Television: Fresh Crews over Sixth Avenue

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ABC continues to score in the network dogfight

In most businesses success or failure is measured in years. In TV the message can be delivered overnight—and almost certainly within the first month or two of a new season. Last week, just five weeks into the fall season, CBS gave its own unhappy assessment: TV's new year has brought it disaster. CBS—until last year the undisputed leader for two decades-was in third place in the ratings, miles behind ABC and irritating inches behind NBC.

Then, following a ritual as intricate as an Aztec sacrificial rite —and only slightly less colorful —CBS Chairman William Paley met with his top aides. At "Black Rock," CBS'S somber, granite headquarters on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, the troops were told to expect an announcement of executive changes at 3:30 p.m. At 3:30 they were told to wait until 4 —coincidentally when the stock market closed and it would be too late for investors to be react.

Small wonder. The changes turned out to be more extensive than anyone could have guessed: CBS not only moved most of its top broadcasting executives, it also realigned its corporate structure. In doing so, it copied stitch for stitch the winning pattern of ABC, which separates responsibility for programming, sports and business operations among three men, rather than consolidating it in the hands of one man, as CBS had done in the past. Overseeing everyone will be Gene Jankowski, 43, the new president of the Broadcast Group and a protégé of CBS President John Backe. Robert Wuscome, 41, who had been network president, was boosted aside to become head of sports. James Rosenfield 57, a vice president for sales, was moved up to become top businessman. In the most important move, Robert Daly 40 who had handled programming and production on the West Coast, will now become chief programmer— CBS'S answer to ABC s Superprogrammer Fred Silverman.

Seconds after Daly's promotion was made public, Silverman looked out of his 38th -floor office in the ABC building to see Daly in the CBS building across 53rd Street hopping up and down to catch his attention. "He jumped up on a window ledge'" says Silverman, a longtime friend "waved and made a V for victory sign with his fingers."

Victory is not likely to come soon for CBS or NBC. In the aerial dogfight above Sixth Avenue ABC will certainly have the edge for the rest of the 1977-78 season—and perhaps for the rest of the decade as well. "The ABC powerhouse has clearly established itself as the General Motors of the business," says Mike Dann a TV consultant who for seven years was CBS'S chief programmer. "It might develop that we'll have one General Motors and two American Motors."

ABC has seven of the top ten shows, including the first three: Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days and Charlie's Angels. It also has 13 of the leading 20. Soap the silly sex opera that drew criticism from moralists even before it went on the air is No. 8. CBS, by contrast, has only three in the first ten and five in the top 20. Worse, the new shows it had Counted on to help lift its ratings-Lou Grant and the Betty White Show—have failed by the usual yardsticks.