ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 19, 1996 TAG: 9604190070
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES BARRON N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Without so much as a blueprint for fighting crime or a news conference for publicity-hungry politicians to elbow each other out of the limelight, one town's murder rate is all but guaranteed to plunge next month.
And sure enough, the credit - or blame - rests with high-level decision-makers at an organization with three initials.
It's not the FBI, but CBS. The network is canceling ``Murder, She Wrote,'' which was one of the longest-running, highest-rated prime-time dramas in television history until it was moved last fall from Sunday to Thursday night, opposite NBC's ``Friends,'' and tumbled in the Nielsens like a bad guy going down in a shootout.
Its demographics are hardly to the network's liking: with a 70-something star, it lacked the younger viewers that Madison Avenue values.
Starting a week from Sunday, ``Murder, She Wrote'' will be back on Sundays at 8 p.m. for its final four episodes. The Jessica Fletcher character, the widowed former schoolteacher-turned-best-selling mystery writer played by Angela Lansbury, may return in future seasons, in made-for-television movies.
This raises the question: what will life be like in Mrs. Fletcher's hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine?
Safer, for one thing. The crime statistics for Cabot Cove, the fictional fishing village where Mrs. Fletcher lives in a tidy white house, are enough to make street-smart New Yorkers watch their backs. There have been, on average, 5.3 murders a year in Cabot Cove (population 3,560, according to CBS).
By the end of the final episode May 19, there will have been 7 murders there this season alone. The all-time low was 4 in 1991 to 1992, the season Mrs. Fletcher moved to, of all places, New York City to teach criminology and creative writing. But she found time to return to Cabot Cove. She had to - contractually, the producers must deliver five Cabot Cove episodes a year.
Mrs. Fletcher never worries about locking her door - Sheriff Mort Metzger or Dr. Seth Hazlitt are always wandering in - but almost 2 percent of the residents have been killed since the show's premiere in September 1984. And visitors fared even worse. Why didn't Cabot Cove impose a curfew and call in the National Guard while Ronald Reagan was president?
Of course, it hasn't been all murder and mayhem in Cabot Cove. One 1992 episode of ``Murder, She Wrote'' featured no murders. But the year-in, year-out slayings have clearly put Cabot Cove in a class by itself.
``I'm not sure you're going to find a community in Maine that has seven murders,'' said Lt. Gary Ronan of Kennebunkport, a town about the same size as Cabot Cove, who said the state average is between 35 and 40 homicides a year. Kennebunkport had one in 1994, he said. ``The one before that was in '87,'' he said. ``And before that? Oh, God, I'm trying to think - in the 70's sometime.''
Other consequences of the show's demise? A healthier municipal budget, because there will be less overtime at Metzger's office. Consider: the majority of murders in Cabot Cove - indeed, the only murders in Cabot Cove - occur in the evening, generally between 8:15 and 8:30, though some episodes this season have featured two slayings, one at the beginning of the hourlong show and the other, as usual, just before the local station break midway through.
Also, with no more murderers to collar, Metzger will not have to worry about needing more than the holding pen he already has. And Mainers will no longer marvel at how, week after week, he manages to do what no other small-town sheriff in Maine does: he handles his own homicide investigations. Ronan said the norm is to let the state police and the attorney general's office do the sleuthing.
Will there be a real-estate boom, to the delight of the town's gossipy broker, Eve Simpson? Will that high-rise hotel that Jessica blocked in a burst of environmentalism back in the mid-1980s now get a zoning permit? How many of Jessica's nieces and nephews will end up behind bars when she's no longer around to clear them of the charges?
And will Jessica finally do some actual writing? Like all television characters, she has spent precious little time at work - in her case, pounding the keys on her manual typewriter (or, since November 1991, her personal computer).
``That could put me out of business,'' said Donald Bain, a veteran ghostwriter who is listed as the co-author with Mrs. Fletcher on a series of ``Murder, She Wrote'' mysteries published by Signet. ``She never criticizes,'' he said. ``She never edits.''
Unlike the television series, the books will continue. And on the printed page, Jessica has a love interest, a Scotland Yard inspector. ``The characters have been so defined by the TV people that God forbid they should ever kiss,'' he said. But with the show's demise, who knows? One thing is sure: if they get around to more than smooching, the cameras will not be rolling.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB