Abc Tv

"SportsBeat," Howard Cosell's Sunday afternoon interview show, has been canceled by ABC-TV. A network spokesman said Saturday that the last SportsBeat show is scheduled for Dec. 15. The show has consistently ranked near the bottom of the sports television ratings, although it offered the only regular forum on any network for in-depth interviews. Cosell created controversy in his autobiography, "I Never Played the Game," which recently was excerpted in TV Guide.

When business is too good, business can be hurt, the sales staff at the ABC Television Network learned to its mild embarrassment last month. They were thrilled, of course, by the unexpected strength of demand when they began selling commercials for the television season that begins in September. But as they booked advance sales during the habitually frenzied "upfront" negotiations with advertisers, they lost track of how much of their inventory they were selling.

In an unprecedented cooperative venture between rival network and cable TV concerns, the Nickelodeon channel said Wednesday that it will produce a prime-time comedy series that will air this summer on ABC and then, only days later, on its own cable service. Even more extraordinary is that ABC and Nickelodeon have agreed to promote one another to their viewers--the television equivalent of Bullock's telling its customers to check out deals at Broadway.

Next week, says new ABC President John B. Sias, ABC programming chief Brandon Stoddard will start deciding which of 26 comedy and drama pilots now before him will wind up as new series on the network's fall prime-time schedule. But Sias says there probably also will be a second prime-time ABC News series on the roster--although not one with a hard-news look or a traditional news-magazine format. ABC's other news series is "20/20," begun in June, 1978.

For some reason, there was a flurry of queries by reporters and possibly some raised eyebrows at ABC News when the President's son disclosed this week that he will become an on-camera reporter for ABC-TV. Did this mean, some wondered, that Ron Reagan, 27, a free-lance writer, would cover fires, floods, pestilence and wars, or maybe even become part of the White House press pack and get to shout questions at his dad just like Sam Donaldson?

With its three NBA Finals games sweeping the top three spots in the ratings, ABC had its most-watched week between Memorial Day and Labor Day in six years. Game 5 of the series between the Lakers and Boston Celtics on Sunday was the most-watched program between June 7 and Sunday, averaging 18.65 million viewers, according to live-plus-same day figures released Tuesday by the Nielsen Co. Game 4 Thursday was second for the week, averaging 16.37 million viewers, the most for a Game 4 since the Lakers-Detroit Pistons series of 2004.

America's premier auto racing event, the Indianapolis 500, will be televised live nationally for the first time next spring. Roone Arledge, ABC-TV president, and Joseph Cloutier Sr., president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corp., made the joint announcement Monday in New York. Terms of the three-year contract, which will run through the 1988 race, were not revealed.

Pop superstar Michael Jackson will be the subject of a 90-minute interview program on ABC Feb. 10, the network said Sunday. Oprah Winfrey will interview Jackson at his home in the Santa Ynez Valley for what was described as a worldwide broadcast.

NBC's unprecedented string of 68 consecutive victories in the weekly prime-time ratings battle came to an end Tuesday as ABC climbed into the top spot on the strength of its coverage of the first two games of the World Series last week. The baseball games on Saturday and Sunday didn't actually win either night for ABC, but the audience for each was enough of an improvement over the network's usual ratings to push ABC to a narrow victory overall. The full list of ratings is on F10.