Video: Battling Back From No. 3

ABC's popular nighttime soap opera, Dynasty, ended last week's episode with typical edge-of-the-seat melodrama. In a scuffle aboard a private plane, Blake Carrington and Daniel Reece (John Forsythe and Rock Hudson) accidentally knocked the pilot unconscious, sending their craft hurtling toward the ; mountains below. Their fate, in the manner of TV cliffhangers, rested in the hands of the network.

And vice versa. After years of churning out hits, ABC now finds its prime- time fortunes largely dependent on just one show, the long-running, top- rated saga of the Carrington clan. In addition to Dynasty, ABC has only one other prime-time program in the Nielsen top ten this season, Hotel, a fluffy comedy- drama that has the good fortune to occupy the time slot immediately following Dy- nasty. Disappointing performances from most of its other series dropped ABC to last place in the prime-time ratings this season, its lowest finish in ten years. Problems mounted elsewhere as well. ABC's daytime schedule slipped out of first place last year for the first time since 1978. And the network's evening newscast, which a few years ago was closing in on No. 1-ranked CBS, has fallen behind NBC in recent weeks, to third place.

Yet the network that is being acquired by Capital Cities Communications is hardly in dire straits. Since the mid-1970s, when it vaulted from last to first in the prime-time ratings, ABC has proved to be a skilled and tenacious competitor. "I think their problems have been overstated," says Fred Silverman, who ran the network's programming department during its boom years of the 1970s. "My guess is that ABC's performance at this point is a temporary blip. You'll see them bounce back."

If they do, it will be the result of hard, uphill work. Even at the height of its success, ABC never quite overcame its image as the upstart of TV's network fraternity. CBS, with its distinguished legacy of William Paley, Edward R. Murrow and Playhouse 90, has always embodied broadcasting's old- school elite. NBC, originator of the Today and Tonight shows and numerous other firsts, is a respected, if sometimes stodgy, TV pioneer. ABC, by contrast, is the brash outsider, by turns more innovative and more shrewdly commercial than either of its rivals.

The image comes from years as TV's best-known underdog. The American Broadcasting Co. was created in 1943 when the FCC forced the National Broadcasting Co. to give up one of its two radio networks (NBC kept the so- called Red Network; its Blue Network became ABC). Ten years later, ABC merged with United Paramount Theaters, whose chief executive, Leonard Goldenson, became president of the new company and its guiding spirit.