NBC Puts Message Over Money With AIDS Show : Television: NBC’s airing tonight of a controversial ‘Lifestories’ episode wins praise from some groups but advertising revenues may fall short.

Toward the end of tonight’s episode of “Lifestories,” about a TV reporter who has tested positive for HIV antibodies, the newsman deviates from his script after a “viewer discretion is advised” warning pops up on the screen preceding his report about living with AIDS.

“I hate it when it says that,” he complains to his audience. “These shows shouldn’t require viewer discretion. With over 90,000 people dead in this country alone, they should be mandatory viewing.”

Mandatory viewing is also what this installment of NBC’s medical drama ought to be, insists Marlene Goland, director of the Center for Population Options’ media project, an organization active in AIDS education. “This is precisely the kind of show that needs to be seen; this is precisely the kind of responsible programming about AIDS the networks need to put on if we are ever going to lick this epidemic,” she says.

But the 10 p.m. episode--which tells the story of the gay reporter’s struggles with the symptoms of the disease and with TV’s often irrational fears of AIDS and homosexuality--had trouble finding any viewers at all. It went unscheduled for many weeks, then was scheduled, unscheduled and rescheduled--prompting charges that NBC was afraid of it.

Now, the show is having trouble finding advertisers. Warren Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment, said that network revenues for the 10 p.m. broadcast are likely to be about $500,000 less than what NBC would have expected to earn from even a rerun of the series being preempted, “Law and Order.”

“There are few things in broadcasting that we know for sure,” Littlefield said, “and one of those is that when you do an episode of any series that deals with AIDS, there is going to be advertiser sensitivity to it. And if you choose to do it anyway, you better count on losing money. I knew ahead of time that it was going to cost about $1 million to make the episode and I probably would get little advertising support. So in a sense we pay twice. But at the same time, we felt, ‘How can we do a medical anthology series and not deal with the subject of AIDS?’ ”

NBC ordered and approved the script for the episode last summer--before “Lifestories” went on the air and got single-digit ratings on Sundays at 8 p.m., and before the pressures of an increasingly softening ad market made it “more difficult than ever before” to sell advertising for anything besides bona fide hits, Littlefield said.

Jeffrey Lewis, the creator and executive producer of the series, said that NBC has never complained about the content of the episode. Nonetheless, the show was held back as six other “Lifestories” episodes aired and bombed in the murderous Sunday 8 p.m. time slot.

Rumors began to circulate that NBC had decided not to run the program because it was reluctant to risk advertiser defections and the loss of even more money on a series that was doomed anyway. They were quashed when the network scheduled the episode earlier this month as part of World AIDS Day weekend. But a few days later, NBC announced that “Lifestories” would air only once more in its Sunday time period before becoming a series of monthly specials and that the AIDS show scheduled for that final Sunday would be replaced by an episode about bone marrow transplants.

NBC was battered in the press for the change of plans and also received complaints from several gay and AIDS activist organizations, which charged that the network was bowing to pressure from certain Christian groups that equate positive portrayals of the gay life style as tantamount to an attack on the values of the American family.

The network subsequently decided to air the AIDS episode tonight as the first “Lifestories” monthly special. Littlefield insisted that he pulled the episode out of the 8 p.m. slot earlier this month only because he thought that its adult theme was more appropriate for a later hour.

“NBC should be congratulated for having the courage to air it,” said Warren Ashley, chairman of the Entertainment Industry Coalition on AIDS.

“Groups like CLeaR (Christian Leaders for Responsible Television) are part of the economic and social environment in which decisions are made,” he said, “and in tough economic times, these minority voices probably do gain in influence.”

One of the reasons that advertisers and, in turn, the networks are running scared, Goland said, is that the viewers who desire programming on AIDS and other so-called controversial topics rarely speak out to counter the well-organized, vocal groups on the other side.

“It’s like on the abortion issue,” Goland said. “For a long time, the anti-abortion side screamed the loudest. But in recent years, the pro-choice side realized they had to fight back. It’s the same in television. People who support quality programming, people who support programming that is beneficial and important to our society, have to write letters and make their voices heard.”

“Lifestories” confronts AIDS head-on, offering medical information on the difference between testing positive for HIV antibodies and actually contracting the various symptoms associated with the disease. It also provides information on current treatments that stave off those symptoms and help prolong a healthy life in spite of the virus.

The program also explores the complex relationship between television and AIDS--including the station coming under fire from a conservative Congressman who considers the gay newsman’s first-person accounts of his situation to be “an affront to family values.”

“Much of what has been on television tends to be stuff that is designed to scare people in the lowest-risk groups that they are about to keel over from an unknown, unseen enemy, as opposed to engendering any sense of compassion for those who are truly at risk,” said Lewis, the show’s executive producer.

“It is plainly true that AIDS has primarily victimized segments of society (gay men and i.v. drug users) that are considered by some soap-buying Americans to be among the least acceptable segments of the country. So that’s why you see things about the middle-class kid who got AIDS from a blood transfusion. I think that a responsible rendering of a terribly important problem ought to be detailed, ought to be specific and ought not to gloss over truths that one portion of the population might find scary.

“Our show, this episode, is in favor of American family values,” he said. “But if the American family is to work properly and is to be worth our gigantic investment in it as an institution, then it has to have compassion and understanding for all its members. It can’t be so quick to dismiss some of the distant cousins. That seems not un-Christian to me. And not un-American.”