On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television HERE'S YOUR EMMY-WHATS YOUR HURRY BY MARVIN KITMAN he surest way to win an Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in a Variety/Talk Series" (the nominees this year were Johnny Carson,...
...What, you mean you never won an Emmy...
...But this is no time for recriminations...
...It will work for any program aimed at a highbrow audience...
...Some believe Griffin misread his problem in this regard...
...As a CBS executive said of the strategy for saving Griffin when he ran into a similar problem last year: "He's already pulled out all the stops, and added three homes in Iowa...
...It is not necessarily true that only talk shows can use this effective method of winning an Emmy...
...A few years later My World and Welcome to It, starring William Windom, won a shelf full of Emmies...
...Both guests walked off the show...
...The third phase of his secret plot to win the Emmy was the threat of cancellation...
...how else would he know who was No...
...When the Hollywood version of the Tonight Show opened on May 1, Shelley Winters called everybody's attention to the fact that Carson is prizeless...
...We're not going to be swayed by the lunatic fringe," they think...
...I mean, couldn't he have better guests or something...
...The single threat to him during all the maneuvering was Frost...
...The date was just talk, for everybody knew that Cavett would receive a three-month stay of execution and then get the ax...
...In the 1960s Bob Newhart received enough praise (includingaPeabody) and low ratings to capture an Emmy for "the outstanding new entertainment series...
...He's so far in a hole," one network observer noted, "he can reach up and touch bottom...
...Johnny Carson never had a chance: His NBC talk show had the high ratings and no critical acclaim...
...Nevertheless, the timing was right...
...half a million letters didn't save Garry Moore on CBS...
...A fellow like Carson needs the ratings...
...Over 300,000 letters didn't save Merv Griffin when his game show was dropped by NBC in the early 1960s...
...If networks are hesitant about a show, four letters of complaint are enough to rip the guy off the air...
...ABC would say, for example, that his audience was up 24 per cent when describing a jump in the ratings from 2 to 2.3—roughly the margin of error in TV polling...
...Intelligent viewers apparently were going to bed at night, instead of watching television, the sex-crazed maniacs...
...All of this may be too complicated for the average viewer to understand, but that doesn't matter much now...
...It's a matter of principle...
...The situation comedy series had everything going for it: stories by a New Yorker writer (James Thurber), high egghead appeal, reams of critical praise, and no numbers to speak of...
...Cavett also may be too thin for a successful television host...
...Everybody knows that you can't make it in TV or the NBA Basketball League if you're a little fellow...
...spot...
...The only thing Cavett hasn't tried is taking his show to Fort Lauderdale, where they really understand a Yalie's humor, during Easter Week...
...After all, their man was on the air to provide an alternative to Carson, Griffin or old movies...
...Carson did his famous quadruple-take...
...They say the poor fellow is still riding back and forth on that BOAC plane as if nothing happened...
...Knowing the way it is in the business, Cavett first went out after the low ratings essential in any campaign...
...Merv Griffin, on the other hand, decided to leave the late-night field, a reliably informed source claims, because he thought it would help him win an Emmy...
...These Emmies are everything in TV," one insider pointed out, speculating that Griffin agreed to move his show from a major network like CBS to syndication, a real come down, just to get the 8:30 P.M...
...Good night, Dick, and good luck...
...Voters who were still on the fence went solidly for Cavett...
...1? But Cavett didn't need them, everybody at ABC told the critics...
...Personally, Cavett was always above the nonsense of ratings...
...Well, now that they're gone, maybe I might win one...
...Outsiders don't understand how the TV letters game works...
...That proves you can't win an Emmy after 11:30 P.M...
...Before a small audience of 1,000 ABC affiliate owners and top executives in Los Angeles, Starger warned that if Cavett didn't straighten up by July, he would be fired...
...Yet this is his third network program slated for cancellation...
...As one network official explained about the cancellation notice that immediately followed, "You really have to know a little history to get his Lincoln routine...
...How would it have sounded if the host of the 24th annual Emmy awards—televised on CBS this year—had to say to himself, "The winner is Johnny Carson...
...David Frost of London put all these things together in 1970 and 1971, the first two years the Variety/Talk Series category was in existence...
...In reality, the guilty group is the sophisticated part of the TV audience, your so-called intellectuals (i.e., anybody with an IQ of 107...
...It is puzzling why Cavett has been so consistently unsuccessful on TV...
...Further investigation has turned one up: the size of his audience...
...One theory holds that the British veteran, seeing how Cavett was campaigning so openly for the award, decided, "I better get my show canceled quick or I won't have a chance to win my third Emmy in a row...
...His thinking is reported to have run as follows: Frost was selected two years in a row with a show that started at 8:30 P.M...
...Part of Cavett's problem, as I explained before the third version of his show went on the air (December, 1969), is that he is too short...
...The last winner of the Variety/Talk Series Emmy is probably the best host in the history of the genre...
...They are the ones who, while swearing they loved Cavett, weren't watching him...
...Even in New York City, the hot center of American intellectual ferment, the Yalie usually lagged behind Carson and Griffin...
...But for some reason it wasn't until 1972 that Frost's boss?Westinghouse Broadcasting—finally got around to telling him that he had been dropped...
...Let's get out of here...
...The only trouble is that even if you win, you lose: The reward the industry gives for the most sought-after prize in television is almost always cancellation...
...He is intelligent, idealistic, a good listener and a fine sitdown comic...
...Because of his tight "shedule," it is possible that Group W was not able to get ahold of him until last May 3 to discuss the problems his show had been having since 1970...
...The Variety/Talk Series category itself was canceled a few days after the Emmy evening...
...In order to convince the industry that he was a serious candidate, Cavett persuaded ABC to leak word that his show was in trouble...
...We're going to stand firm against the 300,000 members of the lunatic fringe...
...But at his worst on CBS Griffin's ratings were around 5, hardly low enough for him to be considered seriously for an Emmy...
...Traditionally, the blame for Cavett's low ratings is put on the unsophisticated part of the TV audience (viewers living in places like Iowa and Idaho), considered to have an IQ of 106 and prefer the alternatives to him...
...He was joking, of course...
...The one thing every intelligent person concerned about Cavett's fate should not do is waste his time writing letters of protest...
...Isn't there anything that could be done to save Dick Cavett...
...asked Don Rickles, who was appearing with her...
...Has network, however, occasionally tried to make a lot out of the numbers...
...This was very subtly done in April by ABC programming vice president Martin Starger...
...At most, therefore, my revelations are useful background information for what promises to be the season's major television event: The final agony of the Dick Cavett Show this fall may well rival in emotion the end of those great talkers, Sacco and Vanzetti, in the 1920s...
...If the threat of being canceled is hanging over your show, too, you have an unbeatable combination...
...At any rate, it can now be revealed that this was the secret strategy Dick Cavett used to win the Variety/Talk Series Emmy the night of May 14...
...Sooner or later, that kind of thinking can be held against you, as Cavett is now discovering...
...At the time I wrote that piece I couldn't think of any other reason a witty, urbane, intellectually curious fellow who has actually been known to read an author's book (sometimes) would run into so much trouble on TV...
...But if they've made up their mind that they don't like a guy, the letters are assumed to be a publicity campaign...
...Then Cavett found the critical acclaim he needed: Five major articles in leading national magazines sang his praises in the month of April alone...
...Cavett's ratings were right down there where they pay off, about 1.2...
...Carson and Cavett, as good as they are, have never made it...
...And he did it while keeping his late-night time slot...
...That would have been in worse taste than the way the Academy had a monkey (Buttons, the co-star of CBS' Me and the Chimp) give Cav-ett's representative (Carol Burnett) the most sought-after prize in TV...
...You know, the sort saying what a wonderful guy he is and how your life will be empty without him...
...On Television HERE'S YOUR EMMY-WHATS YOUR HURRY BY MARVIN KITMAN he surest way to win an Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in a Variety/Talk Series" (the nominees this year were Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and David Frost) is to receive critical acclaim and low ratings during the previous season...
Vol. 55 • June 1972 • No. 13
