ABC cleans up 'Soap' for premiere H

By Jay Sharbutt

AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES ABC, both elated and worried about publicity over its sex-spiced "Soap" comedy, said it wll remake parts of the first two episodes of the new series.

But network officials, announcing this from New York by closed-circuit television to 195 affiliate stations, didn't say why the change was ordered or if already-printed criticism of the show led to their decision.

The series, to premiere next September in a 9:30 p.m. time slot on Tuesdays, is about two suburban families and is described by ABC as an "outrageous character-comedy soap opera."

The leadoff episodes touch comically on impotence, a homosexual youth considering a sexchange operation, a philandering husband and a young tennis bum having separate affairs with a married woman and her daughter.

In his speech to affiliates, Alfred Schneider, ABC'S chief censor, discussed only one scene involving the tennis bum and the two women and didn't specify what was being changed in it.

He only said that because of the change the scene "is funnier."

ABC programs chief Fred Silverman conceded the network likes as much advance publicity and comment about a new series as possible,

but said "matters seem to have gotten a bit out of hand."

"Never have so many words been written about a television pilot which so few people have actually seen," he said.

He didn't mention that ABC, after earlier screening the first two episodes for affiliates and some TV critics, now refuses to show them to other critics until the ordered scene changes are taped.

Silverman said some published reports about the series were "based on story lines and ideas never contemplated much less approved by ABC. Fragments of misinformation all to often have distorted our real intention. Much of this unfortunately has been fanned by a story în Newsweek and by self-serving comments of a competitor.”

He disclosed neither the competitor nor the comments. The Newsweek magazine story, published June 13, said, among other things, that "what 'Soap' primarily is selling is sex, and with a harder core than any sitcom has ever dared.'

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It also said one future plot outline has the promiscuous daughter of one family trying to se duce a Jesuit priest în church.

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"Perhaps the most misleading reports of all had to do with the so-called 'seduction scene' in church," Silverman said, calling it totally untrue.

He said the outline actually concerns a promiscuous, extremely unhappy young woman who discovers that the priest hearing her confes sion in church is an old high school sweetheart.

During her confession, he said, she "breaks down and begins to profess her love for him again. There is no physical contact at all and Faz ther Tim resists temptation and stays true to his

vows.

One of the strongest attacks against "Soap came in the Los Angeles Roman Catholic publica tion The Tidings which castigated ABC. But the... publication later said its remarks were based solely on the Newsweek article and that the writer who accused the network of "casually dese crating every value sacred to Catholics” had not seen the shows.

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In addition, one homosexual organization, the International Union of Gay Athletes, protested to ABC that "Soap" portrays gays as "limp-wristed fruitcakes."

Despite what he calls "all the over-blown criticism" of the new series, ABC says only one station so far in Huntington, W. Va. has noti fied the network it won't carry the series.

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ABC said its Baltimore affiliate, owned by the Westinghouse broadcasting chain, told the network last month it won't air the show's first two episodes and is reserving judgment on succeeding episodes.

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