The Heat Is On: ABC Drops Two Tabloid TV Specials : Unprecedented Network Moves Come Amid Sponsors’ Concern About Offending Viewers

ABC, which cited lack of advertising for quietly yanking a scheduled special on crimes of passion last Saturday, dropped another special on scandals Wednesday. The network’s moves left a co-producer of both shows stunned.

“I’m in a state of shock,” said Loreen Arbus, co-executive producer of both “Crimes of Passion 2” and “Scandals II.” The second show, hosted by Robert Culp, was scheduled to air Saturday at 10 p.m.--the same time at which “Crimes of Passion 2” was to have run last Saturday.

But now “Scandals II” is off the schedule too, said ABC spokesman Tom Mackin. Neither he nor other network officials would immediately provide an explanation for the decision.

ABC said earlier that it had dropped “Crimes of Passion 2” at the last minute because “there was no paid advertising” for it. One executive attributed advertiser reluctance to increased sensitivity to “programs of this nature.”

Senior advertising executives contacted Wednesday said they’d never before heard of a network pulling a show for lack of advertising--and several said ABC’s explanation didn’t ring true.

“I don’t think it would be totally true,” said Richard J. Kostrya, executive vice president at J. Walter Thompson USA. “I think the interpretation might be that no advertiser showed up willing to pay the price ABC wanted to sell at.

“I’m sure there were a few advertisers, but probably willing to pay so little that ABC said, ‘Let’s not air it.’ ”

“I think they yanked it because they didn’t like the show,” said Paul Schulman, a media buyer and president of Paul Schulman Co.

Both specials, sequels of similar shows that aired with commercials last fall, featured reenactments of real-life stories. “Scandals II” featured stories about director Peter Bogdanovich’s marriage to the younger sister of Dorothy Stratton and about people who pose as baby photographers and kidnap the subjects. “Crimes of Passion 2,” hosted by Bruce Dern, contained stories about a teen killing and a love affair between a stepmother and stepson.

Both programs were to have aired during the current ratings “sweeps” that are crucial to local stations in setting their advertising rates.

Some executives said that sponsors are particularly wary now because of protests by some groups and individuals who feel television has begun to go beyond the boundaries of good taste and decency.

One such group is Christian Leaders for Responsible Television, which is monitoring the three networks during the ratings sweeps this month, taking notes on both material that they consider offensive and the advertisers of those shows. A sponsor boycott may be launched in June, the group says.

In a phone interview Wednesday, the group’s executive director, Rev. Donald Wildmon, a fundamentalist minister in Tupelo, Miss., said his organization hadn’t made any specific complaints about “Crimes of Passion 2” but said there’s “no question that advertisers are more concerned now. . . . They know we have a monitoring period and they do not want to be identified with these programs. . . .”

Meanwhile, Terry Rakolta, the Michigan woman who captured attention recently with her letter-writing campaign to advertisers about Fox Broadcasting’s “Married . . . With Children,” announced in Washington Wednesday that she had formed an organization called Americans for Responsible Television. “Our emphasis . . . will be to promote private, voluntary efforts by the advertisers and the networks to raise the standards on network television,” she said.

Betsy Frank, a senior vice president at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, agreed that there is advertiser awareness of the monitoring program of Wildmon “and I think there’s no doubt that advertiser sensitivities are probably much higher than they’ve been in the past.”

But Schulman downplayed Wildmon’s influence, saying his company’s clients have guidelines for their show-sponsorship, and “we have not varied one iota from our guidelines, Rev. Wildmon or no.

“There are clients who are very concerned about environment”--the kinds of shows they sponsor--”and they would not have touched ‘Crimes of Passion’ with a 10-foot pole. But we also have other clients who would have been happy to get the ratings exposure in ‘Crimes of Passion’. . . .”

When interviewed Wednesday, producer Arbus, who is the daughter of former ABC chairman Leonard Goldenson, said ABC had not yet notified her that it won’t air “Scandals II” as scheduled on Saturday.

In a conference-call interview from Los Angeles, she and her co-executive producers of “Crimes of Passion II,” Imre Horvath and Helaine Swerdloff-Ross, said they were mystified why ABC dropped that show.

Arbus said that 18 national advertisers--among them American Airlines, Listerine, Burger King and Rolaids--sponsored the first “Crimes of Passion” last October and got no gripes from viewers.

Asked if she believed ABC’s statement that no sponsors could be found for the sequel, she replied, “I don’t know whether we believe that or not. I do know that there’s no reason that advertisers should not be in this at all.”

“The question I would ask,” Swerdloff-Ross said, “is whether we are going to return to 35 years ago, when the advertisers controlled this medium?” And, she asked, referring to the lack of advertisers ABC cited, “Is this (absence of advertisers) a form of censorship that no one is willing to acknowledge?”

If advertisers again take over the medium, she said, “we will end up with bland, bland television.”

Horvath, who said he was a “60 Minutes” producer from 1968 to 1979, called the “Crimes of Passion 2” show “high quality television,” one that ABC’s programs practices and legal departments had throughly checked and approved.

“We’ve had to answer more questions about fact that I ever had to in my career as a journalist on ’60 Minutes,’ ” he said.

A sampling of other Hollywood producers Wednesday turned up none who were outraged by advertisers’ reaction to “Crimes of Passion II”--and a few even applauded it.

“They (the producers of ‘Crimes’) made a show that nobody wanted to be associated with,” said Grant Tinker, the former NBC chairman who now is president of GTG Entertainment. “I think advertisers have a right to associate with programs they are comfortable with.”

Tinker said advertisers have grown more vigilant about program content recently--not because of pressure from Wildmon, but because they are aware that the networks have cut back the staffs of their standards and practices departments.

“Rev. Wildmon should go back into his pulpit and shut up,” Tinker said. “When I came to NBC in 1981, he was doing his number back then; we considered him more of jerk than anything else. His name is almost spelled correctly.”

Zev Braun, executive producer of CBS’ “Tour of Duty,” said that while he does not condone public-interest groups pressuring sponsors, he believes advertisers should have the right to choose their vehicles.

“They (advertisers) have the right to say, ‘I don’t like this show’; that’s much different from pressure groups saying they are opposed to it on the grounds of religious beliefs, or something like that,” Braun said.