Word: minis
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TELEVISION'S role in this year's election has been much discussed. The significance of "sound bites" and "spin doctors" has equalled concerns over the deficit or defense or health care. Last week's fuss over the NBC mini-series Favorite Son pointed up the campaign's love/hate tempest with the pervasive boob tube. Now, it seems, politics is in dialogue not only with the network news shows but with primetime soap operas as well...
FAVORITE SON (NBC, Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1, 9 p.m. EST). A charismatic young Senator (Harry Hamlin) schemes for the vice-presidential nomination in a three-part mini-series, based not on Dan Quayle's life story but on a novel by ex-network executive Steve Sohmer...
...sipped our Millers, we eyed the tie, oxford and bomber jacket crowd. They stood in big groups--they had no choice, there were only three tables. Their heads nearly brushed the oars that hung on the low ceiling. Waiters clad in black mini--very mini--dresses fought through the mostly male crowd to take drink orders. The video game in the corner had been turned way down so its noises would not interfere with the classic hits...
Like all good TV dramas, this one starts with an exciting precredit sequence. The time is early 1979, and the network wars have reached a frenzied peak. Sitcoms like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley are riding high in the Nielsens. Blockbuster mini-series are vying to reproduce the huge audiences that tuned in for Roots. Star programmer Fred Silverman, the Man with the Golden Gut, is ready to try everything from Gary Coleman to Supertrain in his quest to lift NBC out of the prime-time ratings cellar...
Blockbuster mini-series too have slipped badly in the ratings since the days of Roots and The Winds of War. Because of their high production costs and poor performance in reruns, they are rarely profitable. ABC's 30-hour version of War and Remembrance (the first 18 hours of which will be telecast in November) could lose up to $20 million for the network, ABC executives say, even if it does well in the ratings. These elephantine projects are probably doomed to extinction...