What Does Halt of ‘Love’ Mean for Sitcoms? : Television: Twentieth TV cites limited syndication value and production costs in stopping the series, but the move raises concern about support for quality comedies.

Call it fate. The title of the “Anything but Love” sitcom episode that finished production Friday was “ Angst for the Memories.”

A week ago, it was just a title. But it suddenly took on new meaning when the witty ABC series, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis as magazine writers and lovers, was abruptly told to cease production this week in a move that raised some eyebrows in the TV industry because of the circumstances.

Since its 1989 debut, “Anything but Love,” which even ABC describes as “acclaimed” in its network press kit, has been bounced around unceremoniously in a series of survival crises that rivaled “The Perils of Pauline.”

But in the latest--and perhaps fatal--setback, Twentieth Television, which produces the show in association with John Ritter’s company, joined with ABC in cutting the series short after only 17 of its 22 episodes scheduled for this season were finished.

“I feel stabbed in the back, betrayed,” Ritter said of Twentieth’s participation in the move to abort the half-hour show, which ABC technically could bring back in the future.

In a phone interview from Vancouver, where he is making the movie “Stay Tuned,” Ritter said that he could have made a deal with any studio after the success of his “Three’s Company” series, but chose Twentieth. But now, he said, “Why would we team up with them again?”

Lucie Salhany, the new chairwoman of Twentieth Television, said in a phone interview from San Francisco that the studio’s decision was based on the show’s cost and a lack of faith in its potential in syndicated reruns. But she added that it was “absolutely” a mutual decision with ABC.

What concerned some TV observers--among them, executives of “Anything but Love”--was whether current economic factors now would discourage support of struggling quality comedies, just as quality hourlong dramas already are poor cousins in the industry because of their lower rerun profits.

Series such as “Cheers” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” were among TV’s slow starters in the ratings.

“Very few hits are pure self-starters like ‘The Cosby Show,’ ” said Peter Noah, co-executive producer of “Anything but Love.” Noting the slow development of “Cheers” as a ratings hit, he said, “I think that’s also true of a show like ‘Coach,’ which took a long time to build. ‘Designing Women’ never really became a Top 10 hit until ‘Murphy Brown’ became its lead-in.”

In addition, sources said, if a studio partner is unwilling to carry a weekly deficit--the difference between a show’s cost and what the network pays for it--why not seek outside producing and distribution partners?

“This is a straight business decision,” said Salhany, adding: “I’m not making a value judgment about (‘Anything but Love’). I’m making a judgment about the audience share, the future of the program and the investment Twentieth has made in the program and the return we may get. At a 17 share, with its audience composition, I don’t think it has a future in syndication.”

Salhany said the decision to terminate the production of “Anything but Love” came about as follows:

“They (ABC) had a problem: They’ve overbought; they have too many programs. We have a problem: We’ve got a show that’s got a high deficit, a show that’s a 17-share show. So it’s a problem on both sides.”

But, the Twentieth executive said, “ABC has to say, ‘We want to cut back an order.’ We can’t go to them and say, ‘We’re cutting back an order.’ ”

Added Salhany: “We had talked to them (ABC) and said, ‘We’ve got some problems with the cost of this program, the deficit.’ And Harris Katleman (president of Twentieth Television) had talked to them about increasing the license fee (the price that a network pays for a show). And they said, ‘Well, we really can’t do that because the show hasn’t performed up to our expectations. But we have this problem: We’ve overbought. Would you consider cutting back the order this year?’ And we said yes.”

Although “Anything but Love” is shot on film, which is more expensive than tape but has a higher-style look, co-executive producer Robert Myman--Ritter’s partner in Adam Productions--says the series has been coming in under budget.

“We disagree with their business decision,” he said of the move to stop production.

“After all these years we’ve spent together, isn’t it worth it to put 30 or 40 more shows on?” Ritter said, referring to the fact that “Anything but Love” has done about 60 episodes and needs about 100 to reach an acceptable level for syndicating the reruns to stations--the pot of gold for every producer.

“It’s an intelligent show,” said Ritter, “and they (Twentieth) should just be smart and bite the bullet and go for it.”

Last season, the average production cost per episode of a half-hour, prime-time film series reportedly was about $844,000, with network license fees covering about $598,000. That left a deficit of about $246,000 per episode.

Sources declined to discuss precise costs for “Anything but Love.” But they said that what happened to the series could “drastically change the television business. It changes the relationship between producers and deficit financiers. If they pull the plug after you reach a deal with a network, it puts you in a weird relationship with your partners--if they decide it’s not a ‘Roseanne’ or a show you can identify in its first year as a big hit.”

Programs might even “have to be made at the license fee,” which would mean less money to spend on a show and lower quality, the sources added.

But Salhany said that in the case of “Anything but Love,” the series simply “did not hold its lead-in” from “Doogie Howser, M.D.” And, noting that “Anything but Love” has only a modest audience share after three years on the air, she added: “I haven’t made that decision. The audience has made that decision. I don’t want the creative community to get the wrong signal because we want to be very supportive of our people. We are partners. . . . We will always invest in programming, and if that’s a euphemism for deficit financing, we will do that.”

Meanwhile, the sudden shutting down of “Anything but Love” has created a buzz. And an ever-tougher TV business is tying itself in knots as it grapples with the recession, a loss of advertising, a glut of sitcom reruns and a soft syndication market in which Fox TV is filling the schedules of stations that once were available to buy more repeats.

Angst , indeed.