CONFIDENCE MARKS NBC AFFILIATES MEETING

“Predictions are a very dangerous business for us programmers,” NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff told the crowd. He said he’d recently discussed that with Bud Grant, his counterpart at CBS--”the soon-to-be No. 2-rated network.”

His puckish comment touched off a roar of laughter from executives of 206 NBC-affiliated stations, all savoring the fact that after nine years in third place, NBC finally made it to No. 2 in prime-time ratings in the just-ended season, with ABC dropping to third.

Although both Tartikoff and NBC Board Chairman Grant Tinker last year forecast this outcome, neither would seriously predict this time out that next season NBC would overtake CBS, the prime-time ratings leader for six successive seasons.

But that didn’t much matter to the 770 station executives assembled this week at the Century Plaza Hotel for NBC’s annual affiliates convention--even though all were well aware that NBC still is third in daytime ratings, particularly with “Santa Barbara,” its costly new entry in the soap opera derby.

The mood was upbeat, the confidence strong and the spirit of wahoo high, as seen Tuesday when station executives ended a program-promotion session by taking NBC’s advice that they don party hats, toss confetti in the air and whoop it up.

The hats and confetti were provided by NBC to aid affiliate enthusiasm. The aid didn’t appear needed. But as one network observer noted after ABC’s convention last week in New York, affiliate gatherings generally tend to be upbeat because every new season brings hope, and “affiliates are not like skeptical reporters . . . they want to believe.”

Two brothers at the NBC meeting, Pep and Lloyd Cooney, seemed to bear that out. Pep Cooney, president of the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, said that all the station executives with whom he had talked were “very high” on NBC’s improved fortunes.

His assessment was seconded by brother Lloyd, an executive of Ackerly Communications of Seattle, which he said owns three stations respectively affiliated with CBS, ABC and NBC, the last in Bakersfield. “They’re on a roll,” he said of NBC.

The rampant optimism also affected Richard Thiriot, a program consultant from Salt Lake City, who says his company, Film Service Corp., represents 55 stations, some of them independent outlets, the rest affiliated with all three networks.

Speaking of NBC’s prime-time wares next fall, he said that “they have probably got one of the strongest schedules they’ve ever had.” And even with its third-place finale in daytime ratings, he added, the network’s overall schedule for next season “is looking good. I think NBC is really on the upswing.”

Thiriot, who attended ABC’s affiliates convention as well as NBC’s two-day congregation that ended Tuesday, noted that success in television tends to be cyclical. But he was dour about ABC’s prospects for a comeback: “I think it’s their turn in the barrel.”

ABC, of course, would dispute that.

Tinker, in a 16-minute luncheon speech to affiliates Tuesday, took the statesman’s approach. He didn’t even mention ABC or CBS, the latter now gearing up for its annual affiliates’ meeting next week in San Francisco. He only indirectly referred to CBS in obliquely noting the proposed hostile takeover of that network by a flamboyant cable-TV entrepreneur much in the news these days.

“We don’t have to be worried about people like Ted Turner casting covetous glances at us, and we are not distracted by fearing him,” Tinker said.

The silver-haired executive, whose network is replacing only four prime-time hours (with six new programs) next fall, conceded that the coming season “fairly cries out for predictions, and indeed it is a great temptation.”

But he avoided temptation, saying the name of the game is to be the best in all programs as well as first in all ratings. “Would you like to try for best and first?” he rhetorically asked. “It has a nice ring.”

He said continued progress is afoot in prime time at NBC, but noted that “daytime (success) takes longer.” However, he said, “I’m absolutely sure that the same tactics we are successfully employing in prime time are . . . applicable to daytime.”

The key, he said, is “Santa Barbara,” which premiered nine months ago amid heavy publicity and with a plot line that offered steamy romance, one character’s desire for revenge and even an earthquake.

According to NBC executives, the series initially had a 74% clearance rate among NBC affiliates, but now airs on 96% of the network’s stations.

Describing the show as “infinitely improved over what we started with,” Tinker urged affiliates to keep supporting it: “When we start that ocean liner turning, we will all be in business.”

Tinker also put in a strong pitch for the Roger Mudd-anchored “American Almanac,” a new prime-time news series that NBC News President Larry Grossman has said will debut on a monthly basis in August, and then become a weekly series in January.

Calling both for affiliate support and station clearance for “Almanac,” Tinker told his audience that “if we want to have it all, as broadcasters we have to do it all. And that includes ‘putting something back’ in the form” of the hourlong program.

Earlier Tuesday, programming chief Tartikoff sounded what was an underlying theme of NBC at its convention--gratitude to its affiliates for sticking with the Peacock Network through its lean years. About 12 NBC affiliates defected to other networks during NBC’s cellar-dwelling era.

“Your incredible faith and patience are just beginning to be repaid,” Tartikoff told the faithful, a refrain also heard during the convention from other network executives, among them Pier Mapes, president of NBC-TV.

During a meet-the-press session after a closed-door meeting with affiliates Tuesday, Mapes said there had been a number of inquiries from stations affiliated with rival networks about signing on with NBC. But “we’re not interested in fair-weather friends,” he said in an apparent reference to stations that left the NBC fold for ABC.