In the world according to Brandon Tartikoff, it never hurts to listen. As president of NBC Entertainment, Tartikoff has directed his network into the lightning round of the ratings game, and he`s done it by establishing a consistent, coherent approach to programming.
Talking from his Burbank office on Tuesday, Tartikoff was ruminating over a deal he`d cut with himself at the start of this prime-time season.
”I`m hoping to get from the third week of September to the end of the year without canceling or moving any shows,” he said. ”It`s a little like going to the dentist and turning down the chance for the gas. You take as much pain as you can. I`m tempted to go with some good back-up shows we`ve got.”
Loosely translated, that means the former promotions director at WLS-Ch. 7 is tempted to rid his lineup of, maybe, ”Hell Town” or ”Misfits of Science” or a few other video albatrosses burdening his lineup. There`s a Valerie (”Rhoda”) Harper vehicle in the wings at NBC, along with a comedy built around Jack (”Quincy”) Klugman, and there seems to be a certain amount of panting at NBC to get them on the air.
When asked about his celebrated patience with floundering shows, Tartikoff starts by admitting that his patience is being sorely tested, then fires back with just a touch of arrogance.
”I don`t want to make the same kinds of decisions made by people I just passed in the ratings,” he said.
When you`re sitting where Tartikoff is, even your problems can carry a high gloss. ”Miami Vice,” for example. The slick, pastel saga of Crockett and Tubbs, a show fueled by decadence and pop music, was the talk of the medium last year.
Producers such as Michael Mann were being discussed as wizards who were reinventing prime-time entertainment. That 18-to-49-year-old audience NBC is seeking was in a lather over the cop show of the `80s.
”After the second ”Miami Vice” episode this fall,” Tartikoff said,
”I wound up with about six mailbags in my office, full of letters mostly from college kids asking, `What have you done with my favorite show?` ”
A long letter from a USC student, lambasting the show for a lack of emotion, as well as for the increasing intrusiveness of the music and the mugging going on between actors Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas, led to a series of meetings with the show`s producers.
”This letter was the most intelligent critique I`d seen,” said Tartikoff. ”The producers, who`d gotten so much credit for the show`s success, were called in right away. There was a feeling the emotion had been taken out of the show and that there was a lot of posturing going on between the characters. It was like the show had become a caricature of itself.”
After meetings with the producers, NBC used the time made available during the major league baseball playoffs to reconstruct ”Miami,” with results yet to be seen.
”Series TV is the hardest thing to do,” Tartikoff insists. ”If it`s successful or if it`s good or if it`s both, you have to keep it the same and still make it different. I put a lot of faith in what I hear on the street, what I hear in the softball league I play in, in `civilian` comments about programs.”
Under Tartikoff, NBC has refined the notion of ”targeting” audiences, of finding demographic groups and numbers that will appeal to advertisers. And it`s a process that has to be established over time, a precious commodity in TV.
”In the early days of `Hill Street,` Tartikoff said, ”we didn`t have another show where you could drop in a promo for `Hill Street` and hope to reach the audience you wanted. For example, I think that CBS had that problem with shows like ”Hometown” and ”West 57th St.” CBS didn`t have any other programs that were geared toward the audience they thought they wanted.
”Sometimes you think about the schizophrenic nature of programming, about the fact that what you seem to be trying to reach are yuppies and 9-year-old boys.”
Which brings us, inevitably, to Tartikoff`s biggest gamble, the one that will no doubt be tossed his way when the kid programmer visits Chicago next Wednesday to address a Chicago Communications luncheon.
NBC is locked into 44 expensive episodes of Steven Spielberg`s ”Amazing Stories,” with kisses and attendant ratings promises made to advertisers. So far, according to the numbers, America has not been amazed.
Tartikoff remains steadfast and true to his gamble, as if he had a choice. ”Yes, I`m still excited about the show,” he said. ”Yes, I think it`ll be better next season than it is this season because that`s how TV works. I think there`s a tendency to build a guy (Spielberg) up as a genius, then knock him down a little. There are four or five episodes this year I`m not comfortable with, but 17 out of 22 is an average George Brett would take.”
Tartikoff says he believes that after a slow start and a lukewarm critical response, ”Amazing Stories” will undergo ”a regeneration of interest.” And in the tightrope act that is network programming, he`s been right a good deal more often than he`s been wrong.
In the world according to network television, that`s all that matters.
