Networks Delay TV Season Premieres as News Dominates

After being pushed back two weeks last year because of the Olympic Games, this fall’s official start of the prime-time television season--which was to have been this Monday--increasingly appears as if it will be delayed at least a week by coverage of the terrorist attacks that occurred Tuesday.

CBS and ABC followed NBC’s lead Thursday by announcing that all of their series premieres scheduled for next week will be delayed a week, with the exception of the CBS summer series “Big Brother 2,” which is scheduled to air its concluding episode Thursday.

The WB network also decided to postpone the premiere of its Friday night comedies, which were to debut tonight, and Fox delayed the prime-time serial “Pasadena” for logistical reasons, because the program--which is primarily being filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia--has had difficulty transporting actors and even film footage to and from Los Angeles.

Fox in particular will be affected by major league baseball’s decision Thursday to put off the start of the World Series, because the network is televising the baseball playoffs exclusively this year. Fox previously shared those rights with NBC.

Nielsen Media Research, the service that provides television ratings, has notified the networks that it will “assess the situation [in terms of when to begin the season’s ratings] once we are aware of your plans.”

Though normally fiercely competitive, network officials acknowledge that they have been in communication with one another about their scheduling plans and when the new season should get underway.

Hundreds of millions of dollars ride on the performance of new TV programs, and the networks have already lost considerable advertising revenue and other money.

Advertisers buy network time in advance. When prearranged media buys are preempted by uninterrupted news coverage, networks and advertisers typically negotiate so-called make-goods, wherein networks give back future air time to those advertisers.

“We don’t even know what [the rescheduling] costs. It’s not a consideration,” said ABC Entertainment Television Group Co-Chairman Lloyd Braun late Wednesday.

Sandy Grushow, chairman of the Fox Television Entertainment Group, said: “The situation is fluid. We’re taking it hour by hour, day by day.”

Grushow has been in New York this week, unable to return to Los Angeles, making scheduling decisions that have included pulling three movies --”The X-Files,” which features a terrorist explosion; “Independence Day”; and a made-for-TV thriller titled “The Rats”--all deemed inappropriate in light of Tuesday’s events.

“I was walking down Fifth Avenue [Wednesday] morning, and there was a file of military vehicles,” Grushow said. “It was a scene right out of ‘Independence Day,’ and I was on my way to the office to instruct the network to pull that movie from the schedule. It was a surreal moment.”

*

Times staff writer Corie Brown contributed to this story.