The Business Behind the Box What really goes on inside a fabu ous American industry- its rating wars, its transient titans, its aucience packagers -by -he Television Editor of VARIETY Les Brown JD 1111U1Lauitlimrve, $8.95 Les Brown TEL The Business Behind the Box Talk of what's wrong with television is as copu- lar as weather talk but few really understand how the American TV system works. Les Brown does. A reporter with unique access to network high councils, he has written a vivid, anecdotal, and unvarnished documentary of a year in the TV business-a typical year but one filled with trauma for the industry. The book analyzes the differences between ABC, CBS, and NBC, un- ravels the executive -suite intrigues, the role fear plays in program decisions, the bitter conflict between the networks and their affiliate stations, and assesses the quality of the largely transient titans who control the most powerful communi- cations medium ever known. Taking the reader inside the industry, peopling it, and defining the scene, Mr. Brown demonstrates that the public is not so much served by television as served up and sold. 'It is viewers, not programs, that are the product of commercial TV. Televi$ion explains the numbers rating game, the complex strategies used to plan a TV season, the often intimidating role of the FCC; and ex- plores, too, the curious nature of "public" tele- vision. This first full account of what life is like in the business behind the box will not fail to fascinate the addicted and the selective viewer. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 757 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 Contents The Three Rocks A Sprig of Hollywood The Six -Minute Hour Hatfierds and McCoys Fail -Safe The Million -Dollar Muse The Men from Sales Babbitt at Fifty Specials: Beauty and Truth Network Families in Conflict Molting Season The Summer People The Fourth Quarter The Public Service Quo Video? Les Brown, editor of Variety's Television and Radio section, has been covering the show -busi- ness industries as a journalist since 1953. He lives in suburban New York with his wife and three children. Jacket design by Wendell Minor Jacket photo by Herb Reade TELEVI ION Les Brown TELEVI i ION The Business Behind the Box Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. New York iw Copyright © 1971 by Lester L. Brown All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 0-15-188450-1 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-153684 Printed in the United States of America BCDE For Jean and Jessica, Joshua, and Rebecca Foreword On West Forty-sixth Street in Manhattan, some fifty or sixty paces from Broadway, there is a dingy, narrow, and antiquated five -story structure squeezed between the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre and the rear emergency exit of Loew's State. Built originally as a millinery shop around the turn of the century, it has retained the original façade, complete to the split-level display windows. In the upper window two men sit at their desks; in the lower stands the blow-up of a newspaper's front page. On the windows, in fading green paint and in old-style lettering of eccentric flourish, is the legend: Variety. It is the home of the venerable show business journal, published weekly since 1905, and it will play a part in this book because it is where I work, as editor of the television and radio section. A depressing place to most outsiders, it scorns all the niceties of white-collar life and most ofthe modern conveniences, including fresh air. The hard environ- ment seems to breed a brash, independent kind of journalist with a deep skepticism about press handouts, who delights in uncovering news stories that companies and government agencies are not eager to make known. Since this book's pri- mary source is Variety, it owes certain reportorialdebts to various broadcast beat reporters, but particularly to Bill Greeley, Larry Michie, and Steve Knoll. Others on the paper, including Bob Knight, Leonard Traube, and Jack Pitman, and numerous persons in the broadcast industry who would probably not want to be identified helped in providing in- formation. viii Foreword The interpretation and viewpoint, however, are one man's only, and the esteemed newspaper on which he has schooled for seventeen years must not be held answerable for his opinions. More responsible for this book than any other person- save perhaps the author-was William B. Goodman, my editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., who not only initi- ated the project and guided its course but asked the pertinent questions, as a consumer and layman, that helped to shape its purposes. Without Milton Slater's kindness this book would not have been begun, and without the abidance of the two men in Variety's upper -level window, its publisher, Syd Silverman, and editor, Abel Green, it would not have been completed. I am also indebted to such good friends and col- leagues as Richard Burgheim, Robert Bernstein, Ben Kuba- sik, and Richard Kellerman for their aid and moral support. I set out in January 1970 to write on how the American television system works, and about the men who work in it, using as a framework the events that would take place in that calendar year. My expectation was that, whatever occurred, it would be in most respects a typical year. It proved to be a kind of Abraham Zapruder experience. The late Zapruder, with his simple home movie camera, thought he was filming a presidential motorcade in Dallas and instead recorded the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While far from comparable in historic importance, my experience was to chronicle not the average year I had ex- pected, but a chaotic twelve months for the television in- dustry, full of change and portents of greater upheavals ahead-without doubt the harshest and most uncertain year in two decades of the Beautiful Business. But as it developed, the trials of 1970 served to put a sharper than normal focus on the structure of the system and the mentality of American broadcasting. Looking back, it was not an untypical year. The events were inevitable, and the men in television dealt with them most typically. Bless them. Contents Foreword, vii 1 The Three Rocks,3 2 A Sprig of Hollywood, 16 3 The Six -Minute Hour, 47 4Hatfields and McCoys, 69 5 Fail -Safe, 98 6The Million -Dollar Muse, 124 7 The Men from Sales, 139 8 Babbitt at Fifty, 158 9Specials: Beauty and Truth, 182 10Network Families in Conflict, 204 11 Molting Season, 237 12 The Summer People, 262 13 The Fourth Quarter, 288 14 The Public Service, 314 15 Quo Video?, 347 Index, 367 TELEVI ION 1 The Three Rocks Along the steel -and -glass canyon that has become Sixth Avenue midtown, with façades so sober and businesslike they could pass for brokerage houses, stand the three rocks of American broadcasting -30 Rock, Black Rock, and Hard Rock. The visitor to New York riding uptown along the Avenue of the Americas (still Sixth Avenue to the natives) might catch sight of the illuminated ABC cube outside theen- trance at Fifty-fourth Street; otherwise, he would have no sense of passing through Television Row, that unique quarter mile where most of what appears on his and 83 million other home receivers is ordained. Except for ABC's lighted sign, the buildings seem to strive for anonymity. Beyond a plaque identifying it as the RCA Building and small marquees on the side streets, the home of NBC is unmarked on the row; and CBS, with a fas- tidiousness about contemporary design, has placed its letters where they will neither offend nor attract the eye. The three rocks are substantial members of the business landscapeon Sixth, which includes the Burlington, Equitable Life, Time- Life, Sperry Rand, J. C. Penney, Amax, McGraw-Hill, Uni- royal, and Standard Oil buildings. That is considered fortu- nate. NBC, CBS, and ABC would rather associate with big business than with any other kind, least of all show business. Sensible, Stable, and Prosperous is what the buildings say. The message is for the investment community. More glamour and theatricality surround the mercantile Penney or Burlington buildings than the three great centers of entertainment and communications. 4 The Three Rocks No stars or producers mill about their entrances, no tele- vision monitors or other symbolic hardware betray the craft in the outer lobbies, no signboards tell what TV Guide says about the day's programing. NBC's ground level isa mall for clothing shops, toy and shoe emporia, newsstands, anda pharmacy with a lunch counter. CBS's tenants are a bank and an expensive restaurant with a name as blunt as a check- book, The Ground Floor. ABC's are a bank, a Loft's candy shop, and the entrance to an underground parking garage. Only NBC produces television shows on the premises- Today, Tonight, the daytime games and panels, and news- casts-and invites tours to the studios and the engineering operations. The other two have their actual broadcast plants in factory buildings in seedy West Side streets, and it is from there that films and video tapes-most of them transported from Hollywood, where they were produced-are fed out over the air. These annexes also house the news divisions and are the origination points for the newscasts; the more pretentious shows are done from old midtown theaters that have been converted to television studios.