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-- THE ENEMY WITHIN Unless you're Don King, it's pretty hard to root for both fighters in a title bout. But, alas, that's a situation a lot of studio execs are facing this fall, when the new season kicks into high gear with an unprecedented number of conflicts of interest. The network Fox, for example, wants The X-Files to crush ABC's rookie Sunday challenger, Snoops, yet both shows are from producers Twentieth Century Fox TV. Warner Bros.' ABC hit The Drew Carey Show will square off against its studio's new NBC drama The West Wing. And of Carsey-Werner's three shows on the air, two -- NBC's 3rd Rock From the Sun and Fox's That '70s Show -- are facing off on Tuesday nights. Not only that, both shows are from creators Bonnie and Terry Turner. ''We are now being forced to buy a TV with two screens,'' cracks Terry.
Twentieth prez Sandy Grushow -- who has 13 shows in direct competition -- is trying to look on the bright side. ''The reality is you're always competing against someone. It might as well be ourselves.'' In other words, it's not the worst problem to have -- though sibling rivalry can get intense. ''Where it gets sticky is when the producers of the struggling shows think you're spending more dollars on the successful shows,'' says a former Warner Bros. TV exec who saw four of his series go head-to-head in '93.
Grushow, of course, maintains he ''loves all his shows equally.'' But, he adds realistically, ''I may feel differently two months from now.''
-- CLASS DISMISSED? Fox's racy high school soap, Manchester Prep (previewed on page 85), may flunk out even before the semester begins. The latest trouble started when Entertainment Tonight aired a scene in which one character teaches another how to really enjoy horseback riding. The footage outraged Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, who called his programming chief, Doug Herzog, to complain. The scene was permanently scrapped, and Prep's producers are now scrambling to revamp scripts for a yet-to-be-announced premiere date.
