Networks Man Sweeps Battle Stations : Television: ‘ER’ has boosted NBC’s confidence, ABC is staying with its winning format and CBS is seeking other shows. But the bean-counters still seem to be in control.

Underdog NBC, pumped up by its new blockbuster “ER” and no longer an industry joke, is making a further bid for re-emergence with an aggressive lineup in the February ratings sweeps that begin next week.

Top-ranked ABC is pretty much standing pat, confident in its lineup of hits led by “Home Improvement.” And CBS, hoping that viewers will become more aware of its move of the slumping “Northern Exposure” from Mondays to Wednesdays--and will keep the series alive--is still desperately seeking other shows to attract younger viewers favored by advertisers.

The sweeps, which begin Thursday and run through March 1--one of four months during the year that help set ad rates--also indicate a growing network belief in figure skating as a major attraction. Last year, the rivalry between Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the Winter Olympics in Norway helped lift sagging CBS to its third consecutive victory in the season’s ratings.

On Feb. 11, ABC will offer “The U.S. Figure Skating Championships” as a two-hour prime-time entry. On Feb. 15, CBS will present a prime-time hour titled “The Nancy Kerrigan Special.” And on Feb. 18, NBC’s contribution is “AT&T; Presents Skates of Gold II,” another two-hour figure-skating program.

At least on paper, NBC looks to have the most eye-catching sweeps programming, much of it centered around its constantly expanding base of power on Thursday nights, led by “ER” and “Seinfeld.”

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The freshman medical drama “ER” not only was No. 1 in last week’s ratings, and not only pulled an astounding 38% of viewers--out of about 60% for all of the Big Three networks--but also is averaging the highest share of the audience per episode among all series, 31%, since the season began.

With only the new Dabney Coleman sitcom “Madman of the People” failing to satisfy NBC as part of the Thursday lineup, from which it has been removed, much of the sweeps interest will center around the network’s variations on that night throughout the commercially critical month.

On Thursday, for instance, NBC is sure to get off to a big sweeps lead, beginning with an hour special of “Mad About You” that flashes back to the start of the marriage of the principals (Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser) and guest-stars Lyle Lovett, followed by an hour of “Seinfeld” that recalls highlights of the show’s first 100 episodes, and then--of course--”ER.”

On Feb. 9, “Wings” will fill in for “Madman of the People,” and Jay Leno will be a guest on “Mad About You.” On Feb. 16, there’ll be two “Seinfeld” episodes, and “Mad About You” will find Carl Reiner reprising his role as the pompous producer Alan Brady of the old “Dick Van Dyke Show.” And on Feb. 23, there will be two episodes of yet another of the night’s hits, the sitcom “Friends,” which moves permanently into the post-”Seinfeld” slot.

NBC will also have two sweeps miniseries. One, “A Woman of Independent Means,” stars Sally Field, runs for six hours beginning Feb. 19 and deals with the life of a woman who inherits a fortune that allows her rare freedom. The other, a four-hour effort called “Op Center,” is a Tom Clancy thriller about elite government figures who advise the President, and starts Feb. 26.

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A major NBC sweeps highlight includes the two-hour Feb. 6 film “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story,” with Glenn Close starring in a true story of a high-ranking lesbian military officer discharged because of her sexual orientation. Barbra Streisand is one of the executive producers.

NBC expects major attention, as well, from the guest appearance of former “Cheers” headliner Ted Danson on the series spun off from his hit, “Frasier,” which stars Kelsey Grammer.

Over at CBS, there’ll be further study of the troubled condition of “Northern Exposure.” Star Rob Morrow leaves the series on the Feb. 8 episode. And the network will experiment with various combinations of programming leading into the series to give it a ratings boost.

The regular lineup now preceding “Northern Exposure” on Wednesdays is near dead in the ratings. CBS Entertainment President Peter Tortorici says he’s concerned about the ratings of two shows, “Hearts Afire” and “Love & War,” but, at this point anyway, he has hopes for the two new comedy entries, “Women of the House,” starring Delta Burke, and “Double Rush.”

With its obvious and longtime creative struggling, “Northern Exposure,” going into the sweeps, now will be put to a real and perhaps decisive test in February. In its first month after being moved to Wednesdays, it has been ground down. The first two episodes plummeted to 64th place and 62nd. Then last week it gave a glimmer of hope to fans when it moved up to 43rd, showed strength with younger viewers and tied “Law & Order” although trailing “PrimeTime Live.” But this week, with a repeat, it got crunched by the same two competing series.

Tortorici, defending his “Northern Exposure” switch--which saw the new medical series “Chicago Hope” taking its place on Mondays--says, “When you move a show like (“Northern Exposure”) to a night where you’re not strong, it takes time for the audience to find it.”

CBS and NBC are neck-and-neck behind ABC in the ratings. But CBS is last among all four networks, including Fox, in the competition for viewers 18 to 49 years old. Despite the dependency of “Northern Exposure” on this group, is CBS thinking of dumping the series?

“We’re trying to build a schedule,” says Tortorici. “One of our priorities was to rebuild Mondays, which was slipping.” CBS once had a top Monday lineup, anchored by “Murphy Brown” and “Northern Exposure.”

Adds Tortorici: “We’re in the second year of a two-year deal (with “Northern Exposure”), and we have been talking about renewal. I really want to see this show work. I’m emotionally bound to it. What it needs is what its signature has always been--good stories, a terrific sense of humor and capturing a sense of time and place in this modern Brigadoon that you really wish you could go to.”

CBS has some highlights of its own in the sweeps. On Feb. 5, it offers August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson,” with the cast including Charles Dutton and Alfre Woodward. Set in 1936, it involves “an ornately carved upright piano, which symbolizes the history” of a family. The Dutton character “wants to sell it to realize his life’s dream, to buy the Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves.”

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On Feb. 26, meanwhile, CBS also presents a four-hour miniseries, “Children of the Dust,” set in the 1880s and starring Sidney Poitier as a gunslinger who leads a group of former slaves to begin new lives in Oklahoma.

On Feb. 12, CBS also hauls out one of television’s favorite families when it presents “A Walton Wedding,” in which John-Boy (Richard Thomas) plans to get married. And on March 1, the network will also broadcast the Grammy Awards.

ABC also has a four-hour miniseries, “Texas Justice,” a murder tale that begins Feb. 12 and stars Peter Strauss, Heather Locklear and Dennis Franz. And Fox Broadcasting’s “Married . . . With Children” marks its 200th episode on Feb. 5.

Overall, it’s a pretty thin sweeps in terms of the super specials and gigantic miniseries of the past--”The Winds of War,” “War and Remembrance,” “Lonesome Dove” and the rest. The days of lavish spending are far fewer, and the trick for the new breed of programmers is to make regular series somehow look more special. It’s a bean-counter’s sweeps.