COVER STORY : AT THE CENTER OF THE DOLE FIRESTORM

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) got plenty of attention when he scolded Hollywood about sex and violence in movies, TV and pop music. But, as The Times reports today (see Page A1), Dole’s comments aren’t changing the face of show business. Yet. The creative and business powerbrokers will tell you they’ve always been thoughful about what they produce. Here, then, are some snapshots of life on the front lines:

GREGORY HOBLIT

TV producer

“I have a 3-year-old daughter, and I find myself thinking about what I want her to see, how to censor what she watches,” says veteran TV producer-director Gregory Hoblit.

Hoblit, 50, whose credits include “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” “NYPD Blue,” the TV movie “Roe vs. Wade” and the fall Richard Gere movie “Primal Fear,” says he finds himself “struggling with what the other side [potential censors] is talking about. I don’t share it, but I understand it.

“I’m against mindless violence as opposed to the kind that is real and true, where you understand the consequences.”

He thinks that the current state of American TV is “not very good”--typified, especially, he says by tabloid series, talk shows and local TV newscasts--but that the last few years have seen “a whole flurry of well-done, sophisticated comedies” as well as some outstanding new dramas such as “Homicide” and his own “NYPD Blue.”

Hoblit cites as among his own challenges the difficulties “NYPD Blue” has had with the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, a major conservative force in exerting pressure on sponsors, and the conflict with advertisers and pressure groups that tried to control the content of 1989’s “Roe vs. Wade,” which dealt with the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion.

The “Roe vs. Wade” controversy was “the ugliest, hardest journey I’ve ever had trying to make something,” Hoblit says. “We wound up under-advertised, we lost a ton of money, and the network never reran it. It indicates the power of the right-wing groups.”

Now, he says, a “[Newt] Gingrich-dominated Congress” might “impact on the presidency and the creative content you see on TV in the next half-dozen years.”