Sweeps’ Heavy-Hitters: King of Pop and ‘Queen’ : Television: The key to February’s ratings race just may hinge on a 90-minute interview with Michael Jackson and a miniseries based on a story by the late Alex Haley.

A 90-minute ABC interview with Michael Jackson and a CBS miniseries from the late Alex Haley, “Queen,” may be the keys to TV’s February Nielsen ratings sweeps that begin tonight.

NBC, which on Wednesday suddenly named a new entertainment chief, veteran producer Don Ohlmeyer, because of its poor ratings and overall program problems, has the least impressive sweeps schedule on paper. NBC’s shelf is so bare of hits that it is running two episodes of its top show, “Cheers,” each Thursday throughout the sweeps--a repeat at 8 p.m. and an original broadcast at 9 p.m.

Ohlmeyer, in the newly created post of NBC West Coast president, will now be the boss of the network’s current entertainment president, Warren Littlefield, who retains his title but essentially was demoted.

Jackson and his family have been huge ratings attractions this season. “The Jacksons: An American Dream,” a miniseries about the pop music clan, helped ABC win the November sweeps impressively. Last Sunday, the self-named King of Pop’s NBC halftime show at the Super Bowl drew an enormous audience. And when his prime-time ABC interview with Oprah Winfrey airs on Wednesday, he’s expected to score big again.

Top-rated CBS, meanwhile, is depending heavily on “Queen,” a six-hour entry that is set for Feb. 14, 16 and 18. Written by David Stevens from a story by Haley, “Queen” is a kind of companion piece to the late author’s most famous creation, “Roots,” a TV landmark.

Described by CBS as dealing with “the origins and life of Alex Haley’s paternal grandmother, the daughter of a slave and a white Civil War colonel,” the miniseries has an all-star cast that includes Ann-Margret, Jasmine Guy, Tim Daly, Danny Glover, Martin Sheen, Ossie Davis and Halle Berry, in the title role.

CBS is also depending on another drama with strong roots--”Skylark,” a two-hour film that will be broadcast Sunday and stars Glenn Close in a sequel to “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” the highest-rated TV movie of the 1990-91 season. “Skylark” continues the tale of a woman who left New England to care for two frontier children and eventually married their father (Christopher Walken).

Bottom-ranked NBC doesn’t seem to have as much firepower as its competitors, but the network hopes to get a boost from such shows as its much-praised new series, “Homicide: Life on the Street”--which debuted after the Super Bowl--and a 25th-anniversary salute to “Laugh-In,” which will be broadcast Sunday.

Fox Broadcasting, the fourth network, is wisely airing its two new, well-received series, “Class of ‘96” and “Key West,” every Tuesday of the sweeps as it bids to establish its sixth night of regular weekly programming.

The sweeps, which run through March 3 and help establish the price of commercials for local stations, will also be highlighted by President Clinton’s State of the Union address on Feb. 17. Clinton’s TV smarts, the occasion of the address itself and the presentation during a month of high viewing should add to the natural drama of the event.

As usual, the sweeps will find viewers cussing out the networks for forcing them to choose between attractive head-to-head program matchups, or videotape what they can’t watch. The zeniths of this frenzied competition will be reached on several days during the next few weeks.

The first big blowout occurs Sunday when CBS’ “Skylark,” NBC’s “Laugh-In” special and an ABC movie, “Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland”--about the devastating 1991 blaze--square off against each other.

On Wednesday--the night of Jackson’s 9:30-11 p.m. interview--the networks engage in another dogfight. CBS will try to win over viewers from the get-go, offering “The Andy Griffith Show Reunion” as a lure at 8 p.m. and following with “In the Heat of the Night” and “48 Hours.” ABC, in the meantime, will try to blunt all competition by using two episodes of the red-hot sitcom “Home Improvement” to protect and lead into Jackson.

Against this rough Wednesday competition, NBC is standing by its formidable winner, “Unsolved Mysteries,” followed by the two impressive dramas “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order.” If “Homicide” can hold its own against “Home Improvement,” Jackson and “In the Heat of the Night,” NBC will know it has a show with muscle as well as critical appeal.

Yet another major gloves-off matchup arrives Feb. 14 with the debut of “Queen,” which could make or break the sweeps for CBS. Against the launching of “Queen,” ABC will throw the Warren Beatty-Madonna motion picture “Dick Tracy,” trying to blunt the Haley miniseries. And NBC will weigh in with “Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie,” a two-hour collection of real-life footage of the two comedy stars.

Three TV movies--all based on memorable news events--will be of particular interest to California viewers during the sweeps. In addition to ABC’s “Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland,” NBC will air the Feb. 22 film “Miracle on I-880,” about a freeway collapse during the 1989 Northern California quake. And on March 1, ABC offers “They’ve Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping,” about the 1976 abduction of a busload of youngsters who were imprisoned underground in a rock quarry but eventually escaped.

The personalities of the two leading networks, CBS and ABC, come clearly into focus during this sweeps.

Although ABC will present “Driving Miss Daisy” on Feb. 21, it is the network’s rock-’em-sock-’em sitcoms plus its gut-level TV-movie topics that define its hard-hitting style. On Monday, for instance, another ABC film, “Gregory K,” deals with the 12-year-old boy in Florida who recently won a landmark suit to terminate his parents’ rights so he could be adopted.

While CBS also has its share of exploitation-minded shows, it has a wider-ranging, somewhat gentler, grass-roots program style. Besides the soft-edged “Northern Exposure,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” CBS’ sweeps entries include not only “Skylark” and the Griffith reunion but the Grammy Awards Feb. 24, the Miss USA Pageant Feb. 19 and the Western “Rio Diablo” Feb. 28, with Kenny Rogers, Travis Tritt, Naomi Judd and Stacy Keach.

February sweeps, 1993: Jackson, “Queen” and Clinton.