission.

But who cares about NBC? This is not a business story. What we’re after here is the underlying notion about California. And that notion is clear: NBC believes we are becoming a state of big snoozers. The network thinks that we, like the farmers, sleep with the chickens.

The network doesn’t put it that way, of course. It says that Californians are losing their resemblance to East Coast viewers and starting to look more and more like Midwest viewers. In the Midwest, understand, prime time has always started an hour earlier because that’s what the farmers wanted .

I know, I know. And do not be comforted by the thought that this move represents the tinkering of only one network. Even as the NBC experiment is being launched in Sacramento, CBS has announced that it may do the same with its affiliate in San Francisco.

San Francisco? Oh, yes. Apparently San Franciscans are pulling up the covers as soon as the sun goes down. If you’re a TV exec, you catch ‘em early or you don’t catch ‘em at all. No one cares anymore about staying up to watch Johnny, let alone the little cable cars climbing to the stars. They just care about their rack time.

As for Los Angeles, no one is sure whether the disease has struck down here, but I have some bad anecdotal evidence. Just the other night I happened to find myself in one of those West Hollywood restaurants where everyone wears wrinkled silk. I arrived around 9 p.m. and the place was mobbed.

But at 10:30 I looked up and realized that the restaurant was virtually empty. The pretty people in wrinkled silk had quietly crept away. Then I noticed our waiter was giving us timid glances, as if he yearned to start piling chairs on the tables.

Where had everyone gone? To parties in the hills? To the beach for the submarine races?

I don’t think so. I think they were all at home playing chicken farmer. I think they were feeding the family dog before going to bed, staring into the middle distance and wondering how it got so late.

Actually, California has always been more of a Midwest place than it liked to admit. Who are Californians, anyway, except the sons and daughters of dazzled farmers who came across the plains to escape the winters and, most likely, the chickens?

So maybe this network thing should be taken as a healthy sign. We can give up the pretense that our true cultural brothers reside on the East Coast. No one ever believed that stuff anyway.

No, we are mostly the heirs of Nebraska and Kansas. And probably the experiment in Sacramento will turn out to be a grand success. People will catch Johnny’s--or Jay’s--monologue at 10:30, turn out the lights and sleep tight.

And soon enough, the same will be happening in San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is a real truth here and the only surprising thing is how long it took the networks to figure it out. I can even foresee the day when the evening news tease says, “Death on the 405! Film at 8!”

And some of us just may stay up to catch the gore.