SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 1

I retired from the biz in August of 2015 after a 35 year career at two broadcast networks, NBC and FOX. I had good runs but as the sage Kenny Rogers said "You gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em"

Soon after leaving FOX I was approached by TV BY THE NUMBERS to write a column about TV ratings. Some days there was something to say and some days nothing so I decided to start writing about my years scheduling NBC in the 90's which was known as the Must-See-TV era.

As always, these tales are seen from my perspective and told fifteen years years or more after the occurred but that's memory. 

Recently TVBTN closed shop and for a while this 30-part saga was available and I would direst my Twitter followers to their site. I discovered yesterday that they no longer existed on the site. Fortunately I was given a heads up this may happen so I have save all 30 posts and will begin dropping them here on the blog.

My thanks to Rick Porter who is now at the Hollywood Reporter and edited these posts and made sure they made sense. I will add to this every few days.

Here we go.....

Back in 2002 NBC devoted a significant part of its May sweep to celebrating its 75^th anniversary in broadcasting. One of the specials was a look back at 20 years of Must-See TV. It was hosted by Eric McCormack, who played a slightly better-looking version of me. I believe he was standing in front of a scheduling board and going through the evolution of Thursday night and the expansion to Tuesday and beyond.

To be honest, I didn’t watch it. It was too painful, as NBC was in the process of dismantling the night that meant so much to the culture, the financial success of NBC and to me personally.

I thought it would be fun to spend a few days and take you behind the scenes of the scheduling decisions that resulted in Must-See TV. At the end of the day, it’s all about the shows, but back then, where those shows were positioned on the schedule still mattered. Also, most of the series that made up MSTV were not produced by the network-affiliated studio (big difference from how things are today), so issues such as time period commitments played a big role in decisions.

As you will see, the biggest gamble of moving “Frasier” and “Wings” over to Tuesday night to establish a second “front” was done because we found ourselves surprisingly commitment-free. Success changed that.

I came out to Burbank to be head of scheduling in the summer of 1991. We were at the tail end of the wildly successful “Cosby”/”A Different World”/”Cheers”/”Night Court”/”LA Law” era. My first pilot screening season was in 1989 while I was still in audience research. I was in the room for the screening of “The Seinfeld Chronicles.” This show was the seed of the MSTV comedy era. “Seinfeld” did not make the fall schedule, but Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s head of Entertainment, ordered four more episodes.

In 1990 I again came out for the pilot screenings, and Brandon invited me to go to the scheduling board and put up a schedule. This was a life-changing moment for me, and one of the first tiles I moved to the board was “Seinfeld.” I put it behind “Cheers” and moved “Wings,” which had debuted that spring, to Wednesday with “Night Court.” Lee Currlin, who was Brandon’s scheduler, quickly moved “Seinfeld” off the board and returned “Wings” to the Thursday 9:30 slot.

The following year (now I am soon to be head of scheduling), I again put “Seinfeld” behind “Cheers,” and Lee again moved it and put “Wings” back on Thursday. This year at least, “Seinfeld” remained on the fall schedule. I was starting to think something was up. It was. I was about to learn the dirty little secret of time period commitments.

In July 1991, I moved from New York City to Burbank to be Warren Littlefield’s head of scheduling. In addition to my family, I asked if I could bring my desk. It was my prize possession. By the end of December 1992 that desk had thirteen gashes in it, and the first scheduling move of the Must-See TV era was about to happen.

In October 1980, I started my career at NBC in New York as a management associate. After one year rotating around the various parts of Research, I spent two years with the NBC-owned stations division before going back up to the Network Audience Research area. I progressed from “Smurfs” to soaps before becoming VP Audience Research.

During my time in Research, one of the senior execs, Al Ordover, was my nemesis. I could do no right by Al, and he never hesitated to let me know it. I spent countless hours in Al’s office being schooled about research. The two things I remember about the office was this gigantic painting of a charging rhinoceros behind his desk and the desk itself, which wasn’t a desk but a long oval table.

After years of being tortured by Al, he suddenly became my best friend. I guess he saw he couldn’t break me. I enjoyed his company and learned so much from him. When he retired I asked him if I could have his desk (no interest in the rhino). That desk, along with my hack license on my front door, stayed with me through the rest of my run at NBC, on both coasts. That desk played a significant role in one of the most important scheduling decisions of the Must-See TV era.

As I said in part 1, my initial efforts to put “Seinfeld” behind “Cheers” resulted in then-scheduling head Lee Currlin moving “Seinfeld” out of the Thursday 9:30 slot and putting “Wings” back into that time period. I had a feeling that something was up, and when I became head of scheduling I was determined to find out.

John Agoglia was our head of business affairs, and we hit it off. John liked me because I was a family man, and as he always told me, “I know where you are every night.” It was his way of saying he knew I wasn’t out drinking and revealing the family secrets. John knew where all the bodies were buried, i.e. what were the scheduling land mines (concessions) that he needed to make to get a deal done.

“Cheers” and “Wings” were both Paramount shows, and when we made our last deal for “Cheers,” we agreed to keep “Wings” behind it for the entire 1991-92 season and for the first 13 originals in the 1992-93 season. Now I understood why Lee kept “Wings” in that time period.

“Seinfeld” spent the 1991-92 season on Wednesday night paired with “Night Court.” It was clear that creatively, something was happening with that show, and its ratings were stable if not yet huge. When the 1992-93 season started, I knew that after 13 episodes of “Wings,” we were through with our commitment to keeping it behind “Cheers.” Here is where Al’s desk enters the story. Starting in September, every time an original episode of “Wings” aired, I took a knife and put a deep gash in the desk. By December there were 13 gashes, and it was time to make the move.

Dec. 24, 1992: It was a cold dreary day at the NBC offices in Burbank. Oh, who am I kidding, it was probably sunny and in the 80s, but in the scheduling room the mood was anything but bright.

It was the first year without “The Cosby Show” leading off our Thursday comedy block. “A Different World” (another time period commitment, this one to Carsey/Werner) was not giving us the leadoff support we needed to maintain dominance on this important night. We had put a freshman comedy, “Rhythm and Blues” (white DJ at an all-black R&B station, yeah), at 8:30, and it was not holding the diminished “DW” lead-in. “Cheers” was in its final season, and then there was the commitment to “Wings” at 9:30.

While most of the lot was heading home for Christmas and the usual shutdown of the biz between Dec. 25 and the new year, we were having yet another crisis meeting to figure out what to do with our schedule. We did not have a good fall, and with the exception of “Mad About You,” our new shows were floundering. We were also relying on a lot more unscripted than NBC was accustomed to. Desperate times.

It was time to do what I had been waiting to do for a year and a half. I went to the scheduling board and moved “Wings” down to 8:30 and took “Seinfeld” from its Wednesday night slot and moved it behind “Cheers.” I told everyone that we no longer needed to keep “Wings” behind “Cheers,” and John Agoglia, our head of business affairs, nodded. “Seinfeld” needed to move because we needed a place for “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and we were going to hammock it between “Unsolved Mysteries” (which was a top 25 show that season) and “Law & Order.”

I wasn’t done. I told everyone it was time to circle the wagons on Thursday night, and I moved “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” to the 8 p.m. slot. We were still in the era where 8-9 p.m. was considered the “family hour,” and I felt that this would give us our strongest Thursday night. Warren Littlefield fortunately had a better idea. He asked Paramount, the “Cheers” studio, for additional repeats of the show, making the argument that it would help “Wings” in the transition to 8:30. Paramount agreed, and we had our new, commitment-free Thursday of “Cheers” (R), “Wings,” “Cheers” and “Seinfeld.”

We needed to find a slot for “Mad About You,” so we parked it on Saturday night. It had a surprisingly strong run there, and as we’ll see, it played an important role in putting together the 1993-94 schedule.

Internally the “Seinfeld” move was not universally embraced. There were several people, including some in sales, who felt that “Seinfeld” was too small a show to go behind our biggest comedy and that we were putting too much pressure on a show about nothing. “Seinfeld” was holding its own in a time period with “Home Improvement,” “Melrose Place” and “In the Heat of the Night.” This was before social media was a thing, but many of us could feel the momentum being generated by the show.

“Seinfeld” moved to Thursday in early January and exceeded our expectations. That February, Don Ohlmeyer arrived to run the West Coast operation. A week after his arrival we all headed to Croton, outside New York City, for an NBC management meeting. We were all in fear for our jobs and we spent three days getting beat up about both our performance and the future of broadcast television.

At the close of the meeting Jack Welch walked in to address us. To this day, I remember Jack’s short speech:

“You guys are doing a great job. ‘Seinfeld’s’ working on Thursday. You’re a hit away from turning this around.”

And he walked out.

The “Seinfeld” move worked. We were treading water at 8. “Cheers” was entering the home stretch, and we still needed an 8 p.m. show for the fall. That show happened to be sitting over on Saturday night, but we didn’t realize it yet.