SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 4

Back in the mid-1990s, when scheduling moves really mattered to the bottom line of a broadcast network, two of my guiding principles were:

·       There are three moves to the scheduling game — your move, the other guy’s move and your response to that move. There is not a fourth.

·       Let the other guy do the dirty work for you. Don’t overthink a scheduling move; let your competition do that.

When we moved “Frasier” and “Wings” to Tuesday to establish a second night of Must-See TV for the 1994-95 season, we knew we would be going onto ABC’s successful turf and that we were putting a show that we had a lot of faith in against one of their heavy hitters in “Roseanne.” We had done our homework, and based on feedback from the upfront, we knew there would be a financial upside from this move.

As an aside, we were making another “bold” move on Thursday at 10 p.m. by putting our new medical drama “ER” against CBS’ “Chicago Hope.” “CH” was also a freshman medical drama, but it was created David E. Kelley, and CBS had announced the pickup and time period far in advance. CBS acted like it was their time period and we were the encroachers. More on this down the road.

When I got the call from Don Ohlmeyer that Ted Harbert at ABC was “threatening” to make the move of “Home Improvement” from Wednesday to Tuesday to take on “Frasier,” he told me, “The fun’s over. Let’s put ‘Frasier’ back on Thursday.” My response to Don was that ABC seemed more worried about this move than we were, and that this will result in diminished ratings for both of their big tentpole shows. I also told Don that if they moved “Home Improvement,” ABC would make the Tuesday face-off the story of the new season, which means a boatload of free publicity.

As always, Don (in accordance with the GE culture) was willing to give me all the rope I needed to hang myself and asked me to work with Eric Cardinal, our West Coast research head, to do more competitive analysis of the move. We found that “Home Improvement” would win a head-to-head contest with “Frasier,” but that our comedy would more than hold its own in the time period. When you factor in the gross ratings improvement for us on Tuesday/Thursday and the increase in sales, this looked like a big win for us in spite of the ABC move. In addition, we calculated that ABC would take a gross ratings hit on their two big comedy nights if they made the move.

When we didn’t react to Harbert’s initial threat, Ted kept calling over the summer, telling Ohlmeyer they had hired consultants to look into this and that they all agreed that ABC should make the move. I kept reassuring Don we were doing the right thing, and in success we had set ourselves up for long-term profitability. ABC waited until late in the summer to announce the flip, figuring that we would react. We did nothing.

Paramount, which owned both “Frasier” and “Wings,” was apoplectic, and put pressure on us to unscramble the egg. I ran into Kelsey Grammer at some affiliate function after ABC made the change. I introduced myself and told him that he should see this as a sign of the faith that we had in the series. I also explained that, if the move works, it significantly increased the value of “Frasier” in syndication. It was no longer the show that followed “Seinfeld” but the show that opened up another Must-See TV night for NBC. I told him if Paramount couldn’t figure that out, I would personally write the syndication presentation for them. What an a–hole I was back then.

Sure enough, this Tuesday confrontation became the talk of the fall. We had bet the ranch on this move. We also believed that on Thursday at 10, we had the stronger medical drama in “ER.” The 1994-95 season was going to be really interesting.

The face-off between “Frasier” and “Home Improvement” was the talk of the summer, and the free publicity was amazing. We purposely kept “Frasier” on Thursday night throughout the summer and waited for premiere week to move it head-to-head against “HI.”

It wasn’t quite The Battle of the Bastards, but we were about to go to war with ABC at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, and for the overall claim as the No. 1 network in the 18-49 demographic, which was the currency of the business.

Back in the mid-’90s, the Hollywood Radio and Television Society (HRTS) would kick off the broadcast season with a panel of the network presidents. I still remember when Warren Littlefield was asked about the confrontation, he was humble and said (which was the truth) that we expected “Home Improvement” to win but that we would be competitive. Ted Harbert, then head of ABC Entertainment, was a bit more arrogant about this. He was out of a job within two years.

When I came out to Burbank in 1991, I decided not to look at the ratings until I arrived at the office. This was before ratings hotlines. I would often get a call on the way in to the office from someone in research, and I would beg them not to call and read me the ratings. When I got into the office, I would print up the overnights and look at them as if I were looking at a poker hand. I remember the relief at looking at the “Frasier” overnight ratings. We didn’t win the time period, but it was clear “Frasier” would survive against “Home Improvement” and that “HI” had taken the bigger hit with this move to Tuesday. It looked vulnerable.

The even bigger relief, and pleasant surprise, was what was about to happen on Thursday night — where two medical dramas were going head-to-head at 10 p.m. The “ER” pilot, which I told you all tested through the roof, was two hours, and we had a tough decision to make. Do we pre-empt “Seinfeld” in premiere week and air the pilot from 9-11 p.m., or do we find another timeslot for the premiere? We all agreed that we would be leaving too much money on the table if “Seinfeld” were not part of our Thursday night premiere strategy. Fortunately, we had a simple solution.

At that time, we had a Monday movie night that went up against “Monday Night Football” in the fall. Our movie targeted women 18-54, and we figured that would be the demo for “ER,” so we premiered the pilot on Monday and ran the second episode on Thursday along with our comedy premieres. We were confident that if viewers showed up on Monday, they would come back Thursday for the next episode. They did. We outrated the premiere of “Chicago Hope,” but the shocker was on week two, where “ER” blew “Hope” out of the water and CBS needed to rethink keeping the show on Thursday night.

“ER” quickly established itself as a juggernaut. Next, we had to figure out how and where to repeat the pilot, which leads me to a funny story.

New Year’s Day featured the top college football bowl games (now there are a gazillion bowls). NBC would air the Orange Bowl in prime, and ABC would air the Rose Bowl in the afternoon and the Sugar Bowl in prime. Generally, one of those games was for the national championship. With two networks airing college football, CBS would wisely see that as an opportunity to premiere a midseason series against them. I remember “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” among others, successfully launched against the bowl games.

NBC had lost the rights to the Orange Bowl for the 1995 game. We were sitting around one day thinking about how to program the “ER” repeat. We knew CBS was going to move “Chicago Hope” away from “ER,” and I suggested that given their New Year’s Day strategy, I would not be surprised if they took the opportunity to relaunch it at 10 p.m. on Monday, which was New Year’s Day.

We pre-emptively announced we were repeating the “ER” pilot on New Year’s Day, and we did it sometime in October. We went out with a press release figuring that would give CBS pause. It turned out we were right about where “Chicago Hope” was going, and shockingly, CBS announced it would move there on New Year’s Day. It’s a free country.

Mandy Patinkin, who was starring in “CH” at the time, heard about this and called Don Ohlmeyer’s office demanding to meet with him. Don graciously agreed, and after Mandy vented, Don walked him through the chronology of events and told him that he was in the wrong president’s office and should head back over to CBS. On New Year’s Day, the “ER” repeat once again crushed “Chicago Hope,” which did remain on the CBS schedule for a few more seasons away from the big dog.

Those were the days when scheduling really mattered, and the networks would aggressively go after each other.

Not only were we celebrating the success of “ER,” but also another pleasant surprise was brewing over on Thursday. That’s the next story.

We weren’t expecting great things from the “Friends” pilot. It was not a strong-testing show, and it had two other obstacles. That May, FOX announced a comedy about a group of single twentysomethings in Chicago called “Wild Oats.” It was eerily similar to “Friends,” down to a hangout where the gang congregated.

The comparisons between the two shows occupied most of the coverage. We felt we had the better show with the stronger cast, but it didn’t matter. Paul Rudd was in the cast of “Wild Oats,” but I took solace in the fact that notorious show killer Paula Marshall was one of the leads.

The second obstacle was a bit more daunting. It turned out that Jennifer Aniston was in “second position” on “Friends.” She had also starred in a CBS series called “Muddling Through” that had yet to air, and what second position meant was that if the CBS show moved forward, she was legally committed to that show and we would need to replace her on “Friends.” Although “Muddling Through” did not make the fall schedule, the Eye net decided to air the episodes on Saturday night in the summer on 1994, prior to the premiere of “Friends.”

The morning that CBS announced that they were airing the Aniston show, we were in a Current meeting in Burbank. We knew that if these episodes got any sort of a rating, CBS may well order more just to block Aniston from boing part of the “Friends” cast. My boss Warren Littlefield looked at me and said, referring to “Muddling Through,” “Kill it!”

Although CBS put the show on Saturday night, I scheduled an original Danielle Steel movie (which always popped a rating) against the premiere and aired second-run Steel movies over the next few weeks to squash it. The strategy worked.

There was one more glitch before “Friends” got on the air. One afternoon Jamie Tarses, our top developer at the time, came into my office quite upset. Back then we were trying to do away with opening themes songs, and the “Friends” producers (Marta Kauffman, Kevin Bright and David Crane — more on them later) wanted an opening theme. Jamie played it for me and told me Don Ohlmeyer didn’t like it and was resisting even allowing an opening theme for the show. She asked if I would go up to Don’s office with her and support the song and the positioning. I thought the opening was fun and creative. Regarding the song itself, I really had no opinion, but if it was important to her and the producers, sure, I’d go into the lion’s den with her.

We caught Don in a good mood. As was usual, he asked if I would take responsibility if this turned out to be a mistake. This was the ritual between us. I said I would, and the rest is history.

Although it was given the cushy 8:30 hammock between “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld,” my Spidey senses told me that “Friends” seemed to be performing better than your average comedy given such a primo time slot. Also, the show’s rating built over the first few weeks, and the quality of the episodes kept getting better and better.

The real test came when I gave “Friends” a one-time-only at-bat behind “Frasier” on Tuesday night. If my memory serves me, we were getting close to the November sweep, and “The John Larroquette Show” needed a “hit,” which was scheduling slang for we didn’t have an original episode. I thought there was nothing to lose in seeing how “Friends” would do outside of its hammock. It performed above the level of the “Larroquette” originals.

SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 3

As successful as our Thursday night was proving to be, we still had other issues to deal with. We started the 1993-94 season with a Tuesday night comedy block that was pretty much DOA. The one glimmer of hope on the night was “The John Larroquette Show,” about a recovering alcoholic who managed a bus depot. It was a pretty dark comedy and shared a night with “Saved by the Bell: The College Years” and “Getting By,” which continued our Miller-Boyett obsession (at least mine).

We knew that we needed to start from scratch on Tuesday, and we went into pilot season in the spring of 1994 needing to replace our Thursday 10 p.m. drama “LA Law.” “Homicide: Life on the Street” was the heir apparent, but we saw and tested a medical drama — “ER” — that made us quickly reverse that decision. “ER” was one of the highest-testing pilots in our history at NBC. Back then we recruited people to view pilots on their cable system, and then we would call for feedback. The channel was available for anyone on the system to view, and cable operators were calling our research department to tell us they were flooded with callers asking when the next episode of “ER” was going to air.

That winter, CBS announced that they were going to schedule a David E. Kelley medical drama, “Chicago Hope,” in the Thursday 10 p.m. timeslot. “LA Law” was going away, and they were trying to establish turf in the time period with a show from a significant contributor to the success of “LA Law.” Based on the testing and the internal response to “ER,” we went ahead and scheduled our medical drama up against “Chicago Hope.” We felt that we had the perfect quality companion to our block of Must-See comedies.

I personally loved “Homicide” and was hoping to put it in that coveted spot, but it was clear that we had a broader, more inclusive drama in “ER.”

“ER” was from Warner Bros., who also gave us another pilot that spring — “Friends.” There was nothing unique about “Friends.” It was a solid comedy, but it tested as a “high weak.” I remember reading the script and shrugging. Our head of research and my good friend, Eric Cardinal, went to the taping and reported back that it was not promising. Seeing the pilot, I thought it was better than expected but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I got a threatening call from someone on our New York sales team.

As I said, we needed to start over on Tuesday night and, for some reason, our sales department heard that we were going back to reality on the night with “Unsolved Mysteries.” Reality television back then (and even today) was not embraced by sales. They loved comedies. Joan Leahy was a crusty sales veteran. She called me and said that if we came to the upfront with “Unsolved Mysteries” on Tuesday night, she would hunt me down and kill me. I believed her.

Fortunately for me, we had been doing competitive research all season to determine the strength of certain shows in different spots on the schedule. While we were developing a roster of young adult comedies, ABC was prospering with their middle America family brand. “Roseanne” had been anchoring ABC’s Tuesday night comedy block for six seasons. Although the show was still rock solid, we noticed that when we hypothetically put “Frasier” against it, we held our own — and over the course of the season, the gap between the shows was shrinking. I won’t go into the methodology, but we had a lot of confidence in the research.

After screening the pilots, we were about to start scheduling. Joan’s death threat was weighing on me. I went to bed Friday evening wondering how I was going to go to New York and not get killed. During the night I had a revelation. What if we doubled down and started a second night of Must-See TV by moving “Wings” and “Frasier” over to Tuesday and using the 8:30 and 9:30 slots to launch some new comedies? I had faith in “Frasier” and some research against “Roseanne” to back it up, and “Wings” was a dependable show.

This was 1994, so I didn’t have Excel or anything. I drew a scheduling grid, put “Wings” and “Frasier” on Tuesday with “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld” on Thursday. Sometime in the early morning, I faxed it to Warren Littlefield and John Miller. It’s important to know we had zero commitments to any outside production company, so we could do whatever we wanted with the schedule. “Wings” and “Frasier” were both Paramount properties.

Early Saturday morning, Warren called me and said, “I love it, but someone is going to have to start our cars for us.” That was his way of saying Paramount would not be happy. So, one way or the other, I was a dead man.

We came to the scheduling room on Monday with the goal of convincing every one of the wisdom of this move. It wasn’t easy.

I had the opportunity to work for two broadcast networks in my career, and they were very different environments. NBC was a bi-coastal operation, and there was some real tension between the coasts. If you read Bill Carter’s book “The Late Shift” you will see how this played out in the Letterman/Leno decision. FOX was much more West Coast-oriented, and sure, there was conflict, but the divides weren’t geographic.

When we started scheduling for NBC in the spring of 1994, the East Coast posse was again out to second-guess all our moves, and we had a big decision to make. My boss Warren Littlefield and I had to convince a risk-averse group that after one season of Must-See TV success on Thursday night, it was time to blow up the night. We needed to convince Don Ohlmeyer and the big guy, Bob Wright, of the wisdom of the move, and fortunately we had network sales on our side. The East Coast guys were being their usual annoying selves.

This was not a ratings move. The estimates showed virtually no difference between a Tuesday comedy block and some other configurations. This was about strategy, income and increasing the odds of finding another hit in one of the 8:30 or 9:30 slots. Remember: Back then scheduling mattered a lot more than it does today, and these satellite time periods were extremely valuable and attractive. That’s why avoiding time period commitments was so important.

We went back and forth discussing this move, and I always made it my business to be the last person Ohlmeyer saw before he left the building. Either Don would call me, or I would reach out to him later in the evening. I wanted the final argument every night.

It was a scary move in that we were going at ABC on a night where they had quite a bit of success, even with an aging “Roseanne” as the tentpole. After much debate, we went for it. Warren had to tell the Paramount people that we were moving their two shows, “Wings” and “Frasier,” off of Thursday to help us start a second night of MSTV. They were not happy and immediately campaigned to reverse the move. We were commitment-free, so we held our ground.

We flew to New York for the upfront and, as was the rhythm of the weekend, Warren and I holed up at 30 Rock and started writing the upfront presentation. Neither of us had any idea if this would work. By Saturday night, word was starting to get out that we were making this big move. I was at the “Saturday Night Live” dress rehearsal. There was someone from sales in the booth (there needed to be for every show), and he told me the advertisers had heard of the move and were bullish about it. It was going to be a sales windfall.

We had four satellite shows surrounding the big four. “The Martin Short Show” and the second season of “John Larroquette” went on Tuesday. On Thursday “Madman of the People” was at 9:30, and “Friends” was hammocked between “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld.” “ER” was the replacement for “LA Law.”

On Fridays, we put together “Unsolved Mysteries,” “Dateline NBC” and “Homicide.” To this day one of my favorite moves was to put “Homicide: Life on the Street” in a time period where it could prosper for five seasons without having to worry so much about its ratings. This night stayed intact for three seasons, and “Dateline” and “Homicide” remained on the night for two more years after that.

Needless to say, we returned from the upfront feeling pretty good about ourselves. That was all about to change. A while after the announcement, Don Ohlmeyer called me up to his office. He did not look happy. Ted Harbert, who was President of ABC Entertainment at the time, called to let him know that they were considering moving “Home Improvement,” the second highest-rated show on television, against “Frasier.”

SCHEDULING MUST-SEE-TV PART 2

It’s May 1993. It’s pilot week. We go into the process knowing that we have three of our four Thursday night comedies: “Wings,” “Seinfeld” and the “Cheers” spinoff “Frasier.” We were searching for our 8 p.m. show. The family hour was still sort of a thing, so our hope was to find something more family-oriented for the leadoff spot on the night.

Our comedy development team had placed their chips on a show starring Henry Winkler. “Monty” was a Rush Limbaugh-like character, and the comedy was both workplace and family. “Monty” had elements of “All in the Family,” including David Schwimmer playing a version of the Rob Reiner role.

There was a lot of anticipation as we gathered to screen the “Monty” pilot, and there was dead silence in the room during the screening. Everyone filed out of the room with the realization that we did not have a leadoff comedy for Thursday night.

I stood in the empty executive conference room where we screened the pilots and also set the schedule. I opened the scheduling board and tried to figure out our options. Although I understood the constraints of what we could put at 8 p.m., there seemed to be only one option — and it was sitting on Saturday night, where it had been sent into exile in January.

I moved “Mad About You” to the Thursday 8 p.m. slot and called Eric Cardinal, a good friend and our head of research, and asked him to come over to the conference room. Eric agreed it was our best option, but we both knew there would be issues with going with an all adult block of comedies.

We called Warren Littlefield and Don Ohlmeyer into the room, and it was agreed that we needed to do this. We discussed it with sales and broadcast standards, so we did our due diligence.

There was one hiccup before we nailed the night down. Don found out that “Married … with Children” might be in play, and we debated whether to make a run for it as our leadoff Thursday comedy. Needless to say, this discussion was not as easy as whether we should move “Mad” over to Thursday. Fortunately, that decision was made for us, as FOX renewed the show before we could make a move.

We announced “Mad About You” as our Thursday night leadoff comedy, and not surprisingly, we got a lot of heat for the move. I was personally singled out by some groups as one step removed from the devil. It all seems sort of funny now, but it was a big thing back then. With “Mad” at 8, we had reinvented the comedy block and we were one step closer to Must-See TV.

For me the Thursday night of “Mad About You,” “Wings,” “Seinfeld” and “Frasier” rivaled “Cosby,” “Family Ties,” “Cheers” and “Night Court” as the two most perfect nights of comedy on NBC. I would tell people that when you have a four-comedy block, one of them becomes the “walk the dog” show. These two nights were not favorites among the canine population.

As for “Monty,” that show about the Rush Limbaugh-ish character? NBC passed on it, but it hit a soft spot with Rupert Murdoch over at FOX, and in January 1994 “Monty” premiered on FBC. It did not go well.

Finally, quietly we were building a comedy-heavy schedule. We went into the 1993-94 season with 14 comedies on the schedule. They weren’t all gems, but they were sales-friendly, repeatable and modular. We also went into the new season commitment free. This would allow us to make the big move in 1994-95.

The 1993-94 season was the pivotal moment in the history of NBC’s successful run as not only the No. 1 network, but also the network with the most appealing audience to advertisers. The centerpiece of that was our Thursday night comedy block. This was a win-win-win for the network:

·       Big 18-49 ratings

·       An upscale, highly educated, urban audience

·       Airing on the most important night for advertisers — Thursday

Of course, there was uncertainty as to how our new Thursday line-up of “Mad About You,” “Wings,” “Seinfeld” and “Frasier” would perform. “Mad” was leading off a night for the first time and going against “The Simpsons” on FOX. “Seinfeld” no longer had “Cheers” as a lead-in and was now the cleanup hitter, and we had no idea that “Frasier” would turn out to be a classic sitcom.

Regardless, we went into the ’93-’94 season confident that we were moving in the right direction, and we decided we needed something to signal that.

Here’s my version of what happened next.

Every afternoon at 2:30, about 10 senior executives would head up to Don Ohlmeyer’s office for what we called the “2:30 Meeting,” and you had to be there right at 2:30. Don had this thing about being prompt. This meeting was a byproduct of the General Electric sensibility filtering into the network. QMI stood for Quick Market Intelligence, and its purpose was to make sure the top executives were all aware of both internal and external events that could impact decision-making. Information would be shared and strategies and responses would be laid out. It actually worked.

In the spring of ’93, after we had set the schedule for the following fall, we were at a 2:30 meeting. I brought up ABC’s TGIF Friday night schedule. I always felt that they did a fantastic job branding that night, where the whole was more than the sum of its parts, and that we should think about our Thursday night in a similar way. Don turned to Vince Manze and John Miller, our marketing heads, and told them to go off and come up with a brand for the night. They came back with Must-See TV, and we went into the ’93-’94 season with a rallying cry for the most important night on our schedule.

Thursday night lived up to the brand. “Mad”/”Wings” built a foundation for “Seinfeld,” which exceeded our expectations in terms of its broad appeal without the “Cheers” lead-in. The quality of the “Frasier” episodes continued to grow over the season, and it won an Emmy in its freshman year.

For a scheduler, this night was perfection, and I did not change a thing all season. One of the secrets to “Seinfeld’s” success was that I had 20-plus episodes that were still virtually unseen by most fans of the show. These were the episodes that aired on Wednesday night during the show’s first two full seasons. I had several third runs, and when “Seinfeld” needed a repeat, these episodes played like first-run episodes to a good portion of the audience.

As successful as we were, there was more to come. That development season Warner Bros. brought us two shows — “Friends” and “ER” — that would solidify Thursday as a night for the ages. In addition, in midseason we premiered “Homicide: Life on the Street” on Wednesday night, and we all believed that it would be the show to replace “LA Law” on Thursdays at 10.

Next, we’ll look at the 1994 pilot season, a threat to my life and a restless night epiphany.

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.

A LITTLE TALE OF TWO DUDES WHO IMPACT THE NEWS

Yesterday I promised my Masketeers on Twitter a story that involved both Andy Lack and Jeff Zucker who run CNBC and CNN respectively and, under the guise of news, support the current administration as both news channels attempt to maximize their ratings. I have called them ratings whores which they are but this is just a fun story about the biz. Enjoy

Where to begin? OK let’s start here. Sometime in February 1993 NBC’s DATELINE decided that it would be cool to blow up some GM trucks and claim that they were unsafe. Let’s say that didn’t work out too well for them. To no one’s surprise heads rolled including the Executive Producer of DATELINE and the President of NBC NEWS.

One of my roles as head of scheduling at NBC was to be the liaison between the news division and entertainment. As part of that gig I was sort of the unofficial DATELINE program exec. Jeff Diamond, the Executive Producer of DATELINE, and I would talk quite often.

I still remember calling Jeff up the day after this happened and before the admission that this was ‘staged”. GM was insane and I suggested that we rent out Madison Square Garden and do a “two out of three fall” event where we ram cars into the trucks. Loser donates a million dollars to the winner’s charity. . I’m always thinking like a wrestling promoter. Jeff  was not buying it.

Michael Gartner was replaced by Andy Lack as President NBC News and Neal Shapiro was the new Executive Producer of DATELINE. My friend Jeff Gaspin was the NBC News executive in charge of prime time programs and, when he was looking for an executive producer for a news magazine, interviewed Andy for the gig.  Jeff told him he was not qualified so he was was gone pretty soon after Andy arrived. That’s how things work.

I don’t remember if Neal called me or I called him but, regardless, it was the beginning of a fantastic partnership. We liked each other as human beings and, with so many DATELINEs on the schedule, we would try to match the stories to the surrounding entertainment shows so as to maximize ratings (never said I wasn’t a ratings whore).

We had names for DATELINE depending on where they played. LAW&DATELINE was paired with LAW&ORDER. TOUCHED BY A DATELINE was on a night with softer programming and WHEN DATELINE ATACKS played Sunday at 7 following sports. News and Entertainment worked in perfect harmony to make DATELINE a valuable and profitable franchise for the Peacock. Then there was this young whippersnapper Jeff Zucker.

Zucker had been overseeing THE TODAY SHOW where he was always more interested in razzle dazzle than news. A little while after I left NBC Scott Sassa fired Garth Ancier (Entertainment President) and Jeff came in to run Entertainment. This was the height of the reality era and I guess Bob Wright (the head of NBC) felt someone with Jeff’s background was what the network needed. Things unraveled pretty fast under his leadership but Jeff kept failing upward.

Anyway, back in May 1993 we were told by New York that we were adding another news magazine to our schedule. The magazine would not be called DATELINE but rather NOW WITH TOM BROKAW AND KATIE COURIC and wunderkind Jeff Zucker would be executive producing. I think we were even told where it would go on the schedule but I could be wrong about this.

Don Ohlmeyer had come to the party as President, NBC West Coast. Don was a very competitive and intimidating dude which was just fine with me and some other execs like my pals Vince Manze and John Miller in marketing. Don was fine with all these news magazines on the schedule as long as they delivered ratings and he was aware that there was a strong channel of communication between Neal and I. Zucker on the other hand wanted no input from Entertainment.

This is all a setup for an incident that happened sometime in the 1993-94 season. It was either in November or February I don’t remember but we were at the start of a sweep and, at that time, sweeps were very important to the networks and especially the network affiliates. I don’t remember why but I was working from home on the day of “the incident”.

Bill Clinton had appointed some controversial figure to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division, if my memory serves me, and it started a bit of a tiff in DC. Brokaw or Couric (I think in was Tom) got the individual for an exclusive interview for NWTBAKC. News magazines were entertainment first and news second (kind of the way all news is now) so featuring this lengthy interview in the center of both the show and a night surrounded by scripted series was guaranteed to be a ratings disaster. It was.

We get the ratings and Ohlmeyer immediately calls me.

“What the fuck was that motherfucker (referring to Zucker) thinking putting that interview on in a sweeps period”

I calmly explained to Don that Jeff was working with the biggest star at NBC News and I’m certain that Brokaw would do whatever he wanted to do. I told Don that Jeff is a very competitive person and I’m sure he feels terrible about this but his hands were tied. I tried to defend Jeff to Don but Don did not want to hear it.

“I want you to call him and ask him what the fuck he was thinking and tell him how upset we are.”

“Don I’m pretty sure he feels terrible about this and nothing is gained by calling him.”

“You call him and get back to me with what he has to say about this.”

I was sitting at my kitchen counter (ironically where I am writing this right now) and I call Jeff.

Here is the conversation:

Me: “Jeff I…………

Zucker: “What the fuck do you want me to tell you…………………and he proceeded to go all Donald Duck on me for at least ten minutes.

I put down the phone and let him rant. At some point the Masked Wife passed by. She knew I was calling Jeff and just looked at me and said “Zucker?” and I nodded.

Once there was a lull in the rant I jumped in and tried to calm things down by explaining Don asked me to call. I told him I understood his dilemma and let’s move on. This  just started another tirade.

I called Don back and said that Jeff and I spoke and he understood our concerns. I didn’t go into details. Don seemed satisfied. He got his pound of flesh and I figured I had moved on the next insanity of network television. I was wrong.

About an hour after my “conversation” with Jeff, Andy Lack called me.

“Masked, I don’t want you to ever talk with my people again.”

“OK Andy”

I can only imagine what Zucker told him I said to him.

A few hours later Andy called again to reiterate that he was not kidding and I can no longer talk with his people. I again reassured him I would abide by his order.

I stopped calling Neal. I never talked to Zucker about his show because I knew that was useless. I never told Ohlmeyer or anyone in entertainment about Andy’s call to me. I just didn’t think it made sense to create friction over this.

About three weeks after ‘the incident” Neal called me wondering what was going on. Why wasn’t I calling him. I told him about Andy’s orders. He said that’s bullshit and that we needed to talk and we did.

A few weeks later we were having our usual afternoon meeting with Don and something came up about news. Don asked me to handle it. This was my opening.

“Don, Andy has forbidden me from talking to anyone in News”

He asked why and I reminded him of the Zucker call. After the meeting Don asked me to stay and he called Lack. It was a pretty awesome reaming of the President of NBC News. It was so effective that several years later when we cancelled the Monday Movie and added another DATELINE  to the schedule Andy cowered in a corner during the pretty intense debate between me and Warren Littlefield (pro cancel) and Don who wanted to keep the movie. At one point he came over to me and thanked me for defending news but said if he opened his mouth Don would attack him. It was chickenshit on his part but I got a Tiffany clock from Andy as a thank you.

While we are all quarantined I thought I would give you a little look behind the curtains at two executives who are playing a major role in how many of you are perceiving the reality of the current situation.

Stay safe gang.

A STORY ABOUT MODERN FAMILY

Pilot season 1996. I went to a table read for a multi-camera comedy called “Just Shoot Me”. The executive producer was a dude named Steve Levitan who had worked on several comedies most notably “Frasier” and “Wings”. I thought it was a pretty solid table read with a very professional cast including George Segal. We would order 6 or 8 episodes for mid-season.

At the upfronts in May ’96 I met Levitan at a party hosted by Tom Fontana at his club in NoHo. I introduced myself and (this happened to me a lot) he said he heard I did not like his pilot. You see the development execs would always blame me when they needed to tell a show runner why their show didn’t make it on the schedule or was pushed to mid-season. I told Steve that wasn’t true. We sort of bonded.

                                                                                                   

In the fall of 1996 NBC put a really awful comedy on the air called “Men Behaving Badly”. It was one of the few shows where my boss Warren Littlefield and I threw down some serious words with each other. I did not feel it was ready to go on the air, he did, he won. It bombed.

In December Steve Levitan was asked to step in and salvage “Men Behaving Badly”. While Steve was attempting to “fix” the show we needed something to fill the MBB slot.

Meanwhile over at ABC they were about to put on a comedy starring Arsenio Hall who was red-hot at the time. It was scheduled to run in the now empty MBB time slot. Before the holiday break Warren called to discuss what to do and I suggested we put “Just Shoot Me” in there. Warren and others at NBC were not fans of the show. I told him if we don’t use “Just Shoot Me” we needed to go with repeats against Arsenio and did we really want to throw in the towel. Warren suggested we watch the six or eight episodes, along with my pals in marketing Vince Manze and John Miller, and decide what to do when we all returned to Burbank in January.

Sometime over Christmas break, Warren called and asked if I had watched them. I said “Yeah, four of them weren’t that bad”. “That’s four more than I liked” he said. The marketing guys hated them as well. We argued and Warren eventually agreed to put Shoot Me on the air in March. It turned out the ratings for Shoot Me were surprisingly good and Arsenio was a disaster. “Men Behaving Badly” couldn’t be fixed and we would order a full season of “Just Shoot Me” for the 97-98 season. It had a good run during the Must-See-TV era.

When season two started Steve McPherson, who was our program exec on Shoot Me before going on to run ABC, stopped by my office to tell me Levitan wanted to use my name in an episode. Steve asked if I was OK with that. I said sure but can I see the script first. Never saw the script and one day McPherson hands me a rough cut of “My Dinner With Woody” which aired in the November sweep. Here it is:

https://vimeo.com/594758021

Still don’t know if it was a thank you or a fuck you from Levitan.

I left NBC and headed over to FOX. By then Levitan had made a deal with the FOX TV studio and, before I got there, the network had picked up Steve’s show called “Greg the Bunny”. Let’s just say it was a bit of a departure for him and leave it at that. I think we held off putting it on the air for quite a while. We eventually aired the thirteen episodes and that was that.

“Greg the Bunny” was followed by “Oliver Beene” a sweet family period comedy and then “Stacked” starring Pam Anderson which was the best attended pilot shoot ever. Neither show gained traction and both were cancelled after one season. FOX knew animation, but, with no “That 70’s Show” or “Married With Children”, it was difficult to launch a live action comedy. I could sense Steve was starting to get a bit frustrated with the network.

Pilot season 2007 Steve developed a comedy called “Back To You” with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as the leads. Ironically, Ty Burrell was featured prominently in the pilot. Our head of comedy development at the time came in to see me to express her frustration with having to give up a slot for this show. The powers that be at FBC had decided that “Back To You” would be on the FOX schedule in Fall 2007. She was not totally wrong in expressing her frustration given that the show about TV news at a local station felt very CBS. It was smart and good which is not a FOX comedy. We also had nothing to pair it up with.

I explained to her that we weren’t going to win this battle and “Back To You” will be our highest testing comedy (it was) so we wouldn’t have that argument to make. “Back To You” was paired with “Til Death” starring Brad Garrett (we needed to pick it up for a second season and Brad treated the Masked Wife and me to a Mulberry Street pizza as a thank you when we ran into him on Ventura Blvd.). “Back To You” did not gain traction and now we get to the point of this post.

In the 07-08 season there was a WGA (Writers Guild) strike. Peter Chernin who was running entertainment at NewsCorp made it clear we needed to be prepared for a lengthy strike. As we were gearing up Kevin Reilly came over from NBC to oversee the network. The strike starts in November and the scripted shows were shut down. Somewhere on my blog I tell the tale of having to let Keifer Sutherland know that 24 was being pushed for a full year. I thought he was going to kill me, but I digress.

We run out of episodes of “Back To You” as well as most of our scripted shows. Sometime in mid-February I’m driving back from lunch when I get a call from Levitan. He told me that the strike was over and he asked that I not return BTY to the schedule. He suggested we wait and bring it back next season. He had ideas as to how to make it a better show and  a better fit for FOX. I had no problem with this. He was a smart guy and he was important to our studio. I knew that bringing it back would probably be a death sentence and by then American Idol was on the air and we were going to win another season with or without “Back To You” on the schedule.

I told Steve that I was on board and would bring this up with Kevin and Peter Liguori, Kevin’s boss. I did not win the argument and had to call Steve and tell him they wanted the show to return. It was not a pleasant call and Steve unloaded on me and the network. He said that he was done with FOX and would tell the heads of our studio not to offer his shows to us. I went back again to my bosses and told them we were pissing off a valued creator. They were unmoved.

In May 2009 Steve remains true to his word and develops a family comedy which is sold to ABC. After we get back from the upfronts I get the competitive pilots. One afternoon I sit down at home to watch MODERN FAMILY. Now there are only two times where I lost my shit over work while at home where the Masked Wife threatened to throw me out of the house if I didn’t chill; once when I was forced to make a scheduling move I knew was a fatal mistake, and after I finished watching the MODERN FAMILY pilot.

There are few pilots where you just know. ER, 24, Jane The Virgin and Modern Family all gave me that feeling that I was watching something special. Everything about MODERN FAMILY worked. I knew nothing about the show going in so the way they revealed that these three distinct units are a family was perfection, and the “Lion King” ending was up there with the Cosby/Theo moment. All the characters were clearly defined and what dawned on me were the infinite combinations. For example, if you wanted to tell a story involving four of the eleven characters, there were 330 different combinations of characters. You would never run out of family dynamics. And there was love, so much love. You start with all these strong bonds and then you add the faux documentary style which worked. I just lost my shit. We blew any chance at MODERN FAMILY coming to FOX. All we had to do was give Steve Levitan a second chance at “Back To You”.         

I never saw the testing on the pilot but my gut was it was strong and maybe the studio felt they had something here and giving it to FOX was not the smartest thing to do. ABC was a far better fit just as BACK TO YOU may well have succeeded on CBS and then there would be no Ty Burrell. It’s all interconnected.

Anyway, the series lived up to the pilot and I give props to all involved in making one of the classic family comedies of all time….at least in my opinion. Steve and I stayed in touch. He was a Wisconsin grad as was the Masked Daughter and we hung out at a Badger bar watching them win in the Final Four. Oh, and he finally did another comedy for FOX. It bombed.