SPELLING SPEAKS OUT ABOUT TV, DIVERSITY

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"Awww, it's just a popcorn movie."

A nice way for Aaron Spelling to talk about Satan's School for Girls, the movie produced by his company and airing March 13 on ABC (8 ET/PT).

But Spelling's candid assessment sounds right on the money. What do you expect from a supernatural thriller featuring Shannen Doherty as a distraught woman who enrolls in a New England college to find out why her sister, who was a student there, mysteriously committed suicide?

It's a remake of a TV movie that Spelling did in 1973. One twist: Kate Jackson, featured in the original as a student and later one of the stars of Spelling's smash Charlie's Angels, returns to play the college dean.

"We cast it to appeal to the Buffy and Charmed crowd - the young people who like supernatural tales," says Spelling, who also produces Charmed, which stars Doherty. "We cast Daniel Cosgrove (of Spelling's Beverly Hills, 90210) as her love interest. Buffy's Julie Benz is in it, too."

Satan's is typical Spelling - palatable pulp fiction that audiences eat up - and critics carve up.

But Spelling, 71, didn't get to be a megamillionaire producer - presiding over Spelling Entertainment Group Inc. from a plush office the size of a two-bedroom apartment - by catering to critics.

Scan his list of series, dating to the early '70s - including The Mod Squad, Starsky and Hutch, Dynasty, Fantasy Island, Melrose Place and T.J. Hooker - and the lone critical favorite was Family.

"With a series, you figure out what people want and you give it to them," says Spelling, who is small, slender, dapper, silver-haired, raspy-voiced and incessantly puffing on a pipe. "You don't always get it right, but sometimes I do."

Sure, he's no longer the king of series TV. In fact, WB's Safe Harbor was a bust this season, and Buddy Faro (CBS) and Love Boat: The Next Wave (UPN) failed last season.

But he's still hard at work, with three shows on the air - WB's Charmed and 7th Heaven and Lifetime's Any Day Now - and other pilots in the works.

Spelling is behind Titans, a Dynasty-style soap for NBC, starring Casper Van Dien as a fighter pilot who returns home. Spelling also is offering Lost Souls, a drama about a haunted hospital for UPN.

Though the WB series have bigger audiences, his pet project is clearly Day (Sundays, 10 p.m.), about a friendship between two women - one white (Annie Potts) and one black (Lorraine Toussaint) - that's starting its third season .

"I was worried when it started because it's not a show that's going to appeal to the Ku Klux Klan and all the bigots out there," he says. "The networks can say what they want, but until now, they weren't interested in diversity," Spelling charges.

"You'd say, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if you had this character as African-American?' and you'd get that look that says, 'No.' I don't understand why you wouldn't want to get that African-American audience. But now they're finally asking for diversity."

Spelling acknowledges his own diversity record is tarnished: "I'm no knight in shining armor. I could have done a lot more in past years. One of Charlie's Angels could have been African-American."

This season hasn't been all sunshine for Spelling. NBC washed away his soap, Sunset Beach, but that wasn't as traumatic as Fox finally pink-slipping Beverly Hills, 90210 - the granddaddy of the teen dramas - after 10 years.

"That really hurt," Spelling says. "We thought we were going to get another year. At first Fox was asking us to come back. After a while, the whole cast agreed to come back, except Brian Austin Green - and I think he would have eventually agreed. The ratings were OK, but it was based on money. But maybe they thought it was time to make a change, when the new people came in to take over Fox."

And then there's the ugly tabloid-style battle he has been having with Jessica Biel, one of the stars of 7th Heaven. In a flagrant attempt to get kicked off the wholesome series, Biel did a topless spread in the March issue of Gear magazine. She was 17 at the time of the photo session.

"If my daughter did that kind of layout at her age, I would have quit the business forever," Spelling says.

What riled him the most about the incident?

"They listed me as a senior editor, which they thought was a joke," says Spelling, who filed a $100 million lawsuit against Gear and publisher Bob Guccione Jr. for libel and misrepresentation of association. "A lot of people thought it was true. We've gotten calls, saying, 'How could you have approved any of this?' I have a wife I have to report to. If I was a part of that, she would never have spoken to me again."

Though clearly upset, Spelling doesn't bash Biel. "I like Jessica," he says diplomatically. "I'm not against Jessica. I'm not suing Jessica. She's a very good actress. I love to work with her. I'd love for her to stay."

But she has no choice.

"She's got two years left on her contract," Spelling says with a grin.