The Fly on the Wall . . . : Television: Ken Auletta was given unprecedented access to network board rooms. ‘Mice’ charts the decline of the Big Three since they came under new corporate ownership in the mid-1980s.

NEW YORK —  Author Ken Auletta had been scheduled to begin his book tour Wednesday with an appearance on the “Today” show. But his publisher recently was notified that the appearance on the NBC morning show--considered the best TV venue for selling books--had been canceled. ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning” also have passed on the book, although it has been praised by reviewers.

The subject of Auletta’s book: the decline of the Big Three broadcast networks since they came under new corporate ownership in the mid-1980s. Its provocative title for those new owners: “Three Blind Mice.”

“The reason given by the ‘Today’ show--that the book was not breaking news--was so transparent,” Auletta said in an interview. “I don’t have a constitutional right to be on the ‘Today’ show, but no one has challenged the facts of this book, and the networks should acknowledge that they’re engaging in censorship. The danger with the new owners is not that Jack Welch (chairman of General Electric, NBC’s corporate parent) will say, ‘I don’t want that book on the air’ but that people will want to please the boss, saying, ‘We know how Bob Wright (NBC president) feels about this book.’ ” “Today” spokeswoman Lynn Applebaum confirmed that Auletta’s appearance had been canceled but said, “We schedule and unschedule guests for a variety of reasons, depending upon what we judge to be newsworthy.” She declined to comment further.

All three broadcast networks have decided not to comment on Auletta’s 642-page book. But prior to publication this week, network executives were passing around purloined copies of the unpublished galleys to see how they came out.

Auletta, a veteran journalist who has written several books on big business (including “Greed” and “Glory on Wall Street”), was given extensive access and interviews at all three networks over the past six years. CBS Chairman Laurence Tisch and executives at GE and NBC may regret having allowed Auletta to be a fly on their wall.

While sympathetic to the new owners’ dilemma as they faced new economic realities, Auletta depicts Wright, at least in the beginning of his tenure at NBC, as a disciple of Welch’s Marine-style, GE culture. Tisch is portrayed as a “bottom-dweller” investor who took over CBS as its “white-knight” savior--and then cut staff in its news division and sold off many of its assets.

Although Auletta says that Capital Cites executives made some mistakes when they first took over ABC, low-key Chairman Tom Murphy and President Dan Burke emerge as the corporate heroes of the book.

Among the book’s more memorable scenes:

* Wright, new in the job and unhappy with his division chiefs’ intransigence over an “exercise” to cut 5% from their budgets, issuing a memo that ended, “You must be intolerant of waste, bureaucracy, and those who do not carry their fair share of the load. We will not operate this business with both belt and suspenders.”

* Tisch, angry with CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff, breakfasting with Yetnikoff at the Beverly Hills Hotel and telling Yetnikoff not to order a bagel for breakfast because it cost too much.

* Producer Aaron Spelling pitching his 1989 series, “Nightingales,” to NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff with a one-sentence description: “Student nurses in Dallas in the summer, and the air conditioning doesn’t work so they sweat a lot!” To which, Auletta reports, Tartikoff replied, “It’s a 40 share!”

* Accountants for Capital Cities questioning an ABC reporter about why he had to make so many phone calls to do his stories. (All of the new owners are seen questioning the once-sacrosanct news divisions, asking why network news had to cost so much, especially compared to the budget of Cable News Network.)

“I am sympathetic to these new owners--all of whom were great American success stories--coming in and saying that the networks needed to operate in a more businesslike way because they were facing a decline in viewers,” Auletta said in an interview at his Long Island summer home. “But the new owners were only half-right. They focused too much on cost and not enough on revenue. They were blind initially to the value of hits in Hollywood.”

Many of the problems at the networks, Auletta said, were due to a clash of corporate cultures. The ABC owners, he maintains, proved more adept at merging the cost-conscious Capital Cities culture with the mentality of a major entertainment network.

“The Cap Cities executives initially derided ABC for a ‘limousine’ mentality, but they proved more adept at integrating the two. In part, they were helped by the fact that they owned a TV station group, so that they understood the network-affiliate relationship. But they were more sensitive to morale, which is one reason . . . why they were able to make some of the same cuts in news (as CBS) without the same bad publicity. They kept many of the ABC executives in place. They compliment their employees, and middle managers have informal access to Burke and Murphy in an employee dining room.

“As an employee, you want to know that your boss shares some of your religion,” said Auletta, who is on leave as a columnist at the New York Daily News. “GE manages by creating a sense of insecurity, and Bob Wright (a former GE executive who succeeded Grant Tinker as head of NBC when Wright was 43) was so intent on establishing his authority and moving NBC into new businesses that he was blind to the fact that NBC had just moved from being No. 3 in prime time to No. 1. He didn’t give employees a chance to celebrate--he seemed to be saying, ‘You didn’t do so great--this business stinks!’ ”

Tisch, Auletta said, “brilliantly took over CBS without paying a premium for it.” But, he said, “He spent his days at his Quotron machine (a computer that displays stock-price quotations). He was running a corporation for the first time without his brother, Bob, acting as CEO. Tisch was gruff and impatient, saying, ‘Why do we have (this department)--get rid of it!’ ”

Making people feel good about work well done sounds touchy-feely, but, Auletta says, it makes a difference on the bottom line, especially in a business as dependent upon relationships as the TV business is.

“You can control a jet-engine division more easily than you can control your suppliers at the networks. A Jim Brooks (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi,” “The Simpsons”) or a Steven Bochco (“Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.”) can write his own ticket--they’re going to go to the place where they feel comfortable.”

Some reviewers have criticized Auletta for painting a rosy picture of the previous owners of the networks. “I don’t think I’ve romanticized the past owners,” he said. “I went out of my way to discuss the way it was before. I believe that the networks had grown as complacent as the auto companies before foreign competition. They should’ve pushed harder to diversify and get into other areas--why didn’t they buy CNN when they could have?”

Several reviewers also have said “Three Blind Mice” contains too much detail about how the TV business works for readers who may not be interested in, say, the economics of affiliate compensation. But, said Auletta, who filled 77 notebooks in researching the book, “The detail is there for the reader to know you have it. I think it gives you credibility with the reader.”

Given the current climate at the Big Three networks, several Wall Street analysts are predicting that NBC or CBS eventually will merge with a movie studio--Paramount and Disney are the ones usually mentioned--if the regulatory restrictions against such a merger are removed. (NBC last week denied a published report that it was negotiating for a sale of the network to developer Marvin Davis.)

Auletta said that in an interview conducted before the Federal Communications Commission’s financial interest and syndication ruling made a studio-network merger less likely, “Welch told me he was ‘open to an asset play’ with NBC, meaning either that NBC would buy a studio or perhaps form a 50/50 partnership with a studio or some other partner. GE’s pattern is to form alliances; I don’t see them selling to Marvin Davis.”

At CBS, Auletta said, “Tisch’s pattern is not to sell until the profits are up. I couldn’t see him selling until CBS’ ratings and profits pick up.”

If the Big Three networks do make another spin around the dial, it could make for another book.

“The truth is, no one can tell exactly what the future of the networks will be because there are so many variables,” Auletta said. “But, in the future, will we have three healthy, vibrant broadcast networks as we have known them in the past? No. We don’t have that today.”