Viewer Discretion Advised

"It's market research," Forsyth admits after a recent Friday-night preview. Television Preview conducts similar surveys in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta and Portland, Oregon. The company gathers viewers' opinions on commercials and programs (a Television Preview employee says, "My favorite answer was the person who wrote that Soulmates should be shown to the prison population as a form of punishment") and e-mails the results the same night to the people paying for the research -- "mostly advertisers," Forsyth says.

In fact, some viewers might have remembered City from 1990, when the show's 13 episodes were broadcast.

Andrew Luke is the field operations manager for Research Systems Corporation, also known as Television Preview. Though the company is based in Indiana, the letter sent to recruit previewers has a Beverly Hills return address.

Luke insists that the company shows more previews than just Soulmates and City. "It just depends on what year it was," he says. The programs, he says, are "owned by certain people, and they've already sunk money into producing these, and they have a finished product that they'd like to see a return on." For a while, Luke says, those certain people "were looking at Valerie Harper and wondering if there was another vehicle they could develop for her."

But Tony Cacciotti, Valerie Harper's husband and business partner and an executive producer of City, is apparently not one of those certain people.

"Wow, that's amazing," Cacciotti says when the Pitch informs him of Television Preview's use of City. The Beverly Hills-based Cacciotti says he, Harper and City producer Paul Haggis split ownership of the show with CBS, the network that broadcast it.

"My god, we're duped," says Cacciotti, who says he had heard rumors that a company like Television Preview was showing City. "This is the first time I've gotten real clear information on this. Maybe I didn't want to believe it before, that they're doing this so often. They can't do this. This is sort of ripping off all of us."

How would Harper feel about it? "Not good at all," her husband says. "Anytime anyone uses her likeness, they have to call and get a release ... and this is way beyond that. No one ever approached us about this. It's an abuse that they're getting away with financially, so we've got to get to the bottom of it. They really should be paying us.

"I've gotta make some calls," Cacciotti says abruptly before hanging up his cell phone. But surely Harper would be glad to know that, according to the most recent polling results on Television Preview's Web site, 78 percent of audiences liked City.

Maybe she's gonna make it after all.