NEW YORK (AP) – If viewers still identify Aaron Spelling with starlets whose brassieres didn’t fully rein them in, that might say as much about the viewers as it does about him.

The fact is, once upon a time the audience was eager to watch those “three little girls who went to the police academy” fight crime with a jiggle and a wink. In 1976, “Charlie’s Angels” became an instant hit. All Spelling had to do was come up with it.

Same as he did with dozens upon dozens of other TV projects of a dizzying variety spanning a half-century.

Consider a recent pair of long-running series he produced for The WB: a show about witches (“Charmed”) and a show about a priest (“7th Heaven”). That enough variety for you?

Sure, Spelling can be simply defined. But not just as the architect of “jiggle TV,” or as a partner with Mike Nichols on the much-honored drama “Family” (1976-80), or as the real captain of “The Love Boat” (1977-86), or as the innovator who made groundbreaking TV films about AIDS, anorexia and nuclear war, or as the doting dad who sprang Tori Spelling on the world as one among a crop of teen idols on “Beverly Hills 90210” (1990-2000).

Simply defined, he was the embodiment of nothing less than television’s vast, crowd-pleasing capabilities. And his passing Friday at 83 is the latest suggestion that TV, at least as we know it, is passing, too.

Artistry on TV is always in limited supply, and no one ever said Spelling displayed more than his share.

But even rarer is the visionary who can satisfy the audience’s tastes – the impresario who knows what viewers want, sometimes even before they do, and then gives it to them. On this, Spelling’s track record certifies the exacting calibration of his gut.

Stephen Collins, who plays the Rev. Eric Camden on “7th Heaven,” describes Spelling as a hardworking, shy man endowed with extraordinary creative instincts.

“He didn’t worry about what other people thought,” Collins said in an interview Saturday. “If he had a strong gut feeling, he would follow it.”

In a business at the mercy of viewer fickleness and disposable crazes, Spelling seemed always ready for the next thing – ready to recognize it and usher it in, renewing himself in the process.

Example: With ABC’s cancellation of “Dynasty” in 1989 after eight seasons, Spelling – for the first time since 1960 – had no series on the air. He was 66. He was obviously finished.

But then, a generation after having saved the moribund ABC with a string of hits including “Charlie’s Angels,” Spelling handed the struggling, young Fox network “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place,” thus establishing the next act in his storied career.

What explains his skill, enormous output and longevity? Was it thanks to the common touch he brought with him to Hollywood from his native Texas as (in his self-appraisal) a poor Jewish boy from the wrong side of the tracks?

Was it because he helped write the rules of TV entertainment in the first place?

Whatever the case, he was indisputably a master of television, even TV as it is now, rocked by change and, some insist, living on borrowed time. And if he felt perplexed by the current turmoil – the splintering of audiences across countless channels; on-demand and multi-platform breakthroughs that seem to challenge all conventional TV wisdom – Spelling had too sure a foothold in TV’s grand traditions to be jeopardized.

But the audience he leaves behind might reasonably wonder: Now what?

Who in the industry now can boast of a comparable crowd-pleasing touch?

And if TV evolves into a wellspring of sound-and-motion bubbling from iPods and cell phones as well as PCs and wall-size plasma screens, what then? What impresario could possibly surface, like Spelling did a half-century ago, to master that new media?

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Associated Press Writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE – Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org.

AP-ES-06-24-06 1622EDT

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