Disney’s Television Quest : Network prime-time success still eludes the giant that’s enjoyed movie hits and profits at its theme parks

Across three sound stages at the Culver Studios lies the first lunar colony. Emily’s, a diner with a crater view, is serving mushroom burgers and onion omelets. Across a town plaza graced with potted plants, the medical clinic stands ready for any emergency. Nearby sits the general store, a cave-like building that also houses the local barber shop and the communications center.

This is Plymouth--the lunar colony featured in an upcoming TV movie of the same name that the Walt Disney Co. is producing for ABC. There is no guarantee that the elaborate set will ever be used for anything but this one telefilm. Disney executives hope, however, that the moon village and the “jes’ folks” townspeople who inhabit it will score huge ratings and leave TV viewers crying for more. The studio is itching for ABC to pick up “Plymouth” as a weekly series for the 1990-91 season.

But as the Walt Disney Co. has learned the hard way, landing on the moon is one thing. Landing on a network schedule is something else.

Despite repeated efforts, Disney has not been successful at producing prime-time network programs. The only show it has been able to sustain is the venerable “Magical World of Disney” on Sunday nights, and even that ranks only 76th among 96 series that have been on the three major networks this season. NBC executives are not sure they will renew it for another year.

The company’s poor showing is particularly mysterious because it stands in dramatic contrast to the gains that Disney has made in every other field since it was revitalized by an aggressive new management team in 1984. In the years since Chairman Michael Eisner and his lieutenants set up shop at the then-moribund company, Disney has become a diverse entertainment powerhouse.

In feature films, Disney hit No. 1 at the box office in 1988 before dropping to fourth place in 1989. The company vied with Warner Bros. for the top slot in the home video market in 1989, with an estimated $480 million in sales, and should continue to dominate the industry, says Seth Goldstein, senior editor of This Week in Consumer Electronics. Syndicated cartoons, Disney merchandise, the Disney Channel on cable--all are part of the success story. Disneyland and Disney World remain national institutions as well as the company’s biggest income-generators.

The Theme Park and Resorts division brought in $2.6 billion last year while the Filmed Entertainment division, which includes theatrical releases, broadcast television, cable and home video, grossed $1.6 billion. The Consumer Products division brought in $411 million. Total company revenues were up 34% from 1988.

Yet while the rest of the company has taken a rocket to the top, the network TV division is still waiting to blast off.

It has produced pilots that didn’t become series. It has produced series that quickly disappeared--among them ABC’s “Ellen Burstyn Show” in 1986 and “Harry” in 1987, CBS’ “The Oldest Rookie” in 1987, Fox’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” in 1987 and CBS’ “Hard Time on Planet Earth” in 1989. It has tried and failed to develop series within the framework of its Sunday-night anthology--in an earlier incarnation on ABC and then, for the past two seasons, on NBC. Duds include revivals of “Davy Crockett,” “The Absent-Minded Professor” and “Parent Trap.”

Disney’s only new prime-time entry this season was the NBC sitcom “Nutt House.” It was axed after five episodes.

Now even “The Magical World of Disney” is in trouble. Disney executives, anxious to keep the program alive, have sent bushels of new programming ideas for it to NBC. “It’s a major priority for the television division at Disney,” reports Warren Littlefield, executive vice president of prime-time programs at NBC. Getting the series renewed, he says, has the “time and attention” of Disney’s top executives, including Eisner and Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The show, which has survived changes of networks, titles and time periods--even a three-year absence from TV--since it debuted in 1954, has long been used by Disney as a way of promoting various company projects, especially its theme parks. “The ‘World of Disney” is, in effect, a commercial for the Disney company,” grumbles another NBC executive.

Determined to boost its lowly ranking, Disney has embarked on a costly mission to muscle its way into the network business. The company is spending millions buying up talent--trying to find the people who will produce, write and star in shows that can climb to the heights of the Nielsens. Former Fox Broadcasting executive Garth Ancier was brought in as president of network production one year ago to oversee the process.

Among the people signed to Disney are “Roseanne” creator Matt Williams, who is working on a new Carol Burnett series for NBC; the original team of head writers from “The Golden Girls,” who have a project in development at NBC; and “L.A. Law” co-creator Terry Louise Fisher, who is developing a drama for CBS about a woman in the legal profession. Also tied to Disney are numerous others writers and producers who are not household names but have been associated with hit shows.

“That’s suddenly going from nobody to a whole lot of people,” observes NBC’s Littlefield. “The last few years they’ve been crawling. Now they’re walking.”

In addition, Disney executives like to boast about the performance and quality of the high-rated NBC shows “Golden Girls” and “Empty Nest,” which appear under Disney’s Touchstone Television banner. But some industry observers believe the boasts are misleading because Disney serves only as the financial backer and distributor of those shows, taking a share of the profits in return. It’s Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions that created the shows and that churns them out each week. In fact, the modest-sized production company had already sold “Golden Girls” to NBC when Disney stepped into the deal.

Disney’s low network profile apparently has not escaped the watchful eyes of Wall Street. When rumors of a possible Disney-CBS merger resurfaced earlier this month, one analyst told the Hollywood Reporter that Disney would be the perfect studio to take over a network. The reasoning went that since government regulations prohibit networks from syndicating shows they produce, most studios would stand to lose huge profits if they coupled with a network. But it would not be a problem for Disney, the analyst said, “because they are a non-factor in the prime-time series business.”

The question is, why? Why would a company have such a dismal record in one field when it has found such a winning formula everywhere else?

The answer, some industry analysts and insiders say, may be found within the question itself.

Some suggest that Disney may have hobbled itself by using the same techniques to produce television shows that it uses to produce feature films. During its climb to the upper levels of the film business, Disney became known as a studio that liked to keep a tight fist on the budget and a strong hand in the creative process. That M.O. appears to have carried over to the TV business as well.

“What works in features might not work in television,” says Leslie Moonves, executive vice president of creative affairs at Lorimar, the leading supplier of network programs for the past three seasons. “Lorimar has proven the point in the opposite way,” he laughs, noting his company’s weak performance in film production.

The Disney network division also has sometimes suffered because of conceptual problems in developing programs. Such was apparently the case when the studio sold a TV version of its hit movie “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”--about a bum who moves in with a rich family--to the new Fox Broadcasting network. The concept not only was sold without a pilot but also without the involvement of any creative staff at all. Disney’s upper management reportedly sold the 1987 show directly to Fox Chairman Barry Diller. When work on the series finally began, producers found there was nowhere to take the story week after week.

Disney’s TV department also has built a reputation for stubbornness and hard bargaining. Several NBC staffers say the studio can be difficult to work with.

“I won’t say to you that doing business with them is easy,” Littlefield says. “The studio comes to its projects with a point of view. They come at it with a stamp. Sometimes we go to war with them.”

Producers and writers have felt the imprint of the Disney stamp.

“Nightmare on Dopey Drive,” is the way one producer termed his experience on a Disney TV project. Staying true to their cost-conscious reputation, Disney officials would not budget money for original music for the show. “They wanted us to use music from previous Disney shows,” the producer said. “They’re completely hands-on, starting with the kind of staples you use. There’s a tremendous amount of interference.”

On a 1988 Disney sitcom pilot for CBS called “Tickets, Please,” (“ ‘Cheers’ on a train” was one description), executive producer Charlie Peters saw studio executives edit out a subplot containing roughly a third of his show just before it was presented to the network for consideration. Peters, now with two feature films in development at Disney, was reluctant to speak of the studio overhaul of his work. “I don’t think they made or broke the show,” he says.

A former “Nutt House” staffer says Disney programming executives tried to sugar-coat the series. “While the producers’ and writers’ desire was to create wild and crazy comedy in the tradition of Mel Brooks,” the staffer said, “Disney executives insisted it be filled with heart and poignancy.”

Not everyone is complaining, though. “Disney’s been terrific to us,” says Terry Grossman, one of the four ex-”Golden Girls” head-writers who formed their own production company and signed on with the studio. “We have tremendous freedom.”

Another explanation for the tepid performance of Disney’s network efforts, some TV industry executives believe, is that strengthening Disney’s network television division was not a top priority when Eisner and crew took over the company. Instead, the new managers focused their immediate attention on their biggest assets--the theme parks and the film business.

“I don’t think anyone can argue with that strategy for success,” says NBC’s Littlefield.

Disney executives won’t discuss strategy--or anything else about their network TV operations, for that matter. Studio executives declined to be interviewed for this story. A company spokeswoman said that Disney officials will be happy to talk “when we have a story to tell.”

Disney staffers--including Randy Reiss, executive vice president of Walt Disney Studios and president of its network TV division--also took the highly unusual step of calling people who have worked on Disney television programs to ask them not to talk to The Times. Some people also were asked if they knew of anybody who had agreed to be interviewed.

But people throughout the TV industry are talking about Disney and are watching closely to see if the company’s current drive pays off. With only a limited number of time periods available on network schedules, a strong entry by Disney into prime time would affect every other company fighting for the same precious slots.

“I think Disney in the future will do much better,” Lorimar executive Moonves predicts. He believes his rival had not been managing its network operations effectively before the new talent-buying push.

“I think they have not had the proper show-runners,” he says, referring to the studio executives and producers who oversee budgets, production schedules and story development. Now he thinks Disney’s spending spree has brought them “not just creators, but people who can run shows.”

“From the NBC perspective,” says Littlefield, “Disney seems to have come to life.”

Disney has numerous projects in development at the No. 1 network.

“Carol & Company,” the comedy anthology starring Carol Burnett, has been slowed by problems of concept and execution--namely how to put on a different show with different characters every week. But it should reach viewers this spring, Littlefield says. Michael Jacobs, the “My Two Dads” producer who also is tied to Disney, is developing one project for the “Magical World of Disney” and another series for NBC.

The former “Golden Girls” team is making a pilot for NBC tentatively titled “Fanelli and Sons,” about a widow whose four grown sons, aged 19 to 40, move back in with her. Disney also is producing a pilot for NBC called “Hell Street High,” which will be a musical set in a high school.

The studio has strengthened its ties to Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions, recently signing the company that produced “Beauty and the Beast,” “Benson” and “Soap” to an exclusive contract that gives Disney the distribution rights to its TV projects for 2 1/2 years.

Also developing Disney shows for NBC are William Blinn (“Our House”) and Ken Estin (“Taxi”). “L.A. Law” co-creator Terry Louise Fisher produced a pilot at Disney for NBC last season that was not picked up. This year she is producing one for CBS.

Among the Disney projects in development at ABC is “STAT,” a comedy about doctors and nurses in an inner-city trauma center. The producer is Danny Arnold, co-creator and former executive producer of “Barney Miller.”

And there is the ambitious “Plymouth,” which is being produced by David Zlotoff (“MacGyver”). With a budget estimated at $8 million, the lunar project carries a price tag that is roughly double the cost of an average TV movie. Disney has hedged its bets on the costly project and entered a co-venture arrangement with the Italian media company RAI-Uno. The Italians have invested about half the budget in exchange for international distribution rights, Disney officials have said.

It is unclear what financial involvement ABC has in “Plymouth.” But if the network is paying an average TV movie license fee--$3.5 million might be about right--then Disney has little to lose in the deal.

Whether signing pricey deals will translate into network success for Disney remains to be seen. As a Disney spokeswoman put it while explaining why studio executives did not want a story about their TV efforts, “Just because you’re buying up all the talent in town doesn’t mean you’re going to be the biggest success in town.”