For ABC, Its Present Doesn’t Include Its ‘Roots’

How oddly sad that ABC’s Andrea Wong passed on airing a 25th-anniversary salute to “Roots” (“ABC Won’t Revisit Its ‘Roots,”’ by Greg Braxton and Dana Calvo, Aug. 18). Sadder still that a rival network (NBC) will end up showing the documentary.

Perhaps Wong was too young at the time the original episodes aired in 1977 to grasp what it meant to all of us. It is one of the seminal moments in TV that many of us recall vividly to this day. It also gave many people in this country their first real look at the origins of slavery, the evils it contained and why--even to that day--America and its people so often struggled with the issues of race. Issues we still deal with today.

It also gave way to much dialogue about race, equality and our need to have a greater understanding of America’s past in order for it to have a better future.

ABC had a shot at paying homage to something that meant so much to so many and was a benchmark program for the network. The least they could have done was to honor that and keep the documentary on ABC.

And let’s dispense with this silly notion that the potential audience would be too old and too few. I’m 53 now--a very active baby boomer with lots of disposable income--and will anxiously await its airing on NBC.

PETER BIE

Santa Barbara

When I read that Andrea Wong, an ABC senior vice president, had passed on a 25th-anniversary “Roots” documentary because “people wouldn’t watch it,” my jaw hit the floor so hard the windows rattled! If she had been a white male, some might grumble racism. But since she is apparently a nonwhite female, the bleak truth is utterly apparent.

Wong is seemingly another MBA who lives and breathes focus groups and market research without any awareness of history. History, did I say?

She probably couldn’t tell Rosebud from a Scooby Snack! Someone better call Michael Eisner and warn him that Mickey is going to have egg on his face.

MICHAEL VARIEN DALY

Beverly Hills

It’s easy to guess why ABC said no to the “Roots” documentary. The networks avoid dealing seriously with race because most of their efforts to do so are dismal failures: narrow, predictable and preachy.

One notable exception was, of course, “Roots.”

Why not celebrate its 25th anniversary by the simple ceremony of airing it again?

MARTHA BAYLES

Claremont

Not to recognize “Roots” for the groundbreaking television it was and remains, and to pass on a special celebrating its 25th anniversary, doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s indicative of television programming today.

It also galls me that people still think ABC execs somehow didn’t know it would be watched or well received. “Roots” had one of the most extensive and successful pre-airing publicity campaigns in history.

I was a proud member of that PR department and, in all my meetings with David Wolper, Stan Margulies, Brandon Stoddard, Alex Haley and others, a negative word regarding its quality and potential success was never uttered.

These were men who knew what they wanted and, more important, knew when they had it. For a TV reference work to imply that they ran it eight straight nights to lessen the blow of failure is ridiculous.

LARRY FRANK

Sherman Oaks