SHUFFLE MUST GO ON--PARAMOUNT

The trickle-down theory, Hollywood style, has finally hit the television division at Paramount Pictures, the studio responsible for “Cheers,” “Entertainment Tonight” and miniseries such as “Winds of War” and the upcoming “Space” epic.

The resignation Wednesday of Richard Frank as president of the Paramount Television Group and the naming of the company’s network production head, Mel Harris, as Frank’s successor a day later is the latest and perhaps final executive shuffle directly resulting from Barry Diller’s resignation Sept. 30 as Paramount’s chairman.

Frank, in a telephone interview Thursday, said the departure from the studio of Diller and, subsequently, president Michael Eisner was his motivation for leaving.

“When they left, there was no doubt it left a void here at the company,” Frank said. A restructuring of Harris’ division and the syndication operation run by Randy Reiss followed to make for an orderly transition once Frank resigned.

The state of a studio’s TV division typically is overlooked when studio heads come and go. But Paramount TV contributed to Diller and Eisner’s reputation as critical and commercial sharpshooters. Their legacy is three sitcoms in the Nielsen ratings’ coveted Top 20--”Family Ties,” “Webster” and “Cheers.”

Frank, 42, a former general manager of KCOP Channel 13, also brought a broadcaster’s sensibilities to the studio when Diller and Eisner hired him eight years ago. “Solid Gold,” “Entertainment Tonight” and the upcoming “America,” with a budget of $20 million for its first year of five-day-a-week production, attest to Paramount’s ambition in exploring non-network territory.

(Frank may in fact return to broadcasting; he said “a couple of investment bankers called about putting together station groups.” He also is considering his own distribution company, and would not rule out working at another studio, though in a capacity expanded beyond the TV realm.)

While movie projects often come and go with the production chiefs who initiated them, TV chugs along, often acquiring a life of its own in responding to network likes and dislikes.

Harris said Thursday that he does not intend to make any fundamental changes in the studio’s approach to TV production.

“We’re moving down the same aggressive path in both program production and distribution that we have for the last eight years together,” said Harris, 42, whom Frank hired 60 days after joining the company.

Harris inherits seven pilot orders from all three networks, including a commitment from NBC for a new sitcom from “Cheers” creators Glen and Les Charles. That one will star Bess Armstrong as a TV producer brought in to fix up a dying network soap opera.

The six remaining pilots yet to be considered by the networks are “Hometown,” an hourlong comedy for CBS to be shot in New York; “MacGyver,” an action-adventure show produced by Henry Winkler for ABC; “Mr. Sunshine,” an ABC comedy about a blind junior college professor, also from Winkler’s production company; “Moscow Bureau,” from “Soap” producer Witt-Thomas for ABC; and two sitcoms from former Paramount TV chief Gary Nardino, “Slickers” for NBC and “Joanna” for ABC.

Paramount’s two upcoming miniseries are the 13-hour “Space,” based on James Michener’s novel, airing April 14-18 on CBS, and “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story,” April 8-9 on NBC.

Harris said his long-range goals are “generalized at this point,” but it is “increasingly important that Paramount create an atmosphere in which the (members of the) creative community feel they can do their best work.”