AIDS and the Airwaves: It’s Still a Hard Sell : Television: Even after Magic Johnson’s announcement, the networks have no plans to increase their attention to an issue that makes advertisers uncomfortable.

If the morning table talk at Farmers Market, Hugo’s and studio eateries up and down Ventura Boulevard is any measure, it is practically a given that HIV will soon be as prevalent in television’s soaps and sitcoms as condoms and teen sex have been this year.

“Magic Johnson’s announcement kicks the awareness of AIDS and HIV into a whole new dimension,” said Jim Kramer, a producer for CBS’ “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” which will at least include occasional references to the HIV epidemic if not full story lines in the courtroom drama.

The Laker star’s stunning Nov. 7 revelation that he is infected with the AIDS virus has already been discussed widely in Hollywood and could soon be incorporated into several prime-time scripts, according to several writers and producers.

But the networks said last week that they had no immediate plans to increase their attention to the subject, and several producers expressed skepticism about advertisers’ willingness to support a spate of AIDS-related programming.

“AIDS is melodrama with a capital ‘M’ and therefore exploitable and therefore commercial,” said former “thirtysomething” writer-producer Richard Kramer. “But AIDS and homophobia are forever tangled up with each other”--and that may limit how frequently the networks want to address it, he suggested.

In any case, the hard work of making the disease acceptable in TV entertainment at all was done years ago.

“God bless Magic Johnson for speaking out, but the issue as a subject for TV has been around for at least eight years,” said Perry Lafferty, former senior vice president for movies and miniseries at NBC.

It was 1983 when Lafferty first proposed the idea of a made-for-TV movie about AIDS to then-NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff. AIDS had already been incorporated into the plot of NBC’s hospital drama “St. Elsewhere” by that time, with a doctor portrayed by Mark Harmon contracting HIV. “Trapper John, M.D.” on CBS had also devoted an episode to AIDS, and the Showtime sitcom “Brothers” became the first TV comedy to address the issue.

But in those early days of the international AIDS epidemic, the disease was still viewed by both television and government officials--as well as the all-important network sponsors--as a gay disease or a disease that might be passed between drug users who used the same needle.

“I had a medical friend who told me way back then that it was going to become a plague,” said Lafferty, now retired. “He predicted everything that has come to pass.”

TV executives deemed middle-class heterosexual America unready for AIDS to explode out of the hospital TV drama or a gay-themed sitcom like “Brothers” and into their own homes, according to Lafferty. For two years, he championed the project, focusing on a young, well-educated Chicago lawyer who returns home to his parents’ rural Pennsylvania home to die.

“An Early Frost” went through 13 rewrites before it finally won approval from the NBC standards and practices department. Even then, the final two-hour movie starring Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara and Aidan Quinn probably would not have made it to the air if then-NBC Chairman Grant Tinker hadn’t ordered it broadcast regardless of the protest from the network’s sales department, Lafferty said.

As it turned out, the sales executives were right. Though the Nielsen ratings were respectable, advertisers pulled out in droves.

“The first time it aired (Nov. 11, 1985), NBC lost $600,000,” Lafferty said. “Brandon decided to broadcast it again about six months later. That time, it lost $1 million.”

Since then, AIDS has been dealt with periodically in nearly all forms of entertainment programming, from comedies such as “Designing Women” and “Mr. Belvedere” to afternoon dramas aimed at children.

Yet the networks are still not thrilled with presenting the issue, primarily because it is a topic with which many sponsors are uncomfortable.

“Because of what has happened to Mr. Johnson, this is going to finally have an impact on the American consciousness,” said John Erman, who directed “An Early Frost” and last May’s ABC movie “Our Sons,” about two mothers (Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret) brought together by the homosexual relationship of their sons, one of whom is dying of AIDS.

But Erman said that “Our Sons” sold because the actresses were “heterosexual icons” who made the idea of AIDS palatable to advertisers and a timorous TV audience. Another project that he and actor Tom Hulce have been trying to sell to the networks about AIDS in middle America has had no takers after more than a year.

“It is still a very, very hard sell,” he said.

Lafferty agreed. “I hope that more condoms will be distributed and like that, but I don’t think anything is going to change in terms of commercial TV,” he said. “Anything that is controversial, that is going to upset the advertising department, is going to be an uphill battle.”

One prime-time series, however, is in the midst of a Magic Johnson-like story now.

“It’s interesting that Magic’s announcement came four days after Jesse Harper (played by Chad Lowe) announced to Becca (played by Kellie Martin) that he had HIV,” said Michael Braverman, producer of ABC’s “Life Goes On.”

By the second week of December, the Harper character will get sick, he said. As in real life, everyone will assume that his infection has turned into AIDS, but it will be a false alarm. Harper will be around for more episodes, at least through the end of the season. Whether he survives beyond that is more a question of whether ABC renews the show than of the disease, Braverman said.

In the works at HBO is the dramatization of Randy Shilts’ best-selling book on the beginnings of the AIDS crisis, “And the Band Played On,” which languished for two years at NBC before the pay-cable network picked it up in 1989. The project hit a snag six weeks ago when director Joel Schumacher withdrew, but Richard Waltzer, vice president for HBO Pictures, said last week that he expects a new director to be signed soon and that the film will go into production after the first of the year.

Johnson’s announcement did not speed up activity on the “Band” project, Waltzer said. “We’ve been going at full tilt,” he said. “We couldn’t have been moving any more quickly.”

Meanwhile, Renata Simone, a producer at WGBH-TV in Boston who works with ABC News anchor Peter Jennings on the PBS series “Health Quarterly” (originally “AIDS Quarterly”), said that they have approached Johnson’s representatives about producing a documentary about his life.

She said that they sent Johnson’s agent a copy of an award-winning documentary that Simone made, “Born in Africa,” a 90-minute program about Ugandan pop star Philly Lutaya, who--like Johnson--publicly announced his infection, then spent the rest of his life staging anti-AIDS concerts throughout Africa.

Times staff writer Judith Michaelson contributed to this article.