Catacombs Reference LibraryPress
Space 1999 Snubbed by Webs, Starts Second Year
Catacombs Reference Library
by Morton Moss, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1st January 1976
Space: 1999 the Made-in-England series which the works rebuffed for the season of 75-76, fared swimmingly without them on syndication basis. As a reward, the weekly science-fiction adventures of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, has had a 76-77 renewal. Another 24 episodes of interplanetary cartwheels have been ordered by ATV, the British TV empire presided over by Sir Lew Grade.
The word was passed along by Abe Mandell, president of Independent Television Corporation, a long arm of ATV, head- quartered in New York. Mandell, who expects the number of outlets next season to top what Space: 1999 has now, reports that the financial outlay will also climb above the first year's expenditure.
The series, produced with a lavish hand, cost $6.5 million this season. Next season's budget will be $7.2 million, which comes to some $300,000 per episode. If the same series were to emerge from one of the United States fantasy factories, the costs would run generously higher.
Landau and Bain have been undergoing harrowing hazards each Saturday night, between 7 and 8 o'clock on KHIJ 9. Lionel Schaen, the chief of operations at Channel 9, was quick to pick up that station's option for 75-76 on learning that a second year had been approved in London. The series, he told us, has been an eminent success.
"Space: 1999 is our highest rated show." he said. "Demographically, it has done extremely well for us. For men and women 18 to 48, it beats all access time shows on local stations, except NBC's Hollywood Squares. Space: 1999 draws more men in the 18 to 49 group than any late news show here, including network stations."
Schaen remarked that the only comparable success for him as a sustaining program was The World at War, an impressive audiovisual experience of the Second World War. Coincidentally, that production also stemmed from England - Thames Television, precisely.
Mandell reports that ITC's clientele began to fill up quickly at the disclosure that the sci-fi series would be continuing to soar through the realms of outer space. Pick- ups, aside from Los Angeles, encompass New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Cleveland, Portland, Ore., Denver and Detroit stations. Mandell looks to better the 155 U.S. cities and 101 world markets of $75-76. The CBS network of Canada has already bought the second year, as have many countries in Europe, the Far East and South America. If this isn't art, it's the art of making money.
Space: 1999 isn't hurt by its monopoly of the science- fiction field on television, except for the reruns of Star Trek, the prototype of television sci-fi to many buffs, who regard it with a stubborn loyalty that brooks no competitor. Star Trek as a motion picture, has been discussed for several years, but it never seems to get out of the talking stage. Space: 1999 has tried to be a little different. It has flirted with the extra-sensory, using dream sequences and other means beyond the cliched canon of its genre.
If you place the numerous fiascos of network series this season alongside the success of Space: 1999, which the webs refused, you have reason to ponder. The bloody de- capitation of new series this mid-season was horrifying. The survival rate sank far below 50 per cent.
What happened to the electrodes the networks put into people's heads to certify by computer measurement when a contemplated series will succeed? There must have been a rash of short-circuits. It suggests a thought about the mythology of masterminds.