Word: minis
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...Reporter-Researcher Peter Ainslie, who interviewed network, cable and advertising executives. "Network television faces threatening competition," Ainslie concludes, "but few people I talked to expect it to shrivel up and disappear." On the contrary, says Senior Writer Gerald Clarke, a frequent television reviewer, who wrote the main story: "The mini-series is what television should be producing, and despite its flaws, The Winds of War is absorbing, serious entertainment...
...school study guides, a film documentary, TV and radio spots, and newspaper and magazine ads-well over a billion "impressions" in all. If these projections are accurate, then doubtless you already have the word: on Sunday, at 8 p.m. E.S.T., ABC will begin broadcasting the most expensive, most spectacular mini-series ever made, a $40 million, 18-hr, adaptation of Herman Wouk's 1971 novel, The Winds...
...will have been hooked to push the ratings close to-or, who knows, even past-those of the champion miniseries, Roots. "I think it will be the highest-rated program of the season," predicts George Keramidas, ABC's vice president of TV research, "and among the highest-rated mini-series of all time...
...Dallas or Magnum, P.I. on CBS, or Hill Street Blues on NBC? That they may (dire thought) turn to cable or flip on a video game? Or just decide to read Jane Austen? Of course it is. The bottom of the rating charts is Uttered with such failed mini-series as King, The French Atlantic Affair, MacArthur and Beggarman Thief. "Obviously The Winds of War is a high risk," says ABC President Fred Pierce. "But most things that lead to success are risky...
Meanwhile, network programmers are failing to produce any new blockbuster series. A mini-series like The Winds of War may earn ratings and prestige, but it has a fatal flaw as a piece of merchandise: it cannot be duplicated ad infinitum. The megabit series remains the most efficient kind of money machine, generating huge profits for the network in its initial run and even larger sums for the show's producer when it is later syndicated to local stations: All in the Family stands to bring in about $100 million in syndication fees. This season, Dynasty (Dallas in Denver...