NETWORKS ARE CONSIDERING NOT GIVING VIEWERS A `BREAK`

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993                   TAG: 9303200402
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By BILL CARTER THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
NETWORKS ARE CONSIDERING NOT GIVING VIEWERS A `BREAK`
The night's episode of "Cheers" is winding down, and you sit poised on the edge of the couch, ready to spring for the kitchen and the box of sourdough pretzels.
There'll be plenty of time before the start of "Seinfeld" to grab the pretzels, make a stop in the bathroom, maybe even a quick phone call. But here comes Jerry Seinfeld's opening monologue, right after the "Cheers" fade-out.
You are confused. The natural order of television has been unhinged. The station break between the two shows is gone. What used to be separated by two minutes or so of commercials, plus a station-identification announcement, has been run together. The pretzels and phone call will have to wait.
For more than 40 years, viewers have been able to count on the leisurely hiatus between programs. Now the station break is under attack from programmers looking for ways to feed viewers directly from one show into the next.
Give people half a chance, say network planners, and off they go "surfing" with their remote controls, looking for alternative viewing on the dozens of channels now proliferating on cable.
The point, said Ted Harbert, president of ABC Entertainment, "is to try to keep the viewer's thumb off that remote-control button."
This winter, the three big broadcast networks began experimenting with what they call the "seamless transition" or the "hot switch" between programs. Both terms mean the same thing: as soon as one show is over, the next begins.
The end of the station break would not mean fewer commercials, of course, just relocated ones. They would be moved into the surrounding programs, creating longer pods of commercials inside shows.
The experiments all involved a 9 p.m. comedy feeding into a 9:30 comedy. In January, ABC made the first hot switch on Tuesdays when it introduced "The Jackie Thomas Show" by sliding the end of "Roseanne" into the first scene of "Jackie Thomas."
In February, CBS eliminated the break between "Murphy Brown" and "Love and War" on Mondays, and NBC did the same between "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" on Thursdays.
On all three networks the hot switches gained more viewers for the later shows. Despite the success, however, ABC backed away after a month when it couldn't clear the elimination of the break with local stations and local advertisers. The problem remains the chief impediment to widespread use of seamless transition on all three networks.
Nevertheless, ABC is plotting to hot switch all its shows, relegating the old-fashioned station break to the same television ash heap as the variety show, the "Please Stand By" sign and the teatime movie.
Neither of the other networks is ready to go as far as ABC. CBS executives said they thought breaks should be eliminated only when the shows were especially compatible.
At NBC there is suspicion that the early success of the experiments is overstated and that other measures should be considered to hold viewers. "It's only one thing in the bag of tricks you can use," said Preston Beckman, vice president of program scheduling for the network.
Programmers are compelled to seek "every possible form of subtle manipulation," said Peter Tortorici, executive vice president of programming for CBS. In addition to the hot switch, the network is placing an aggressive promotion for a 9:30 show in the body of the 9 o'clock show.
For example, the stars of "Love and War" now regularly appear during a commercial break in "Murphy Brown" to make fun of the movies playing at the same hour on ABC and NBC.
The ratings for "Jackie Thomas" certainly supported the experiments. In its first four weeks, "Jackie Thomas," starring Tom Arnold, the husband of Roseanne Barr of "Roseanne," stayed reasonably close to the earlier show in its share of the audience. Without the hot switch, "Jackie" cooled quickly and was soon losing a much bigger chunk of the "Roseanne" crowd.
On CBS, "Love and War" was holding only about 75 percent of the "Murphy Brown" viewers in November. After CBS began the seamless transition, almost 85 percent of the "Murphy Brown" viewers stuck with "Love and War." And NBC has used the device so effectively between "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" that the latter has begun beating the former in the ratings.
"I'd really prefer to give the credit to `Seinfeld,' and not to our scheduling expertise," Beckman said. Still, he added, the network will likely look toward making more seamless breaks between shows next season. "It's like chicken soup," he said. "It can't hurt."
Tortorici said CBS is also certain to try more seamless switching "on a situational basis." But he pointed out that the audience is not likely to be fooled into watching something they don't like.
"It's like a restaurant that serves bad food," he said. "If they give it away for free it only gets the word out faster that the stuff is horrible."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB