It’s the Battle of the TV Newsmagazines

TV or not TV. . . .

DATA BASE: By midway into the new television season, roughly one-tenth of the series in network prime-time may be newsmagazines.

Going into the fall season, nine of the 100 series on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox will be hourlong magazines: “60 Minutes,” “20/20,” “48 Hours,” “PrimeTime Live,” “Day One,” “Eye to Eye With Connie Chung,” “Dateline NBC,” “Front Page” and “Now,” which arrives Aug. 18 with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric.

Assuming all of these entries remain on the air, the number will increase to at least 10 by early 1994 when ABC plans to go weekly with another news hour, “Turning Point.”

“Turning Point,” which has been in development as “Moment of Crisis,” will have a sample outing next Tuesday.

The allure of newsmagazines to the networks continues to grow, not only because they are much less expensive to produce than entertainment series, but also because almost all of them are registering ratings that range from respectable to excellent. “Front Page” is the only network magazine now on the air that thus far is going nowhere as a ratings contender.

With entertainment shows heavily into reruns in the summer, the newsmagazines are doing exceptionally well in the weekly rankings and are giving the traditional networks--ABC, CBS and NBC--at least some form of fresh programming.

The lineup of prime-time newsmagazine anchors also includes high-profile names who are competitive with entertainment stars, among them: Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Jane Pauley, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Brokaw, Couric, Chung, Forrest Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl and Steve Kroft.

Ratings leader CBS has three magazines at present: “60 Minutes,” “48 Hours” and the Chung series. Second-ranked ABC, pressing for the lead, also has three--”20/20,” “PrimeTime Live” and “Day One”--and presumably will go to four when “Turning Point” arrives weekly.

Third-place NBC, a longtime loser in the newsmagazine field, will have two when “Now” joins “Dateline NBC.” And Fox has one, the recently launched “Front Page,” whose best-known reporter is Ron Reagan.

HEAD START: August, usually television’s slowest month, has some action this year that will serve as a prelude to the 1993-94 season.

Fox, which has previously scored in the ratings as a summer alternative to the Big Three networks, is introducing a trio of new series from its fall lineup--”My Girls” (Aug. 22), “The Sinbad Show” (Aug. 26) and “The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.”(Aug. 27).

Showtime, meanwhile, has an Aug. 1 launch date for its new, film noir-style anthology, “Fallen Angels,” produced by Sydney Pollack and featuring directing turns by Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Phil Joanou, Steven Soderbergh and Jonathan Kaplan.

Hanks, for instance, is the director of the Aug. 15 outing, “I’ll Be Waiting,” and also does a cameo in the tale of a hotel detective (Bruno Kirby) “whose emotional involvement with a sexy guest (Marg Helgenberger) has tragic consequences.”

The biggest TV happening of the month, of course, figures to be David Letterman’s Aug. 30 debut on CBS after his long goodby to NBC.

And, if plans work out as scheduled, NBC expects to have its own Aug. 30 happening--the debut of Conan O’Brien in the slot vacated by Letterman.

OUT OF THE PAST: Too bad there’s no category for best rerun in the Emmy nominations that will be announced Thursday. The winner, in a breeze, would be those daily back-to-back repeats of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 10-11 p.m. on the Nick at Nite channel. They simply blow away almost everything else on the television screen and are just plain timeless.

NIGHT WORK: We’ve seen the pilot of Valerie Bertinelli’s new, fall NBC sitcom, “Cafe Americain,” which is set in Paris. And let’s just say that the sudden new casting of Marion Ross (“Brooklyn Bridge”) as the cafe owner is--well, uh--a start.

SALUTE: TNT cable pays tribute to Stanley Kubrick on his 65th birthday Monday by showing several of his movies, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Dr. Strangelove” and an early film, “Killer’s Kiss.”

PAYOFF: HBO’s much-praised miniseries “Laurel Avenue”--an all-too-rare TV drama about contemporary black family life--registered solid ratings against the Big Three networks in homes that take the pay channel.

We’ll say again that if HBO doesn’t turn the tale into a continuing program, one of the commercial networks should try to grab it and produce it as a weekly serial. It’s rock-solid stuff.

MYSTERY: “Full House” keeps on hanging right up there in the weekly ratings, and I’m sure that some day I’ll meet somebody who watches it.

NEW LOOK: The casting of two women in key roles this fall in the male-dominated starring cast of NBC’s “Law & Order” was just a matter of time. The series, one of TV’s best, is clearly trying to broaden its viewer appeal--but it’s too bad that actor Richard Brooks, notable as an assistant district attorney, is being replaced in the process.

PACIFIC RIM: A nightly newscast in Cantonese is debuting this week on KSCI-TV Channel 18 at 6 p.m. The station already offers a newscast in Mandarin Chinese at 7 p.m.

BEING THERE: “There are a couple of loose ends I’d like to tie up. Nothing important, you understand.” --Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) in “Columbo.”

Say good night, Gracie. . . .