Can Games Carry Torch to NBC?

The Olympic Games have yet to begin, but NBC and the other networks are already wondering how much of an afterglow the Olympic torch will leave behind.

There’s virtually unanimous agreement that the Summer Olympics--which NBC will televise Friday through Aug. 4--will bring home the gold in terms of ratings. A question with longer-term significance involves whether the top-rated network will be able to parlay the audience it garners during that period into more viewers for NBC series come September.

Having paid $456 million for broadcast rights to the Games of Olympiad XXVI, NBC is hoping the event will not only provide returns on that investment this summer but also help keep its prime-time schedule on the victory platform.

Toward that end, get ready for a slickly produced barrage of on-air promos, using the Olympics to highlight new NBC shows as well as the shift of seven returning shows to different time periods.

NBC plans a two-stage campaign involving specially produced spots featuring “NewsRadio’s” Phil Hartman as President Clinton, with “Saturday Night Live’s” Norm MacDonald later joining him as Bob Dole.

The entertainment division has a total of five minutes nightly for on-air promotion--actually a bit less time than on an average night, according to John Miller, NBC executive vice president of advertising and promotion. “We have not overloaded on commercials and promotion,” he said.

To maximize the impact of those spots, NBC will move a number of its series--including “Mad About You,” “Wings” and “Caroline in the City”--to new time periods the week of Aug. 5, right after the Olympics end. Those shows will continue in repeats until mid-September except for “Boston Common,” which will feature original episodes during that stretch.

Beyond the time-period changes, NBC will heavily promote “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” (which the network picked up from ABC) and its three new Saturday night dramas. As an added bonus, one of those shows, “Dark Skies,” possesses an aliens-among-us theme, so in hyping that series, NBC will try to capitalize on the box-office hoopla surrounding the movie “Independence Day.”

The other networks acknowledge that there’s really no way to effectively counter-program the Olympics with a lineup of summer repeats. “The strategy is to duck,” joked Alan Sternfeld, senior vice president of program planning and scheduling at ABC. “The Olympics are a bona fide event.”

ABC will repeat the Stephen King miniseries “The Tommyknockers” July 21 and 22 and air a number of movies, including the network premiere of “Bonfire of the Vanities.” CBS will bookend the Games with “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and its sequel, in between airing movies and burning off episodes of canceled series.

Fox has also added a second movie night and (also piggybacking on “Independence Day,” which the studio released) scheduled a number of science-fiction theme projects, including reruns of “Alien Nation” movies and the special “Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?”--under a monthlong “The Aliens Have Landed” theme.

Officials at the other networks concede that the Games will provide NBC some advantage in showcasing its new programs.

“It can’t hurt to have all that promotion, because it’ll build awareness,” said Kelly Kahl, vice president of scheduling at CBS. “That’s something that’s tougher and tougher to get these days.”

Yet history has also shown that many viewers who watch major sports events can’t be induced to return for series. “You’re reaching a lot of people, but a fair number of them are not regular prime-time series viewers,” Sternfeld said.

The same holds true with other sports. Pro football, for example, delivers strong ratings on a weekly basis, but NBC and more recently Fox have discovered that it hasn’t helped in trying to launch new shows on Sunday night.

The networks have also offered a number of new shows after the Super Bowl in recent years, yielding a list of soon-forgotten series that includes “Davis Rules,” “Grand Slam,” “Extreme” and “The Good Life.”

The last time NBC televised the Summer Olympics, in 1992, was followed by a disastrous third-place finish for the network during the 1992-93 season.

Miller doesn’t deny that promotion can only do so much. “This is a case of fishing where the fish are,” he said. “You know there are some people who come for the Olympics, then they go away, and you won’t get them [back to watch series].”

Still, NBC officials note that the network heads into the coming year in a much stronger position than it was four years ago, with a powerhouse Thursday lineup that provides a promotional vehicle of Olympian size every week.

As a result, NBC can target its efforts during the Olympics to certain shows, because a series like the new Brooke Shields comedy, “Suddenly Susan,” will get sampled by virtue of its Thursday night time period.

“When you have Brooke Shields, and [the show] follows ‘Seinfeld’ and precedes ‘ER,’ I’m thinking she has a pretty good time slot as it is,” Miller said. “I don’t think she needs a lot of help from us.”

The challenge for NBC will be to maintain the momentum. Although viewing levels promise to surge during the Olympics, the broadcast networks could drop to historic lows in August when they cover the Democratic and Republican political conventions. The WB Network has already said it will preview its new shows during the Democratic convention, which runs from Aug. 26 to 29, to capitalize on that opportunity.

Because of that six-week lapse after the Olympics, ABC’s Sternfeld believes that the other networks can even the playing field a bit before the 1996-97 season gets underway.

“If there’s any residual benefit by October [two weeks after the season begins], I’ll be surprised,” he said.