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...Fred Pierce, the aggressive former vice president of TV planning and development who had become president of ABC Television in 1974, engineered a stunning turnaround. His first major move was to hire Silverman away from CBS to head ABC's programming department. Under the guidance of Silverman, "the man with the golden gut," ABC began turning out a rapid parade of hits. Many of them were raucous, youth-oriented comedies (Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley); others exploited buxom blonds and sexual humor ( (Three's Company, Charlie's Angels); still others were sentimental puffballs from Producer Aaron Spelling (Love Boat, Fantasy Island...
Such assessments, aside from being self-serving, ignored the network's serious contributions. In January 1977, ABC telecast Roots, a twelve-hour multigenerational saga about American slaves that ran for eight consecutive nights. The scheduling tactic was unprecedented, the results staggering. Roots drew the largest audience of any entertainment program in history and helped make the mini-series form a prime-time staple. Since then, ABC has produced its share of ambitious dramatic fare, from the 18-hour The Winds of War to The Day After, the controversial film about the impact of nuclear war on a small town...
...ABC's successes in the late '70s were not limited to prime time. The network's soap operas (General Hospital, All My Children, One Life to Live) made it No. 1 in the daytime ratings by emphasizing younger characters, livelier story lines and more elaborate production values than its rivals on CBS and NBC. Good Morning America, which was launched in 1975 with an upbeat mix of news, features and talk, replaced NBC's then 29-year-old Today in 1980 as the early-morning pacesetter. In the same era, ABC's News division became a full-fledged rival...
...times for ABC came almost as suddenly as the good. After three years in first place, ABC dipped to second in the prime-time race during the 1979-80 season. This season everything seemed to go wrong. Despite ABC's aggressive on-the-air promotion of its new fall shows during last summer's Olympics coverage, not one of the newcomers became a hit. Older series like The Love Boat and Monday Night Football skidded badly. The network's only new mini- series of the season, Hollywood Wives, did not draw the blockbuster ratings many had expected...
...obviously stubbed our toe," says Pierce. "We had what we considered a slump season." Others claim they could sense a growing attitude of caution and complacency. Says Leonard Goldberg, co-creator of the profitable Charlie's Angels and executive producer of this season's dud, Paper Dolls: "What made ABC so successful was that its programming was new, exciting and progressive." Garry Marshall, the creator of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, agrees: "As I was leaving ABC to make films, the programming side was no longer selling innovativeness. The network was getting conservative...