Sweeps Stakes : The Networks Campaign for Viewer Loyalty

The biggest night of TV’s November ratings sweeps will come Tuesday after voters finally have cast their presidential ballots for Bill Clinton, George Bush or Ross Perot.

Politics have turned into TV’s best entertainment in the shootout for the White House. But the Nielsen sweeps period, which begins tonight and runs through Nov. 25, finds the networks trying to grab viewers’ attention with a number of high-powered events, including two highly anticipated miniseries: CBS’ “Sinatra,” about the life of singer Frank Sinatra, and ABC’s “The Jacksons: An American Dream,” about the pop-music family.

Particularly in a recessionary period, the sweeps stakes are high because the ratings help determine the price of commercials for TV stations.

With program content freer and more controversial than ever, politics has turned into fair game on various series. For example, on Sunday, the Fox sitcom “Roc,” which is broadcast live each week, will have the show’s family debating “the merits and faults” of Bush, Clinton and Perot, the network says.

Actually, Fox is trying to have it both ways. On election night, when ABC, CBS and NBC preempt regular shows for news coverage, Fox will counterprogram from 8 to 10 p.m. with the comedies “The Simpsons,” “Martin,” “In Living Color” and “Herman’s Head,” breaking away only each half hour for quick political updates.

NBC, however, will toss its hat into the ring in a major way on Sunday with a two-hour special, “Saturday Night Live’s Presidential Bash,” which will be hosted by Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman and will feature highlights from the series’ 17 years of political sketches and satire.

Politics aside, however, the networks are attempting other seemingly logical maneuvers--for example, capitalizing on the popularity of top daytime talk-show personalities by starring them at night.

The big event in this area will be NBC’s two-hour special “Donahue: The 25th Anniversary,” a Nov. 15 salute to Phil Donahue’s quarter-century in the TV talk field. His guests will include fellow TV gabbers Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Joan Rivers, Maury Povich and Jerry Springer.

Donahue, however, will be facing what appears to be formidable competition: “The Jacksons: An American Dream,” which ABC launches with a three-hour outing Nov. 15 and then winds up with two more hours on Nov. 18. The miniseries includes 38 songs but has other performers portraying the Jackson family and its rise to fame.

Nonetheless, the talk-show stars will be prominent during the sweeps:

Winfrey, in addition to her appearance with Donahue, also has an interview special on Wednesday that is scheduled to include Richard Gere, Jodie Foster, the Simpsons and Vanessa Williams. And on Nov. 9, Winfrey is also a guest on NBC’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” in an episode in which characters in the series appear on her talk show.

Rivera, meanwhile, will star Nov. 7 in back-to-back episodes of NBC’s “Empty Nest” and “Nurses.” It all starts when several of the characters in “Empty Nest” appear on Rivera’s talk show (is this starting to sound familiar?), which then ends in a dispute that sends Rivera to the hospital--on “Nurses,” of course.

There are other attempts to juice up the programming of weekly series during the sweeps. On the Nov. 12 episode of “The Simpsons,” for instance, Bart falls in love with a 15-year-old tomboy named Laura who moves in next door. According to Fox, Bart “attempts to woo her when she comes over to baby-sit.”

Over on CBS’ “The Golden Palace,” meanwhile, Bea Arthur guest-stars in a two-parter starting Friday in which she visits her former housemates from “The Golden Girls.” And on Nov. 9, “Murphy Brown” finally names the new baby born to its title character in that surrealistic flap over single motherhood that included criticism of the show by Vice President Dan Quayle.

On a much more serious and poignant note, CBS’ “Love & War” is planning a Nov. 16 episode that pays tribute to the late actor John Hancock, who portrayed bartender Ike Johnson on the new series. He died of a heart attack earlier this month.

Going into the sweeps, “Sinatra,” which airs Nov. 8 and 10 with Philip Casnoff in the title role, and “The Jacksons: An American Dream” are being offered by their networks as the entertainment centerpieces of the critical ratings period.

Like “The Jacksons,” which features Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and Angela Bassett as the parents of the musical clan, “Sinatra” is also five hours in length. The singer’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, is the executive producer.

In a sense, and despite some of the big productions, the November sweeps look frugal and conservative overall as the hard-pressed major networks tighten their belts even more because of the recession.

Yes, NBC has a miniseries too, the four-hour “Deadly Matrimony” Nov. 22 and 23, with Brian Dennehy, Treat Williams and Susan Ruttan in a tale of murder and a corrupt lawyer.

Yes, there are the motion pictures, among them “Beaches” on CBS Saturday and “Pretty Woman” on ABC Sunday.

Yes, there are some other specials such as “TV’s Funniest Commercials” on ABC Wednesday.

And yes, there is the usual lineup of crime-oriented TV movies, all primed and ready to go.

But what is highly noticeable is the networks’ attempt to make do as much as possible within the framework of their regular series--spicing the weekly fare in an attempt to build their bread-and-butter shows, but also cutting excess expenses.

As further examples of this, Joel Grey visits CBS’ “Brooklyn Bridge” Nov. 14 as a cousin from Poland; weight-meister Richard Simmons turns up on CBS’ “Evening Shade” Nov. 9 in an episode involving the rotund regular character played by Charles Durning; and rapper Hammer is a guest Saturday on NBC’s “Out All Night.”

And more: NBC’s “I’ll Fly Away” deals with civil rights activists Nov. 6; Bob Newhart’s CBS show, “Bob,” has a Nov. 6 outing with Tom Poston, Dick Martin, Steve Lawrence and Bill Daily as guests; and football greats Johnny Unitas, Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith appear on ABC’s “Coach” Nov. 10.

Election nights and miniseries come and go, but series pay the bills.