For TV Excitement, Nothing Compares to Network News

A dull new TV season, huh? A November ratings sweeps thin on interest, right?

Those were the predictions. But think again.

The last few months were among the most dramatic in TV history--from the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings to Magic Johnson’s disclosure that he has the AIDS virus, and, in sports events, the classic Minnesota-Atlanta World Series.

It’s been a shared, national TV experience that we’ll remember for years.

Never mind that none of these phenomenal broadcasts were regular prime-time shows. It doesn’t matter. It’s all television--and the ultimate attraction of the home tube is that anything just might happen at any moment.

From the Persian Gulf War to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Thomas-Hill hearings to Johnson’s revelation, it has been a simply extraordinary year of television.

And what is bittersweet and sad as a viewer is that all of these events add up to virtually a last hurrah for network television news--illustrating unforgettably how the fading CBS, NBC and ABC can bind us, as no one else can, in a communal manner at a period of crisis.

Even with CNN dominating Gulf War coverage, even with other cable channels such as C-SPAN providing the fullest of reports, the sheer weight of the Big Three--however weakened--is still unmatched at providing the greatest national impact at a given historical moment.

So shed a tear for the best of network TV because this year, and recent weeks, are a vivid reminder of what we will be losing as the inevitable decline of the networks continues.

Even as recently as last week, the Thomas-Hill hearings provided the inspiration for an episode of CBS’ “Designing Women” as the cast members argued the case before a vast TV audience.

And if anybody had told you during the intense Thomas-Hill TV confrontation that another broadcast would come along within weeks with even greater emotional impact, would you have believed it?

Yet we barely had time to catch our breath from Thomas and Hill when Johnson shook up the nation and world as few individuals have done in the TV age with his disclosure of testing positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

The World Series is, of course, minor by comparison in the realm of human events. Yet here viewers were watching not only an unexpectedly thrilling competition, but also a reminder that great sports events will no longer always be free of charge on the networks in the future as the new world of pay and cable TV evolves.

In the Thomas-Hill affair, PBS, CNN and C-SPAN brought home the drama of the sexual-harassment allegations as clearly as the Big Three. But without ABC, CBS and NBC bringing their full force to the story--and their 60%-plus of the television audience--the breathtaking exchanges and charges simply would not have penetrated the nation with such a sledgehammer effect.

In the case of Magic Johnson, the cable channels--this time also including the sports outlets ESPN and Prime Ticket--were superb again. And every major local TV station in Los Angeles carried Johnson’s HIV announcement live.

Yet it was the follow-up coverage by the Big Three, day after day and at length on programs ranging from “Nightline” to the evening news of ABC, CBS and NBC, that brought home the story on TV with overwhelming power.

It is easy enough to laugh at network TV, which is all too often laughable. But never before in history has any communications force come close to matching the colossus of the Big Three in presenting the major news happenings of the universe over the years since TV’s birth.

It has been a privilege to watch them at their best--Cronkite covering the space shots, Brinkley at any political convention, Murrow skewering Joe McCarthy, “Nightline” covering the Iran crisis, Gorbachev and Yeltsin in this year’s interview from Moscow with U.S. viewers.

And it is heartening to note that even though their fate is probably sealed, the Big Three networks are not going gently to their eventual slaughter.

Tremendous news events, as we have seen, basically dictate what they must do, despite staff and budget cutbacks. But the grand irony is that Hollywood, long despised by some who regard it as the ultimate creative sellout, suddenly is carrying the banner in trying to keep such networks as NBC and CBS afloat.

While the corporate chiefs in New York are systematically tearing down network news divisions--the jewels in TV’s crown--the entertainers in Hollywood are showing surprisingly admirable tenacity and ingenuity in the face of adversity.

Hollywood is run in great part by bounders and scoundrels. And yet here, thus far this season, is NBC’s independent new entertainment president, Warren Littlefield, showing some real guts by gambling his network on worthwhile drama series, all doing passably to quite well in the ratings.

The networks are down, but they’re not yet out.