DOES THE EYE HAVE IT?

By RICHARD ZOGLIN/NEW ORLEANS

Muhammad Ali, a puffy and nearly immobile promoter for a new cable channel called American Sports Classics, sat in a director's chair as a line of people trooped up, one by one, to sit next to him, shake his hand and get a Polaroid memento of the occasion. Comedy Central enlivened the floor at the cable-TV industry's national convention two weeks ago with an array of carnival games, like Skee Ball. CBS, pushing its new cable channel, Eye on People, took a more subdued approach, with a booth featuring plush blue carpeting, comfortable seating and lots of space. The only thing that seemed to be in short supply was people.

Starting new channels has never been easy, but CBS's much belated entry into the cable sweepstakes, which debuts this week, is facing tougher odds than most. The network, to a great extent, has only itself to blame. While its broadcast rivals were busily getting into the cable business (ABC with ESPN; NBC with CNBC and America's Talking; Fox with FX and the Fox News Channel), CBS sat on its hands--or rather, on chairman Laurence Tisch's tight fists. That finally changed in 1995, when the company was sold to Westinghouse, which already owned a piece of one cable channel, CMT: Country Music Television; marketed another, TNN: The Nashville Network; and wanted more.

The trouble was, by the time CBS was ready to get into the game, all the good concepts had been taken. For Eye on People, the network has gathered up some top talent at CBS News, and a lot of videotape that's been lying around for years, to assemble a potpourri of informational programming about (you guessed it) people. Charles Kuralt is the host for I Remember, in which reporters talk about their reaction to major news events, like the Oklahoma City bombing. Paula Zahn anchors Fast Forward, which takes a look at people who used to be in the news, from Morton Downey Jr. to George McGovern. Final Cut will run unedited versions of interviews previously broadcast in shorter form on various CBS shows, while 60 Minutes More and 48 Hours Later will reprise and do follow-ups on stories aired earlier by those magazine shows.

The programming promises to be well produced and occasionally diverting, in an info-junk food sort of way. But quality, or lack of it, may have little to do with the new venture's fate. With dozens of channels fighting for a limited amount of space on the cable dial, a fuzzily conceived network like Eye on People lacks the gotta-have-it factor. Indeed, only about 2 million cable homes will get it initially. That figure could grow to 10 million by year's end, if the network's optimistic projections hold true. But even at that, the number of people watching at any given time is unlikely to rise above the low five figures.

Eye on People is far from the only case in which major resources and talent are being lavished on cable channels watched by almost no one. espnews, a 24-hour sports-news channel launched in November, is available in only about 1 million cable homes. Its chief competitor, CNN/SI (which is owned by Time Warner, also the parent of TIME), has managed to corral just 4 million. The Fox News Channel and MSNBC, two network-backed news channels launched last year to compete with CNN, have passed the 20 million and 30 million marks, respectively. Yet their average audience, according to preliminary ratings leaked by industry sources, is reported to be tiny.

With more focused channels like America's Health Network and the Sundance Channel competing for scarce channel space, why should Eye on People survive? Geoffrey Darby, a former top executive at Nickelodeon who was named president of the channel two months ago, makes a game effort to define its niche: "When you want to see stories about people, this is where you'll go." Yet Lloyd Werner, executive vice president of sales and marketing, admits that cable operators have so far reacted with "skepticism." Says he: "I've been doing this for 15 years, and it's never been so tough. There is a true dogfight for channels."

Nor is CBS trying to buy its way onto the dial, as channels like Fox News and Animal Planet (from the creators of the Discovery Channel) have done by offering money to cable systems in return for carrying them. Yet CBS does have some potential clout to wield. It could hold up permission for cable systems to retransmit local CBS stations unless they agree to pick up Eye on People--a tactic the other broadcast networks have used in order to get wider distribution for their start-up cable ventures.

Even so, CBS executives project that the channel won't break even for six years. If it can hang on that long, digital technology--or a new generation of direct-broadcast satellites--is expected to increase capacity so much that getting space on the dial will no longer be a problem. The goal for CBS, like its network competitors, in this virtually unlimited marketplace is to accumulate shelf space--and hope that Eye on People is one product shoppers won't pass by.