PASADENA, Calif. — America's war against terrorism will change our TV picture, from Hollywood to Sesame Street, for the rest of the year or longer.

        Television executives speaking to the Television Critics Association press tour here say events since Sept. 11 have affected practically every aspect of the business — prime-time programming, movies, news, non-scripted “reality” shows, midseason replacement series, advertising and development of next fall's new series.

        At least three TV movies are in the works about the terrorists' hijacking of four passenger jets that were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside.

        Networks are looking for fall shows about firefighters, police officers and heroes, says Sarah Timberman, president for Studios USA programming.

        “A lot of people are wary about doing anything that feels like a sort of commercial exploitation of such a tremendous tragedy,” she says. “You'll see not so many (fall shows) dealing with the specifics of the events of Sept. 11, but some things having to do with the spirit.”

        New York firefighters will visit Sesame Street on the 33rd season premiere Feb. 4. After they extinguish a smoky grease fire at Hooper's Store, firefighters give a frightened Elmo a firehouse tour. Sesame Street has produced four episodes to teach kids about fear, loss, bullies and cultural diversity, says Rosemarie T. Truglio, Sesame Workshop vice president for education and research.

        Viewers also will see fewer original episodes of some series and fewer midseason shows. Networks are still reeling from a one-two punch — lower than expected “upfront” advertising sales when fall lineups were announced in May, and revenue losses from the war coverage that delayed the fall TV season launch. Studios also expect to make fewer pilots for next fall, says Gary Newman, 20th Century Fox Television president.

        “The upfront marketplace, and the extraordinary hit (loss) that the networks took back in May, along with the turn of the economy generally, and the events of 9-11, all have resulted in a pretty difficult situation for everybody,” says Peter Roth, Warner Bros. Television president.

        ABC and Fox have cut back their orders for Once and Again and Titus from 22 episodes to 17 to make room for six-week spring replacement shows.

        “We got a very late start,” says Gail Berman, Entertainment president at Fox, which premiered nine series in November. “We have some terrific midseason shows, and we need to have room to put them on the air.”

        CBS only has three midseason shows, about one-third of its typical winter slate. Many new fall series, which didn't debut until October, remain on the air while researchers analyze their actual and potential ratings.

        “The results are still not quite in on a lot of new shows,” says Les Moonves, CBS president and CEO.

        How we watch network series also has changed since 9-11. Fox and WB have repeated 24 and Charmed within days on sister cable stations (FX, TNT). The additional exposure has increased Charmed ratings 20 percent on WB. The reruns — called “repurposing” — allow networks to maximize the audience for advertisers during the post-9-11 recession, without incurring additional programming costs.

        “Showing a program once, and then not showing it again for six months . . . is a very old-fashioned way of providing entertainment through a television set,” says Jamie Kellner, Turner Broadcasting chairman and CEO.

        Everyone — viewers, networks and advertisers — benefit from airing a show multiple times a week at different times, he says. “This is a new (economic) model,” he says. “In two, three years from now, everybody will wonder why we didn't do a lot more of this before.”

        On the movie front, CBS has Lawrence Schiller, who produced the JonBenet Ramsey miniseries, writing a movie about Flight 93, the United Airlines jet that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers revolted against the hijackers. The story is told from the ground, not inside the plane, says Peter Sussman, Alliance Atlantis Entertainment president.

        “The entire film takes place in the offices, the control towers, and the White House and newsrooms,” he says.

        Alliance Atlantis also is producing a TV movie about the Hamburg, Germany, “cell” of suspectedal-Qaida ringleader Mohammed Atta.

        “I've heard others about (TV movies) about the heroes of the flight that crashed . . . a more typical approach to a TV movie,” Mr. Sussman says.

        Why make a movie about the 9-11 tragedies that killed thousands? Because movies have been made about most significant historical events — Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the Vietnam War and Nazi Germany, Mr. Moonves notes.

        “The artists in our community deal with it in different ways, and this tragedy on 9-11 will be dealt with at a certain point in time,” he says.

        “This (Flight 93) is a script deal. I don't know what it will be. We're going to look at it very carefully.”

        Within hours of the World Trade Center collapse, Mr. Moonves also changed locations for Survivor 4 from Jordan in the Middle East to Nuki Hiva, a South Pacific island near Tahiti. Filming started a few weeks later on Survivor: Marquesas, which premieres 8 p.m. Feb. 28 (Channels 12, 7).

        “The deal with Jordan hadn't been set, but it was . . . a leading contender,” Mr. Moonves says. “After Sept. 11, it became obvious that doing Survivor in Jordan would not be a great idea.”

        After Americans saw survivors of the World Trade Center towers on TV, and heard about lives snuffed out by the fiery plane crashes, ratings for most so-called “reality” series never recovered. ABC quickly pulled The Mole 2; NBC shelved Lost.

        Hollywood studio presidents say networks will continue to rely on a limited number of comparatively inexpensive reality shows for budgetary reasons. “With the economic pressure that the networks are facing, they would be reluctant to abandon reality programs (completely),” Ms. Timberman says.

        Sept. 11, of course, also changed TV news. Gossipy stories about Gary Condit and Anne Heche have been displaced by real news. Foreign correspondents, a dying breed up until then, were delivering the top stories.

        Lowell Bergman, a former 60 Minutes producer now covering terrorism for PBS' Frontline, points out that the network news divisions were laying off people earlier this year. “They had to hire people back to do this coverage,” he says.

        As Good Morning America co-anchor Charlie Gibson e-mailed to ABC colleague Barbara Walters during the 9-11 aftermath: “Isn't it wonderful to be back in the news business again? And isn't it tragic that it happened for this reason?”

        TV critic John Kiesewetter is reporting from the Television Critics Association press tour. E-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.

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