VANCOUVER - For 20 seasons, Canadians tuned in to The Beachcombers every Sunday to watch the antics of the gang at Molly's Reach. Today, Nick Adonidas and his foe, Relic, continue to feud on television screens around the world. But the artists who brought the show to life claim they have been tuned out by the CBC as it continues to cash in on the series.

It's an outrageous abuse of the artists in this country, says Jean Teillet, a Vancouver lawyer representing the estate of a former writer for The Beachcombers, which aired on CBC for 20 seasons beginning in 1972.

Her client, the late Merv Campone, believed series personnel are owed possibly millions or dollars in royalties, an allegation the CBC denies.

We do feel that we have paid the performers properly, says network spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles.

Networks and producers are responsible for reporting sales and rebroadcasts of shows, and for calculating royalties and residual payments.

Unfortunately, it hasn't been the case with respect to two major series out of the past that the CBC has been exploiting quite extensively - The Beachcombers and the Wayne &Shuster series, and there may be others, says Stephen Waddell, national executive director of ACTRA, the union that represents performers.

The union's performers' rights society, which pursues such claims for members, had three staff members a few years ago. Today it has 13 staffers dealing with hundreds of claims.

Most of those claims are with independent producers, Waddell says. But we're particularly concerned with the CBC because the CBC is the mother corporation, it is a publicly funded corporation and we've had an agreement with the CBC for over 50 years.

It's not something that anyone would expect, particularly the taxpayers of this country, would expect would occur with the CBC.

If The Beachcombers is rebroadcast on CBC, performers receive a residual fee. If the program is sold to another network - The Beachcombers now is shown on Showcase while Wayne &Shuster appears on the Comedy Network - performers receive a royalty payment, Waddell explains.

ACTRA believes foreign sales of The Beachcombers haven't been properly reported.

The disputed amounts range from perhaps a few hundred dollars for a minor role to thousands for series regulars.

Waddell hopes the union and the public broadcaster will appear before an independent arbitrator within months.

In most cases they're saying that their claim is not valid, says Waddell. They're saying that they have been reporting (foreign sales). We believe they haven't been.

We're happy to go before an arbitrator and prove that they haven't been reporting properly nor meeting their obligations.

The CBC is prepared to make its case, says spokeswoman Soles.

This has been an issue for ACTRA for some time, but CBC is . . . willing to work with ACTRA in order to satisfy their concerns, she said. We're willing to sit down and talk and I don't think there's anything more to say.

Teillet does not have a lot of faith that the dispute will be settled through arbitration.

I suspect we will have to launch a court case against them to get this to settle, she says.

She attended the funeral of Merv Campone last week and now will pursue the claim on behalf of his widow, Joanne.

Almost Merv's last words to me were that he wants to have this brought out, Teillet says.