CBS’ New Game Plan for Sunday

It was never written in stone that pro football was predestined to dominate network TV on Sunday afternoons.

In fact, it wasn’t always this way.

Some people actually don’t give a hoot about watching the NFL, especially when a game becomes a blowout or is meaningless--both of which happen often.

Still, Sunday pro football is a national television institution to many, and it’s pretty well tuned-in to boot.

Thus, it becomes fascinating to see how CBS, which was left holding the bag when Fox grabbed the games from the older network--effective this fall--intends to fill the gap.

At first glance--and maybe in total fact--the CBS plans look desperate, perhaps especially to those raised in a generation that doesn’t remember when things were different on TV’s Sunday afternoons.

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And make no mistake about it: CBS was hurt badly by the loss, would give just about anything to have the games back and will probably go to the mat to find another killer sports substitute for Sundays.

There’s even been talk about CBS backing and building up a new football league, which is how NBC got into the gridiron top tier, thanks in part to such earlier stars as Joe Namath.

CBS’ immediate plans are probably OK for a start, a first draft. Things, however, will be tough because, unlike the ‘50s and ‘60s when networks were the whole ballgame, there now are also 24-hour cable competitors ranging from American Movie Classics to MTV to CNN.

Still, CBS has to start somewhere. And its first plans for alternative shows to compete with pro football--significant decisions because the programs lead into prime time--are to present “Hallmark Entertainment” productions and “Harlequin Sunday Matinee Romance” movies, along with the “CBS Sports Figure Skating Challenge” and other sports, including tennis and golf.

CBS clearly hopes the tremendous audience interest in the recent Winter Olympics, hyped by the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan rivalry, has created a new, winning sports attraction in figure skating.

Overall, however, the planned CBS lineup is not likely to strike fear in the hearts of Fox executives or to halt other stations from defecting from the Big Three networks to make sure they can carry NFL games.

But, among other things, there’ll be a particular interest in how the CBS alternatives do in West Coast markets such as Los Angeles, where--because of the three-hour coast-to-coast time difference--pro football is usually well over before prime time starts and its lead-in importance is therefore minimized.

There will also be interest in just how much we--the audience--have changed in the last generation. Are we so hooked on TV sports that we’re no longer open to the kind of programming that once thrived--or at least survived and tried--on Sundays?

Oh, much of it was just ordinary or less, but some was spectacularly ambitious or at least relatively popular.

Competitively, Sunday afternoons--leading up to the 7 p.m. prime-time start--was never ratings heaven in the earlier years for the networks, which now are consumed with statistical performances that assure their existence and are reluctant to experiment, as once was the custom.

But Sunday afternoon did mean something else before football blew just about everything else away for nearly half a year and thus diminished its importance as a network programming daypart in the other months as well.

Old-time Sunday afternoon and early evening programming--before 7 p.m.--had a strong family thrust as well as venturing into news, the arts and plain old entertainment.

Did you know, for instance, that programs such as “Mr. Ed” and “Maverick” began just before prime time for a while? Do you remember that “60 Minutes” aired for a time in its earlier years from 6 to 7 p.m.?

A memorable series that began at 6:30 was NBC’s “Profiles in Courage,” a one-hour dramatic anthology based on President John F. Kennedy’s book. Yet another 6:30 show was ABC’s “Walt Disney Presents.”

Aside from long-running news programs such as “Meet the Press,” probably the most famous Sunday afternoon series was the legendary “Omnibus,” a collection of drama, music, documentaries and the arts in general, hosted by Alistair Cooke.

There were other Sunday afternoon entries that certainly had a definite presence, from the engaging quiz show “College Bowl” to Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” (it appeared elsewhere as well) to “Wild Kingdom,” “See It Now,” “You Are There,” “The Twentieth Century” and “NBC Experiment in Television,” a sometimes wondrous hour that offered one of the first serious dramas about the Watts area of Los Angeles.

New CBS Entertainment President Peter Tortorici, who, you can bet, would rather have the NFL games, now says hopefully: “A new and competitive daypart has been born on Sunday afternoons. There is a huge, underserved audience out there, including women and families.”

If the unending popularity of daytime soap operas rubs off, the “Harlequin” romance movies might have a shot. NBC has also made ratings hay by counter-programming sports events with Danielle Steel’s mushy, glitzy romance dramas.

And, for years, the networks have also counter-programmed ABC’s Monday night pro football games, in part, with female-oriented movies and comedies for people who don’t know the Raiders from the Redskins.

Will there be an audience for “Hallmark Entertainment”? Depends on the shows, of course. But back in TV’s early years, Hallmark--best known for its “Hall of Fame” specials--had a Sunday afternoon slot.

And in that same category, one of the historic broadcasts of early TV was NBC’s 1953 version of “Hamlet” with Maurice Evans, which was presented on a Sunday afternoon and helped break ground on the new medium for longer-form dramas.

The lineup of yesteryear’s Sunday afternoon and early evening shows that preceded prime time will strike many a chord in those who grew up with TV. There were “Victory at Sea,” “Wide Wide World,” “My Friend Flicka,” the “Original Amateur Hour,” “NBC Opera Theater,” “Hopalong Cassidy,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Mr. I. Magination,” “Juvenile Jury,” “Sky King,” “The Roy Rogers Show,” Ed Murrow’s “Small World” and Walter Winchell’s series as well.

Remember “Super Circus”? “Capt. Gallant of the Foreign Legion”? “Tales of the Texas Rangers”? The ambitious failure “The Seven Lively Arts”? The sitcom “McKeever and the Colonel”? And, for a while on Sunday afternoons, the “Bullwinkle” show and “The Jetsons”?

Are we ready to even give a chance to any entertainment CBS throws our way on Sunday afternoons? Or are we just more interested now in watching somebody--anybody--throw a pass?