On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television NEWMAN AT NBC by marvin kitman IL^ast February, the television world was stunned by the news that Fred Silverman of ABC, the number one network, had defected to become president of...
...He is in the refrigerator, or wherever they keep the clonee...
...CBS has started doing the same...
...TV not a ratings business...
...I have never seen a series so drastically changed while still at the starting gate...
...In my view, a true programming genius would be abandoning the banal chest and trying to discover a new part of the anatomy as a source of programming...
...An exception is Harold Robbins' 79 Park Ave.—the story of a prostitute with a heart of pure gold and other valuable parts...
...As early as June 12, I noticed while shuffling through the clippings trying to figure out when he had gone bananas, Silverman was saying that what TV needed is more documentaries and news in prime time...
...a small royalty of five cents a head on every person who looks at or thinks about the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza...
...In March, lame duck Silverman began a forced exile from TV...
...You can't have reruns, his argument used to run, it's money down the toilet...
...NBC hopes the other networks, who have been known to do whatever Freddy does, will commit themselves to these patently nonsensical ideas...
...Until then, the clone at RCA's helm will continue running weird things like "quality counts" and prime-time documentaries up the flagpole...
...and not only that, 2) they are bad for quality...
...Then, it will spring the trap...
...The network, for instance, will be starting the fall season with virtually the same line-up announced last spring, before his arrival...
...The real Freddy Silverman would have bought his suits at Barney's (with the pre-rumpled press...
...For him, the only people living were 18-34-year-olds...
...He immediately changed this to Kids and is putting the star, Caren Kaye, proud owner of the nicest gams on TV since Secretariat, in the background...
...I would say that Fred may even have an Achilles' soul...
...My sources say Freddy is still in Hawaii, at Jack Lord's house, where he spent his exile because he enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere...
...Otherwise folks will be comparing Griffith to the late Arthur Taylor of CBS fame...
...With the release of this season's schedules last April and May, it was clear that ABC and CBS had the T&A sewed up, while NBC was going to be legs...
...The pelvis sold Elvis, not the sneering lip...
...Gould, incidentally, is today a television repairman in Connecticut...
...For it raises a question far greater than "what has happened to Fred metaphysically...
...The exile was spent largely in Hawaii, lying on the beach, where most new TV programming ideas originate...
...It demands an answer to the deep problem of where he is physically...
...Now he's going to let us watch a whole show about grandfathers in prime time—on a weekday (Wednesday) night...
...This line of reasoning was detailed in a famous letter to critics by M. S. Rukeyser Jr, vice president for corporate relations...
...But it was...
...Except for the head, the whole anatomy was neatly divided...
...Couldn't there, for example, be a pelvic thing...
...Being, after all, a perfect stranger, he would need time to find out where the executive washroom and other such essentials were located...
...This hoax, my sources add, will be uncovered by RCA at the start of the second season in January...
...I was shocked...
...There are many theories about the new intellectual Silverman...
...Silverman's main problem at ABC, it used to be said, was his taste...
...The miniseries Centennial based on James Michener's novel, has not been cancelled yet either...
...He doesn't want to be remembered as Mike Dann, but as Frank Stanton...
...When the acknowledged king of kiddie porn—whose concentration on programming for teenagers and dummies won ABC the name "the pimple network"—took over at NBC in June, he inherited a show with the great title of Legs...
...There is more to the new Freddy, though, than his simply walking around the corridors of NBC saying, "I'm not going to do Charlie's Angels anymore, I'm going to do news...
...The real Freddy Silverman, after being thawed in the hot sun, will ride in on a big wave from Hawaii just in time for Christmas with a whole new schedule...
...Indeed all the prestigious literary properties that NBC has been famous for in its decline to the bottom, are continuing as planned...
...and, eventually, Radio City Music Hall for his kids so they will have a place to play...
...It simply couldn't be...
...The other networks, however, soon began ripping off that seminal concept (NBC had Roller Girls, CBS had The National Cheerleaders Contest and Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes...
...Yet, here he is, doing the news specials in prime time that once were done at 11:30 p.m...
...The original Freddy didn't give a damn about grandfathers...
...Under the terms of his contract with ABC, he was not allowed any contact with his new bosses until the pact expired in June...
...Edgar Griffith, chairman of the board of RCA, parent company of NBC, was hailed for the coup of luring Freddy away from the competition with a package said to include: a large sum of money...
...It was widely quoted in the daily newspapers and was the funniest thing that came out of NBC this year...
...But under the Silverman administration, NBC has gone to the head—with documentaries, public affair shows and realistic medical series like Lifeline...
...He was offered the same money whether he became the head of programming at the network or the head of the whole corporation...
...I always thought that if there was anything that Freddy hated more than a 14 share of the ratings, it was live programming...
...Come on...
...Calling the Silverman currently at NBC a clone is not a mere calumny...
...Silverman himself is said to have left CBS, prior to coming to ABC, because he resented William Pa-ley's hiring 42-longs for every executive job...
...The bad programming of last year, in fact, has been blamed on tight pinch pleats in suits being worn in Hollywood...
...On June 6, amid all the hubbub, the Messiah of NBC finally arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, corporate headquarters...
...He could not meet, discuss, write letters, telephone, send or receive carrier pigeons, or even think about what he would do at NBC—since thoughts travel, mental telepathists argue...
...It's not just some organ on the periphery...
...This may, in fact, have been the very same beach where a few years ago he thought of using bralessness as entertainment (Charlie's Angels, Three's Company, et al...
...And so, while Freddy sunned himself, everyone was wondering what new things he would come up with...
...This new Silverman has also made some other alterations to suit his born again persona...
...It is that the Freddy Silverman who took over at NBC the first week of June is not the original Freddy Silverman but a clone...
...I call upon the FCC to look into these charges immediately...
...courageously betting on the controversial notion that the American public would watch anything that moved...
...Any day now, there will be nothing on at 11:30—except Johnny Carson...
...So NBC will be airing a program titled Grandpa Goes to Washington, starring Jack Albertson...
...Not since the golden years (circa 1950) of Jack Gould, the legendary eccentric TV critic of the New York Times, had anybody spoken so eloquently and passionately for public affairs programming...
...Insiders know how important tailoring is in TV today...
...It's not just the man's Achilles' heel," Eli Evans, a foundation executive once observed...
...My theory is more credible, though...
...Never mind that nobody would have known the difference because all sitcoms are interchangeable...
...For RCA Chairman of the Board Edgar Griffith's sake, he had better turn out to be a clone...
...I did not really check in on Fred during the first 40-50 days...
...This couldn't be the same fellow we all knew at ABC, the one so deeply involved in ratings it was predicted that two hours after he arrived for work he would change NBC's address to 30.4 Rockefeller Plaza...
...He chose the latter...
...It's his Achilles' heart...
...The practice is unfair to the other networks...
...The old Silverman would have thrown out the whole schedule his second day at the office, after he had figured out how to use the phones...
...Now there is a man who took Marshall Mc-Luhan's message about the medium seriously...
...Well, he and Stanton have the same initials, anyway...
...Then there's Dick Clark's Live Wednesday, another grandfather of a show, hosted by a man who has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age...
...This will consist entirely of the usual Silverman-type programs that really turned the ball game around in 1975 and made TV such a drag...
...He doesn't want to go down in history as the kiddie porn jiggler...
...The letter could have been Rukeyser's application for head of the situation comedy department...
...A new Freddy had appeared...
...It's almost as if Fred thought he was back at CBS...
...As a test of authenticity, they could make the New York Fred Silverman sit through 12 consecutive hours of The San Pedro Beach Bums—and he will either talk or cry...
...But on July 20, Silverman caught my attention by claiming: 1) Ratings mean nothing...
...Finally, the most telling evidence of all that something strange has happened: The day that this so-called Silverman walked into the RCA Building, he bought six new Paul Stuart suits...
...He is trying to wipe out his old reputation," explained Reuven Frank, a vice presidentatNBC'Hedoesn'twantto be known as the tits and ass man...
...On Television NEWMAN AT NBC by marvin kitman IL^ast February, the television world was stunned by the news that Fred Silverman of ABC, the number one network, had defected to become president of NBC, the number three network...
Vol. 61 • September 1978 • No. 18
