TELEVISION : Sweet Sixteen? : After misfiring with 15 other newsmagazines, NBC believes it has an attractive formula for its ‘Dateline’ show

If things go as NBC hopes, March 31 may make a bit of history: the date that the network introduced a prime-time news magazine that succeeded.

Yes, 16 could be the lucky number.

Do the names “First Tuesday,” “Chronolog” and “Monitor” ring a bell? They are just three of NBC’s 15 previous efforts at a prime-time magazine over 23 years. All came with much fanfare, and all left quietly and with little impact. Now the network is hoping “Dateline NBC” will inaugurate a new list.

There are several reasons for NBC’s seeming incompetence in the field of newsmagazines, including a lack of commitment from the top, a lack of need while on top and a lack of expertise in the area, amounting to what former “20/20” executive producer Av Westin calls “a virus on NBC’s walls.”

But NBC says it really is serious this time and has even gone outside to get help, hiring from both “20/20” and “60 Minutes.”

And not a moment too soon: The newsmagazine, cheaper, fresher and owned by its network, is muscling aside the dramatic hour on prime time.

CBS has “60 Minutes,” the venerable front-runner that currently is the most-watched show on television (and, incidentally, CBS’ biggest moneymaker ever, rumored to earn the network up to $70 million a year); “48 Hours,” now in its fourth season and running smoothly after hopping all over the schedule and finally being given a 10 p.m. time period to prove its appeal; and a “48 Hours” spinoff, “Street Stories,” which has done well enough since its Jan. 9 debut to earn a spot at least through the summer.

ABC is close behind, with “20/20” averaging a solid 25% share of the audience on Friday nights and “PrimeTime Live” overcoming its shaky start and now sometimes beating off both its faltering Thursday night competitors, “L.A. Law” and “Knots Landing.” And this summer, the network will premiere a new magazine, probably featuring Forrest Sawyer, to go up against “60 Minutes.”

“I’m a competitive guy and it’s our turn,” says NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield. “It’s why I’m giving this program the best possible berth from which to succeed. We’re also using the entertainment division’s relationships with certain people to try to hook the show some big names.”

So here comes “Dateline NBC,” to run in the very attractive time period of 10 p.m. Tuesday, to be hosted by the very attractive Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips (a former correspondent from “20/20”), with a roaming bunch of, yes, attractive correspondents, including Persian Gulf pinup Arthur Kent and investigative ace Brian Ross. All answering to a man who comes from a successful show at another network.

“We’re betting on an all-star cast behind as well as in front of the camera,” says Littlefield. “We had to go outside to do our drafting and we just haven’t had that kind of force before.”

The force of which Littlefield speaks is Jeff Diamond, formerly the No. 2 man at “20/20.” NBC executives make much ado about his hiring and the fact that they wooed him for a year and a half (though before he accepted, Cathy Lasiewicz, now executive producer of “Street Stories” and formerly No. 2 at “48 Hours,” was offered the job and turned it down).

Diamond, who has a solid reputation as an organizer and overseer, says he took the job both because of the crowded conditions at ABC and because he was finally convinced that NBC wants to make it in the magazine business.

“I had been at ABC 19 years,” says Diamond, a bearded, studious type, “and was one of many executive-producers-in-waiting. So I needed a change and this was a real opportunity. But it wasn’t until I felt NBC was dead serious about this magazine that I said yes.”

That included garnering the 10 p.m. Tuesday slot, when adult audiences are most likely to want such fare, and, most importantly, a 52-week commitment from the network.

Jane Pauley feels the fact that Diamond and David Rummel, a producer from “60 Minutes,” came over proves things might be changing at NBC. “We keep attracting outside talent,” she says, “and there was a time you couldn’t do that here.”

Pauley’s last experience with NBC was such an odd and still slightly bitter one that she is handling all the “Dateline” euphoria with understandable caution. In the summer of 1990, coming off a nationwide love affair resulting from her being shoved off the “Today” show in favor of the younger Deborah Norville, Pauley helped design, and anchored, a series called “Real Life With Jane Pauley.” It was a solid success in five test outings at 10 p.m., then went off to gear up for a January, 1991, return.

The next thing Pauley and her executive producer, David Browning, knew was that they were being reduced to half an hour, paired with a tabloid-investigative show called “Expose” and scheduled at 8 p.m. Sundays opposite “Murder, She Wrote” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

“I certainly made a case against all that happening,” says Pauley. “But I didn’t go to the mat on it. I guess I was just grateful to be back on the schedule at all. But I knew it couldn’t work in the time periods when all the people it was for were putting their kids to bed . . . including me. And the competition was fierce. Even my own sister called to say, ‘Gee, you know “Murder, She Wrote” is my favorite show.’ I knew my luck had changed.”

There are some NBC insiders convinced that the network powers who flubbed the Jane-Deborah affair at “Today” didn’t want to see her succeed in her own series. “It was also sort of a boy-girl thing,” says one. “They liked the macho, promotable aspects of “Expose,” and “Real Life” just seemed so touchy-feely next to it.”

“We were frankly astonished,” says Browning (who left the network last June after being told that “Nightly News” Executive Producer Steve Friedman was coming in to oversee and “fine-tune” “Real Life”). “It’s very difficult to pace a half-hour show, and pairing it was to Jane’s disadvantage since “Expose” had all the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”

NBC’s Littlefield is clearly uncomfortable talking about the death of “Real Life.” “Yes, there was a successful launch in the summer, but the competition was soft,” he says. “It was a decision made between the news and entertainment divisions, though I had the ultimate say. What became very clear was that the prime-time audience loved Jane Pauley, but the research for that particular vehicle wasn’t trending upward.”

“Real Life” and “Expose” were yanked suddenly last fall, at which time Pauley was promised a full hour in March. Diamond was hired and, for the last five months, “Dateline NBC” has been in the making.

Friedman insists that he is only the liaison between the executive producer and the honchos of a network he knows far better than Diamond. “I have a day job (producing “Nightly News”) so I’m really mostly a buffer for Jeff,” Friedman says. “Anyway, I don’t want this show to be a referendum on me.”

Aside from guiding the “Today” show through some of its golden years, Friedman has masterminded two of the most resounding flops in TV news annals: “Summer Sunday, USA,” one of NBC’s earlier, short-lived magazine efforts, with Linda Ellerbee and Andrea Mitchell, and the syndicated “USA Today,” which cost $40 million to launch in 1988 and lasted little more than a year.

“Do I have a good record in news magazines?” he responds defensively. “It depends how you define magazine. I view ‘Today’ as a magazine show. I view ‘Nightly News’ as having magazine-like pieces. So I’d say yeah, I do.”

Friedman is the first, however, to admit that NBC has not had a clue how to put together a successful news magazine. “The reason it hasn’t worked in the past is there’s been no system. So I said, ‘Who’s the best systems person?’: Jeff Diamond.

“If you can do it right, we’ve done it right this time,” he says. “We hired people who know how to do this and married them to the creativity already here. Mostly, we have the commitment. The other networks have succeeded partially because their leaders have let their magazines stay on until they got it right.”

There are still skeptics, and reasons to be skeptical. A few weeks ago, NBC did a presentation for its affiliates for “Dateline,” but some were surprised that News President Michael Gartner was nowhere to be seen--unusual at a time when family stations could use the reassurance that 16 is, in fact, their lucky number.

Gartner’s predecessors at NBC also have some healthy skepticism, based on their own experiences. Reuven Frank, who was president of NBC News twice (from 1968-1973, then from 1982-84) even takes issue with the notion that NBC has never done a magazine right.

“We had ‘First Tuesday,’ with Roger Mudd and Connie Chung, on for about a year and a half,” he says, “and it was doing pretty well until the money people killed it. The network didn’t have enough movies so they asked me to fill a couple hours a month and the show saved their ass. But when they got enough movies, they killed us.

“Then I started ‘Weekend’ on Saturdays at 11:30 (p.m., once a month) and that lasted four years until NBC got pressure from the affiliates to move it to Fridays on prime time. I said, ‘But that’s not what the show is,’ and they said, ‘So change the name.’ NBC just eats its young.”

During Larry Grossman’s years as NBC News president (he preceded Gartner), his particular problem with getting magazines on the air was that the network simply didn’t need the help. “NBC at that time was far and away the No. 1 network, so the threshold of success was much higher for us,” he says. “GE came in and just couldn’t understand why we didn’t do all entertainment. The irony is that logic says when you’re doing so well, you can take some risks and maybe do some good, but that wasn’t how NBC chose to go and now they’re playing catch-up.”

Not only is NBC playing catch-up with “Dateline,” it’s also blatantly playing copycat. The format is much like what you see on “20/20,” “PrimeTime Live” and even “60 Minutes.” There will be the proverbial troika of 12-to-15-minute pieces (one issue-oriented, one entertainment-related, one coping- or crime-related), followed by some sort of show closing. “I want it to be eclectic,” says Diamond. “And because we’re on early in the week, we have the chance to be more topical. So it may look like other shows, but what people will get are the tastes and interests of the people on the show.”

No one questions Diamond’s experience and organizing skills: He’s already banked up to 20 stories from which to create multifaceted shows, and he received shocked stares from understandably jaded staffers when he asked for things like pre-edit meetings and rough-cut viewings. But does he have the vision that NBC so sorely needs to overcome what many consider the network’s fatal dullness?

“A television magazine follows the same rules as a print magazine,” says Reuven Frank. “All successful ones began with one person’s vision, and I’m not sure NBC will be successful this time simply because it’s trying to do what the others do.”

Clearly, “Dateline” is counting on Pauley not only to give it some personality and to bring in viewers, but also to get the occasional big-story hit, a la Sawyer, Walters and Chung. “We have some advantage starting out in that I’m not Jane Doe,” says Pauley. “On the other hand, it is not my style to be offensively aggressive, which for a journalist can be a real character flaw.

“But I’m hoping my strength will be that people will say, ‘I like Pauley’s style. She made her case and now she’s letting me make my decision in peace.’ This is a theory, mind you.”

Pauley and co-host Phillips are both collecting a group of pieces of their own and should do about 15 each a year. As a longtime “20/20” correspondent, Phillips--who says “this show is the riskiest thing in my career”--is at ease in the genre, while Pauley admits that traveling and doing long-form pieces is not necessarily her thing. “I wasn’t built for this, frankly,” she says. “I instinctively know what a good story is but what I’m learning from Stone is where to find the narrative.”

Pauley insists she’s not insulted that NBC felt she needed a male co-host to get a hit. “I work best when I’m comfortable,” she says, “and I’m most comfortable as a team player.” Friedman also denies that NBC has lost faith in Pauley or wants to see her fail: “I think Jane does best when she has someone to respond to.”

Still, no magazine succeeds on the strengths of its anchors alone. “NBC has had talented people before and it didn’t support them,” says Av Westin, one of the pioneers of the format, who is now executive producer of the syndicated “Inside Edition.” “You have to have the right mix and a lot of experience in doing a whole program.”

And while there seems to be what “48 Hours” Executive Producer Andrew Heyward calls an “appetite to lap up these programs as fast as they can be developed,” not just any will do.

“The audience has become so much more sophisticated,” says Westin, “and it won’t watch a magazine show unless it really grabs them and makes them care.”

NBC finally seems to care. That’s a start.