Networks Won’t Give You Much of a Break : Television: To combat trigger-happy remote holders, execs are cutting commercials between shows, dropping theme songs and shortening opening credits this season.

Imagine network television with no more commercials between prime-time shows. No more ditsy theme songs that rattle around in your head. No more long opening credits or closing credit crawls to sit through.

Well, stop imagining. As the fall season unfurls over the next few weeks, you’ll see many of these changes transpire.

The major broadcast networks are dramatically revising the way they present their TV programs, altering the face of broadcast television as it has been seen for decades.

NBC is going the furthest by completely eliminating TV commercials between programs during prime time, late night and Saturday mornings.

“We call it viewer-friendly formatting,” said John Miller, executive vice president of advertising, promotion and event programming for NBC.

*

The changes are a competitive response to cable television and TV remote controls. Network executives have come to believe that opening and closing credits, theme songs and station breaks are a “surf’s up!” signal for viewers with itchy trigger fingers to start channel surfing via remote control. And with 40 to 45 channels now on the average cable system, viewers can virtually ride an endless wave of TV programming.

Over the last several seasons, the networks have experimented with strategies to reduce channel grazing and improve the audience flow from one show to the next. But what has been the clever exception in the past is quickly turning into the rule. Everyone seems to have caught the fever since NBC’s “Frasier” achieved instant popularity last season--finishing as the No. 7 show on television--thanks in part to the seamless, commercial-free transitions from “Seinfeld.”

Here are some of the sweeping changes in store for the networks this fall.

*

ABC: Producers of new shows this season have been ordered not to use theme songs and to keep main-title sequences under 10 seconds.

ABC Entertainment President Ted Harbert calls theme songs “an antiquated practice” that gives the audience too much time to zap around with the remote.

“The first thing we ask producers to do is to begin programs with a tease, a prologue or a cold opening, so viewers with their thumbs on the remote control at the beginning of a program time period see program material as opposed to what a restless viewer would see as clutter,” said Alan Sternfeld, senior vice president of program planning and scheduling for ABC.

And series producers are being encouraged by ABC to devise creative end credits, sometimes known as “living” end credits. These involve bloopers, outtakes or a tag scene, with the credits running obliquely underneath--as shows such as “Home Improvement” and “Roseanne” already do.

“The point is that we’re trying to provide entertainment from beginning to end for viewers,” Sternfeld said.

ABC will employ seamless, commercial-free transitions between shows on a limited basis, mostly to introduce new series--including a smooth move from “Coach” into the new “Blue Skies,” from “Full House” into the new “Me and the Boys” and from “Thunder Alley” into the new “All-American Girl.”

*

CBS: Main title sequences are still being used at CBS, but only in certain cases.

“A show that is a premise show, a la ‘The Nanny,’ that’s what needs a main title,” said Steve Warner, senior vice president of program planning for CBS. He was referring to the high-concept sitcom starring Fran Drescher as a Queens native who becomes a nanny for a well-to-do WASPy family. “With the song and title you set up what the show is about in a fun, fast and refreshing way,” he said.

But CBS is cutting back on main title sequences in new shows. Two fall sitcoms, “The Five Mrs. Buchanans” and “Daddy’s Girls,” will do without them. When there are main titles or theme songs, they will almost always be preceded by program material.

“That’s one thing we’re trying to be consistent on--all shows open on program material before the first commercial,” Warner said. “That is the single biggest way to keep viewers hooked into the show. To do a seamless transition into the main title into the commercial gets you nothing.”

CBS feels the same way about seamless transitions that ABC does: They will be used primarily to introduce new series. Minute-by-minute network research has shown that during the commercial breaks between shows, the viewing level drops by as much as 25%. Going from one show straight into the next pulls viewers of an established hit into the opening of the next series, often before they realize it.

Both networks believe that established shows don’t need the push of a seamless transition, which can create problems with advertisers. There are typically four commercial breaks in a half-hour TV series. By eliminating those at the top and bottom of the hour, networks have to push more commercials into the remaining breaks, making them longer and potentially less effective in getting a sponsor’s message across.

*

NBC: Whether all these strategies are the future of broadcast television or just a passing fad will probably tell at NBC. Under a sweeping plan called “NBC 2000,” every prime-time, late-night and Saturday morning program will be linked together with seamless transitions beginning Sept. 19.

“According to our research, people are more disturbed by the number of commercial breaks than by the length of them,” said NBC’s Miller, adding that viewers are more likely to sit through advertisers’ commercials once they are engaged in a show.

At the end of every NBC movie, series and special, viewers will see their TV screen split in two. One-third of the screen will contain a silent credit crawl, while the other two-thirds will feature programming snippets, such as a tag scene after a sitcom or highlights from that night’s “Tonight Show.”

In fact, NBC has hired an entire staff of writers and producers to create a variety of short programming items to run alongside the credits of its shows. The bits include NBC trivia, backstage visits to NBC series and classic NBC moments. One such moment that will air is the first kiss between Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman on “I Dream of Jeannie.”

“If one guy does something and it seems to work, the others will naturally follow,” Miller said. “We’re trying to get a jump on the competition.”

*

Fox: The Fox network has used many of these techniques intermittently--cold show openings, seamless transitions, split-screen credit rolls--to set it apart from its established competitors. The youth-oriented Fox has pushed the envelope even further, at times, with zany theme weeks and hosted evenings.

Sandy Grushow, president of the Fox Entertainment Group, said his network is stepping up its use of cold openings and “living” credits by about 50% this fall, reflecting the activities of his competitors.

But Fox will only use seamless transitions to introduce new shows, such as it did Sunday night with “Hardball” and “Wild Oats.”

“In the absence of clear-cut evidence that, indeed, this is a successful procedure, we will go at it selectively, assessing and analyzing the results, before we thrust ourselves into it the way the others have,” Grushow said. “I do have some doubts about this procedure in the long run. If a show lacks the appeal of the show before it, over time you will see audience erosion--I don’t care what you do to stop it.”