SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 6

My role with Neal Shapiro was to give him some sense of where the “Dateline” hours were positioned on the schedule, what demographics we were delivering with the lead-in entertainment shows and what sorts of stories would be most promotable to that audience. Working in concert, Neal and I helped make “Dateline” one of the most successful newsmagazine brands in the ’90s.

Each “Dateline” had its own personality, and internally, we actually gave them different names. For example, the Friday “Dateline” was the transition show between “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Homicide,” and we would call it “Law & Dateline,” focusing on courtroom and crime stories. Tuesday’s show inherited a large young female audience, so we anointed it “Touched by a Dateline” and did softer, more emotional, heartwarming stories. When we added it to Sunday at 7 p.m., we were driving more of a male audience from sports, so that was “When Dateline Attacks,” a nod to my soon-to-be best buddies Mike Darnell and Bruce Nash. We would do hard-edged, video-driven stories there.

In addition to all the “Datelines,” we had two solid movie nights on Sunday and Monday. These nights consisted of made-for-TV movies and miniseries under the guidance of Lindy DeKoven and her group, as well as theatricals, which I would buy along with our head of business affairs and my friend, the late John Agoglia.

As I said before, the business was transitioning from movies to newsmagazines as the preferred relief for scripted shows, and we eventually got up to five “Datelines” while eliminating a movie night, but I’ll save that for later in the saga.

Next time, I’ll talk about how Lindy and I would map out the movie strategy and the night I broke the law.

With “Dateline” filling up from three to five hours of our Must-See TV schedule, we looked to our movie group, led by Lindy DeKoven, to provide us with four hours of movies and miniseries each week. We augmented that with theatricals, which the late John Agoglia (our head of business affairs) and I would buy.

Back then you could still get a rating for a theatrical, and we would generally buy packages from a studio. There would be one or two “A” blockbusters, and the art was to cherry-pick the “B” movies to fill out the package. I probably enjoyed acquiring and scheduling theatricals more than anything else, and I’ll try to talk about that at some later point, but I wanted to give you some idea about how we came up with our movie schedule each season.

Sometime at the beginning of the new season, I would sit down with Lindy and go over the number of made-for-TV movies and miniseries she and her group would need to deliver for the following season. We were always a year ahead. We needed to be because the movie group would start ordering movies for the next season by October. Miniseries would often be ordered even earlier. After figuring out how many theatricals we were going to schedule, we would determine how many made-fors I needed from Lindy.

I would assume a miniseries each sweeps period and decide which theatricals were sweeps-worthy. Lindy then knew the number of sweeps-level movies she needed and how many other movies would fill out the year. In order to guarantee some level of success with these “B” made-fors we would develop some franchises, especially in the mystery area. We would do a couple of Perry Masons and also featured Louis Gossett Jr. in a series. We also had a franchise called “Moment of Truth” movies that adhered to a formula of a TV actress who had been out of the spotlight for a while and a young actress who played her daughter and was in jeopardy. These movies clicked with the viewer, and I even put one or two in a sweep.

We relied a lot on research to select and schedule the movies. Made-fors were generally very female skewing, and we did an analysis of the core group of viewers (women 35-54) and which movies appealed to the fringes (55+ and 18-34). Our goal was to attract the younger end of the movie audience, and we found a sleazy formula that featured a stable of young TV actresses. These movies became known as the Lifetime movies, since Lifetime wound up buying them all and adding to the sleaze over the years.

Among my favorites were:

“She Fought Alone” — Tiffani Thiessen
“She Said No” — Candace Cameron
“The Babysitter’s Seduction” — Keri Russell
“On the Edge of Innocence” — Kellie Martin (Lindy’s favorite actress to wit)
“Death of a Cheerleader” — Kellie Martin and Tori Spelling, and speaking of Tori, maybe our most infamous title:
“Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?”

We would appeal to the “older” part of the movie audience with one of our strongest franchises: Danielle Steel. Those movies were gold, and as I recalled for you, helped bring down a Jennifer Aniston series on CBS and keep her on “Friends.”

Next time we’ll continue to go through the movie strategy, and I promise to finally tell the tale of “The Beast” and my Jeer in TV Guide.

With movie nights on Sunday and Monday, it was ideal for NBC to feature miniseries during sweeps periods. We would generally air one per sweep, and unlike the more conventional made-for-TV movie, miniseries events tried to reach the broadest audience, including men.

There were three broad categories of miniseries that increased the chances of success, and since they were expensive to produce, we gravitated toward these three buckets.

Probably the most successful were the big historical events. I would call them the “Cliff Notes” miniseries since it was a way to “learn” history in an entertaining way. Tasty spinach, so to speak. Biblical miniseries were also included here. A related group was the biographical miniseries. We did several based on the lives of musicians such as The Judds (“Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge”) and “The Temptations.” I scheduled the Judds mini against a Stephen King miniseries on ABC, and we more than held our own.

I fondly remember “The Temptations” because it led out of a reality show that I developed along with my friend Bruce Nash. Mike Darnell was having success with these exposés about magicians’ secrets, so I pitched Bruce the idea of doing the same thing for professional wrestling. Back in the mid-’90s there was still the “kayfabe” illusion that wrestling was not fixed. We shot it at the Olympic Auditorium in L.A. and I met Harley Race, one of the all-time greats. It didn’t do all that well, but it was a memory for me.

The next bucket was the true crime minis or the subgenre of a story based on a real event, like the successful “Switched at Birth” (not to be confused with the current Freeform show). Affiliates loved this form because it was easy to tie into their local news, and the movies were pre-sold.

The genre that I think we enjoyed the most was the sci-fi/fantasy mini-series. Our marketing gang, under the guidance of Vince Manze and John Miller, would crank out theatrical-level promos for these events. Since Lindy DeKoven and I would plan these minis out far in advance, we generally had the movie in house in plenty of time to come up with a marketing plan.

Every once in a while, we would catch a break. We did a miniseries based on “Gulliver’s Travels” starring Ted Danson. As part of the campaign we shrink-wrapped busses in major cities with artwork for “Gulliver’s.” About a week before the movie was to air we were at a 2:30 meeting in Don Ohlmeyer’s office. Don had his TVs on, and suddenly there was a hostage situation on a bus in downtown L.A., and for about an hour we watched the shrink-wrapped artwork for “Gulliver’s Travels” on all the stations in Los Angeles. Fortunately, it all ended well.

My most memorable miniseries story involved “The Beast,” based on Peter Benchley’s novel. This was the centerpiece of our May 1996 sweep. We started the movie on Mother’s Day. A good scheduling rule back then was, after a day with the family, guys wanted to kick back with something for them, and what would be better than a yarn about a giant octopus?

Back in 1996 NBC had the network rights to the NBA, and we aired a first-round playoff game in late afternoon on the Sunday “The Beast” was going to premiere. I was at a birthday party for a friend of my son. We were in the Santa Monica Mountains with limited cell service, and this was before smartphones. After several attempts, I finally reached Lindy to wish her good luck and innocently asked her what the score of the NBA game was. She told me, and then I asked what period they were in. I figured out that the game would not be over by 8 p.m. on the East Coast.

I grabbed my son, who was not happy about leaving early, and drove home to hunt down our head of operations, John DeWald. He agreed that we were going long, and we had to decide whether to slide the schedule or join the 8 p.m. show in progress. Joining the 8 p.m. show (“Mad About You”) in progress could cost us advertising money if we could not get all the commercials in. Save the money or start “The Beast” on time? I tried everyone — Warren Littlefield, Don Ohlmeyer and John Miller — to consult, and none were reachable. It was Mother’s Day pre-smartphones but the scheduler was on call 24/7.

I was watching the game and decided it would be over around 10 minutes after the hour and Sports was informed to get off ASAP. I told John to slide the schedule. I would take responsibility. I got off the phone with John and panicked. When viewers tune in at 9 o’clock for “The Beast” and see an episode of “NewsRadio” (our 8:30 comedy), will they tune out?

I called John back and told him to run a crawl at the bottom of “NewsRadio” that said “Don’t touch that dial, THE BEAST IS COMING THE BEAST IS COMING” and make “The Beast” in large green letters. I told John to run it every minute until the movie came on (which was around 9:10). I had the NBC East Coast feed at home, and there is nothing more surreal than giving that order and within a minute seeing a crawl across the screen.

“The Beast” was a huge success. Must-See TV was at the pinnacle of success. We had nine of the top 10 shows for the week, with “The Beast” at No. 2 behind only ER. I put the cover of the Wednesday, May 1 Hollywood Reporter with the network rankings for the week on my @maskedscheduler Twitter feed.

The next morning, I came to work and Don Ohlmeyer called me up to his office. He thanked me for handling the situation — then told me I had broken the law and that crawls were only to be used for news bulletins or emergencies. He also told me that if that ever happened again to do the same thing.

The cherry on the top of all this was TV Guide gave us a jeer for the shameless promotion of “The Beast” and for the crawl. We took it as a badge of honor.

The third part of our movie strategy was the strategic use of theatricals. More about that next time.

In addition to made-for-TV movies and miniseries, the fun part of scheduling movies was buying and programming theatricals. Here are some stories I originally told on my blog, Revenge of the Masked Scheduler.

“Jurassic Park”/”Schindler’s List”: While at NBC I worked closely with John (the Godfather) Agoglia to acquire theatricals. The deal that I will always remember was for “Jurassic Park.” We desperately wanted to get it, knowing that it would be a huge weapon in a sweep (it was). We were willing to overpay, as were the other networks. What sealed the deal for us was that we agreed to include “Schindler’s List” in the buy with Universal. We were also willing to accept Steven Spielberg’s conditions as to how the movie could air on broadcast television. “Jurassic Park” was a big success for us in terms of ratings and profits, but we were not sure what to do with “Schindler’s List.”

We took a gamble and aired it in a February sweep. We conformed to all the stipulations, and our sales peeps went out looking for a single sponsor for the movie. Of course, we went to our parent company, GE, who passed. Then Ford stepped up. They were so supportive that they did not take advantage of the opportunity to insert a commercial during the intermission. We were all nervous as to whether the movie would get a rating, but we were proud to have acquired the movie and to have aired it in a respectful way.

We woke up on Monday morning to surprisingly large ratings. I called up my good friend in sales, Mike Mandelker, to thank him for all that he had done to make the showing a success. He was in a foul mood because he had just gotten off the phone with Bob Wright, the head of NBC. Rather than congratulating Mike, he wanted to know why we hadn’t approached GE about sponsoring the now high-rated movie.

Being involved in airing “Schindler’s List” on a broadcast network is still one of the most satisfying moments of my career, and it also reinforced one of the golden rules of television: No good deed goes unpunished.

“Kindergarten Cop”: Early in my scheduling career at NBC, we bought two movie packages from Universal, where all the films bypassed cable and went directly to the network. Both packages featured a few “blockbusters,” and then we needed to cherry-pick a bunch of movies to round out the buy. The fun was finding the gems among the rest of the litter.

One package included “Kindergarten Cop,” and part of my job was to decide how many times I would air it. We would then spread the cost of the movie over the runs. I think I said that I could run “KCOP” six or seven times. It was another home run in a sweep, and I ran the sprockets off of it. I started getting angry calls from affiliate GMs who begged me not to run it again, but I ignored them and starting making bets with some of them as to what the rating would be for the sixth or seventh run. I made a lot of money on that movie.

“Tremors”: This one was a gem among the runts in the Universal package, and “Tremors” wound up as one of the top 5 movies of the season in 18-49s. No one believed the ratings the morning after it aired, but those were the days when counterprogramming really mattered. I put it against two very female-skewing movies.

“Fried Green Tomatoes”: Another hidden gem, which I aired in a May sweep. This movie was a textbook example of how research can help in scheduling the network. We did concept tests on all our movies (including theatricals), and “FGT” had an amazingly high interest and intent-to-view score. We also did competitive research putting “FGT” against potential movies on the other two nets, and it did surprisingly well. I took a gamble and put it in a sweep. I got one of my “Don’t come in to the office tomorrow if this doesn’t work” speeches from Don Ohlmeyer, but there was just too much positive research on this movie.

“Fried Green Tomatoes” popped, and we repeated it against the American Music Awards on a Monday night, and I think we beat them. I sent a plate of fried green tomatoes to my counterpart in scheduling at ABC to rub it in. I WAS a real d**k back then (some would say I still am). Speaking of being a d**k …

“Backdraft” was another movie that was part of the Universal package and helped us big time in a sweep. I believe we had three runs of the movie, and I was down to my final run. Here’s how I used it: One day Lindy DeKoven, our head of movies and miniseries, called me to say FOX had just scheduled an off-night episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210” right up against the world premiere of a Monday made-for-TV movie which starred “90210” star Tiffani Theissen.

Lindy told me the star and the producers were ballistic and I had to do something. I explained there really wasn’t much I could do, but to appease her I called Doug Binzak, who was doing the scheduling at FOX at the time. I explained the situation and asked him why he wanted to offend a star on his network. Doug said there was nothing that he could do about it. I told him that I would need to retaliate because I had a crazed executive on my hands.

That summer FOX premiered an original scripted series about firefighters. I put my final run of “Backdraft” up against it and killed their series. Doug called and asked if we were even.

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”: The way we generally figured out a license fee for a theatrical was by its box office gross. Back then, a network would generally pay 15 percent of box office for X number of runs. Sometimes there would be a cap. I was out our local art theater and I saw a trailer for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” This was when I was at FOX, and we were in the process of buying a movie from Sony. They gave us a list of features and asked us to buy one more movie.

I told our head of business affairs that I had seen a trailer for “Crouching Tiger” (it had not come out yet) and it might be worth a shot. I felt it was a sleeper. We threw it into the package. The movie came out and wound up grossing over $120 million. We suddenly had a movie with an outrageous license fee. We were screwed and only aired it once.

“The Fugitive”: At some point the networks started pre-buying movies, i.e. making deals for a movie even before we saw the box office. The first movie we pre-bought at NBC was “The Fugitive.” After we made the deal, we started to panic.  We had paid a large license fee in order to take it off the market. We went out on our own dime and bought the rights to air the final three episodes of the television series. Fortunately, “The Fugitive” opened and we gave Warner Bros. all this free publicity.

Pre-buying is a game of chicken between the movie studio and the network. We wanted to pre-buy the 1998 “Godzilla” from Sony and made a generous offer. Sony turned it down and said that they were happy to wait until the movie opened. Well, “Godzilla” bombed. Suddenly Sony claimed that they had accepted our offer. We held them up for more runs for the same price and we demanded additional runs of “A Few Good Men” and “Men in Black 2” (two movies that we had bought in an earlier package).

“Richie Rich,” “Beethoven,” “Jurassic Park,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”: Our sales department loved when we aired theatricals over Thanksgiving weekend, and I would have fun putting together packages of movies to air Thursday-Sunday. One year I pitched Vince Manze (our promo guy) the idea of doing promos for the Thanksgiving movies where the children of NBC employees took over the network and demanded that we air these four movies. Vince liked the idea, and we made it into a big party, inviting our co-workers to bring their kids to the Burbank lot for the shoot. My daughter and son were in the promo (my daughter actually had a speaking part).

One problem: We had just renovated the executive conference room, and we pretty much destroyed it during the shoot. It took the whole weekend to get it looking like new again, and I thought for sure I was going to get fired.