By FRANK SWERTLOW

Staff Reporter

Network television officials recently met with more than 200 TV critics at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena to air their views on the current state of the television industry and its future.

Among the topics discussed by executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, the WB and PBS networks were the the future of digital television, the migration of network audiences to cable, and the abandonment of older viewers for more-youthful viewers.

Not surprisingly, the executives didn’t agree on much. The one area of agreement was that broadcasters believe their programming system will prevail, despite losses to cable. Here are excerpts from what the network executives said in their sessions with the critics:

On the future of network TV

Stu Bloomberg, chairman, ABC Entertainment: “I still think we are the strongest vehicle for mass appeal entertainment. As popular as, say, ‘La Femme Nikita’ or ‘South Park’ are (on cable) in terms of numbers, they can’t stand up to what we deliver on a weekly basis.”

Dean Valentine, president, UPN: “As I look at the television landscape, the one thing that occurs to me is nobody wants to program for (the American middle class) anymore. Everybody wants to program for a sort of psycho yuppie in Manhattan. We don’t want to.”

Les Moonves, president, CBS Television: “Network television is still the best game in town.”

Don Ohlmeyer, president, NBC, West Coast: “Broadcasting means having shows that appeal to a wide spectrum of people and that’s what we’ve attempted to do. And I think that’s what we have done to some degree, successfully.”

On the battle for younger viewers

Moonves: “I can’t believe a 50-year-old today is treated the same way (by advertisers) as a 50-year-old was treated 30 years ago. The fact that a 19-year-old is considered a better audience than a 50-year-old is ridiculous.”

Jamie Kellner, WB chief executive officer: “The newer networks are always are going to have a harder time attracting the older segment of the audience, which is one of the reasons we focus ourselves as young as we do. We are never going to be, in terms of households, where NBC and CBS is.”

Ervin S. Duggan, president of PBS: “I think that other television services make a mistake depreciating the value of older viewers people with leisure time, with relative affluence, a very good target audience. I also think that older viewers are perhaps as underserved in the TV marketplace today as the 2- to 5-year-old, pre-school generation was underserved until PBS came along.”

Ohlmeyer: “I am a firm believer that broadcast television is an undervalued, undersold commodity. To buy an ad in The Wall Street Journal you will pay $65 (on a cost-per-thousand basis). To buy an ad on network television, you will pay somewhere in the teens to $20s. I would say, respectfully, that a commercial with sound, with music, with moving pictures, has more impact than a static ad. If I was sitting there confronted with a static ad and a moving ad, I would have to say I’m going to be more influenced by the moving ad.”

On the chances that digital TV will gain quick viewer acceptance

Ohlmeyer: “There will be 10 digital sets in the city of Los Angeles. Six of them will be owned by the networks. You have to look at the transition from black and white to color. It took two decades.”

Moonves: “That’s the $64,000 question, or should I say the $64 billion question. It’s a tough one.”

Duggan: “We have sent out broadcasting’s first satellite test signal in high definition. (see related story, page 13). We are sponsoring the Traveling Digital Television Express, the road show that will go to 40 cities beginning in March. And we are beginning already to create and produce high-definition programming for eventual broadcast when sets are capable. We chose to focus on the opportunities that are presented by digital television and not the problems.”

On NBC’s $858 million deal to keep “ER”

Jamie Tarses, president, ABC Entertainment: “It’s going to encourage earlier renegotiations. You are going to look at a show that’s successful in three years and you’re going to revisit them at that point to talk about re-upping for additional years.”

Moonves: “Everybody’s looking at doing five-year deals, instead of four.”

Ohlmeyer: ” ‘ER’ is rough. Every two weeks of ‘ER’ is roughly equal to a Super Bowl in terms of rating and share. I see many articles that somebody’s going to pay $1.3 million, $1.4 million, $1.5 million for a Super Bowl unit (30-second commercial). I don’t see any kind of outrage, I don’t see any kind of moral indignation (at the prices). It’s what the market will bear.”

On how the exploding number of channels is affecting programming decisions

Valentine: “Fragmentation (of the audience by cable) is not inevitable. It’s just another word for nothing left to watch. The reason people are watching other than network television is because they don’t like what they are seeing on network television. We feel that the networks, including us, have not done a great job, a compelling enough job, of putting on the kind of programming that a large enough group of people want to watch.”

Bob Wright, president, NBC Inc.: “It seems more unlikely than it did in the past that you could put a show on the air right away and it would be a huge hit, the way ‘ER’ was and is. There is more patience at the beginning of the broadcast year now, more recognition on our part that it’s going to take a little longer. I don’t know if it’s going to be more expensive, but it’s going to be riskier. You are going to have to put a show on the air that you like and you’re going to have to wait longer to see (if it is hot).”

Bloomberg: “I think just looking at ‘ER,’ when you get a hit that audiences love, they will come.”

On the trend of networks airing updated versions of old shows like “Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island,” and ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show”

ABC’s Bloomberg: “If Mary Tyler Moore comes in and says she wants to come back as her character with Valerie Harper’s character it’s a fun idea and she is a television icon. So that’s just a kick.”

Moonves: “ABC wanted that show more than we did. In addition, everybody knocks us it’s, ‘Oh, you’ve got Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch, now you are getting Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda. There you go getting old again.’ It didn’t seem to be a priority to us.”

Valentine: ” ‘Love Boat,’ I liked it and I think the American public will like it.”