SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 8

We ended the 1996-97 season with a new group of comedy assets. I figured we were putting off the decision on cancelling a movie night since we had ordered a bunch of made-fors for ’97-’98. It turned out that I was wrong, and that led to some unpleasantries from which we never fully recovered.

As Must-See TV was exploding into a cultural phenomenon in the ’90s, and as we were generating network profits that will never be seen again, I gave my boss Warren Littlefield a copy of David Halberstam’s book “The Breaks of the Game.”

Halberstam followed the 1979-80 Portland Trail Blazers, a team that had won the NBA Championship two years earlier and a one he saw as building a long-term dynasty. Halberstam’s intent was to write about the formation of that dynasty. Instead, he ended up writing a book about how difficult it was to sustain success and the factors that work to undermine long-term dominance. I told Warren to read it because, as successful as we were, this was probably our fate.

If there was a turning point for us — that moment when we became the Portland Trail Blazers — it was when we cancelled our Monday movie night. We entered the 1997-’98 season with 18 comedies on our schedule. I have often been told that it was an act of insanity, although I point out that when I came into the scheduling job in the ’91-’92 season, there were 18 comedies on the NBC schedule. We had a clear strategy for taking advantage of “Dateline,” a high degree of repeatability with comedies and an effort to prepare for the ending of “Seinfeld.” This all resulted in a very profitable schedule. The issue wasn’t strategic; it was organizational. There were too many type-A personalities, myself included.

The scheduling meeting in May 1997 was the turning point because of the internal damage it did to the organization. Although Warren and I told senior management that we needed to table the movie discussion until October, the decision was made to have the conversation in May. The problem was that our movie group had already ordered original movies for the ’97- ’98 season, so cancelling the Monday movie would have resulted in tens of millions of dollars in product with no room for it on the schedule. Real lines were drawn within the organization, and I left the last meeting being told in no uncertain terms that the movie would remain on Monday night. I was also convinced that when we came back from the upfront in New York City, I was going to be fired.

CEO Bob Wright stepped in at the last minute and made the decision to go down to one movie night. We had done the homework, and Bob saw the upside to the bottom line. The irony was that over the next few seasons, the other networks would also begin to reduce and eventually eliminate their movie nights. Unfortunately for us, the internal damage had been done, and the scars remained for quite a while.

Because we were able to test out and expose several comedies to a large audience through putting them behind “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” we were able to put together a female-skewing block of comedies on Monday with “Suddenly Susan,” “Fired Up,” “Caroline in the City” and “The Naked Truth.” We were able to establish “Dateline” as the only newsmagazine in the Monday 10 p.m. time period. I worked closely with Neil Shapiro the EP of “Dateline” to tailor the stories to our comedy block. The Monday gamble paid off, and we did not touch this night for the entire season.

I really believe that our Tuesday comedy block of “Mad About You,” “NewsRadio,” “Frasier” and “Just Shoot Me” was a more solid group of comedies than the Thursday MSTV mothership. Over on Thursday we used the leadout timeslots to launch new product. At 8:30 was a rather lame comedy, “Union Square.” It was another “Friends” wannabe and sort of similar in format to CBS’ current “Superior Donuts.” “Union Square” didn’t cut it, and we needed to move “Just Shoot Me” to 8:30 and try out a few new comedies on Tuesday, including “Lateline,” another newsroom comedy starring now-Sen. Al Franken.

Remember, in the beginning of this post I talked about how difficult it is to maintain a dynasty? Also remember way back at the start of the MSTV story I told you about time period commitments? Well, winter was coming to the Must-See TV schedule. At 9:30, following “Seinfeld,” we aired a comedy from Warner Bros. and the creators of “Friends” — “Veronica’s Closet.”

The time period commitment was creeping back on to the schedule. Gulp!

In my first post on the history and strategy of Must-See TV, this was the second paragraph:

“I thought it would be fun to spend a few days [well, it turned out to be all summer] and take you behind the scenes of the scheduling decisions which 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 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.”

The 1997-98 season was probably peak MSTV. Although we were scarred and tensions were high within the organization as a result of the whole process of cancelling the Monday movie, we still had the horses of “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” “Frasier,” “Mad About You” and “ER.” We had a comedy-rich schedule with players such as “Just Shoot Me,” “NewsRadio,” “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “Caroline in the City.” “Law & Order” and “Homicide” were dependable performers, we had four “Datelines” and Fridays and Saturdays that made sense. It was a stew of sales-friendly programming where our successful shows were supporting the relatively weaker product. But we had a tension within the organization … and we had “Veronica’s Closet.”

We didn’t own most of our programming, and we were probably most dependent on Warner Bros., which produced “Friends” and “ER” as well as “Suddenly Susan.” Paramount, from which came “Wings” and “Cheers,” continued to own one of our biggest weapons in “Frasier.” Although we were beginning to produce and own some of our programming, our philosophy was still to put the best schedule together regardless of ownership. In case of a tie, the nod might go to our own studio, but we were far from where things are today.

When you don’t own your own programming (and even when you do), there comes a point where you need to renegotiate the license fee that you pay for the right to air two or three runs of an episode. Back then repeats, especially for comedies, still generated ratings, so over two runs you could be profitable with an episode for most shows. The studio is willing to operate at a loss for a show hoping that the big payoff comes when the show goes into syndication.

“Seinfeld” (Castle Rock/Sony), “Friends” (WB) and “Frasier” (Paramount) have all been extremely profitable for their studios and creators. NBC never saw a penny beyond advertising. Plus, oftentimes late in the run of a successful show, the network may pay full cost of production per episode. That’s why ownership has become more important.

Something that enters into negotiations when it’s license fee renewal time is offering to pick up another show from the studio and/or creators of your hit show. “Veronica’s Closet” was a Warner Brothers comedy created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the creative forces behind “Friends.” It starred Kirstie Alley as a businesswoman whose personal life was not in the best of shape.

Looking back at it, if we tried to put this on today, we would have been rightfully skewered. Putting that aside, it was yet another female-led workplace comedy — at a time when NBC had several on the air already — but to appease our creators and WB, not only did we order the series, but we also committed to put it behind “Seinfeld,” where it stayed for the entire season. I don’t remember if there was a two-year commitment to the time period, but “Veronica’s Closet” remained there for a second season.

I remember going to the table read for the “VC” pilot. I arrived late, and although there was a seat for me in the front, I always preferred to sit in the back of the room because people were always looking at my reactions (like it mattered what I thought). This was before I wore a mask. Anyway, when I got to the room, I realized that I had left my glasses in my car (I was nearsighted back then), so I spent the table read squinting and trying to figure out who was in the cast. When I got back to the office my boss Warren Littlefield called to tell me that Peter Roth (head of WB TV) and the producers were upset because I was making faces like I thought it was a terrible show (it was). I explained what happened. Warren of course believed me, but he asked that I call Peter Roth and make nice.

“Veronica’s Closet” would be the first of several time period commitments, but we had a bigger issue on the horizon. Festivus 1997, I got the call from Warren Littlefield that I was dreading. “Well, we’re gonna have a big May sweep,” he said. That was code for “Seinfeld” would not be returning.

You can never be totally prepared for the end of one of your dominant shows, but when Warren Littlefield called me on Festivus 1997 to tell me Jerry Seinfeld was not returning for another season, I think we were as prepared as we could be.

The whole point of building an 18-comedy schedule was to give us as many options as possible for regrouping without our most dominant comedy and the No. 1 show on television in 18-49 viewers. We still had “Friends” and “Frasier” and, of course, “ER.” In “Just Shoot Me,” “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “NewsRadio” we had comedies that we felt were ready to take an anchor position on the schedule. We still had another season of “Mad About You.”

When Warren called me with the “Seinfeld” news I was at home taking a nap. My brain was scheduling 24/7, so I immediately told him what we should do.

“Let’s move ‘Friends’ to the ‘Seinfeld’ slot, move ‘Just Shoot Me’ to the hammock slot between ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ in the new year and slide it to 8 p.m. in the fall. Done!”

Warren agreed. Don Ohlmeyer (who sadly passed this week) called me a while after I heard the news. Rather than discussing what to do, Don said the three of us should ponder it over the holidays and regroup in January.

At this point, only a few people knew of Jerry’s decision. This was in the early days of the internet as a news source. The New York Times had a website, and late in the evening on Christmas Day, Bill Carter, then chief TV writer for the paper, broke the story that Jerry had called it quits. Around 11:30 Christmas night, the Masked Wife and I were hanging around the kitchen counter, preparing for a trip the next day to Palm Springs, when the house phone rang. I just assumed someone had died.

Instead it was Joe Adalian, who was writing for the New York Post at that time. It was 2:30 in the morning back east, and Joe had been awoken by his editor who saw Carter’s NYT post. Joe asked me to confirm, which I told him I could not do without talking to Pat Schultz, our press person. I called Pat first thing the next morning. By then the cat was out of the bag, and there went a restful couple of days in Palm Springs.