Neal Sabin, program director of WPWR-Ch. 50, finished spooling the thin pasta and stopped gazing at the seemingly even thinner women modeling $2,000 ensembles at a chichi Near North restaurant. Now, it was time for fresh fruit and The Pitch.
”Neal, the first thing I want to talk to you about is `Family Feud,`
” said luncheon companion Lou Israel, a vice president of LBS Communications Inc. and a longtime salesman of syndicated shows.
LBS hawks ”Family Feud,” which now runs in Chicago on WMAQ-Ch. 5 but, until last week, had been buried in a terrible, late-night slot. The LBS contract with Channel 5 expires in the fall, and Israel, a vibrant survivor in a business that spits out those graying around the temples, hoped to persuade Sabin to consider a purchase and an early-evening slot.
”Lou, I can`t,” Sabin said. He explained that the show would disrupt an early-evening schedule geared to teens and young adults. ”We`d effectively be putting up a sign saying, `Kids, go away!` and I don`t want to do that.”
Undeterred, Israel pitched Sabin on renewing a children`s show,
”Heathcliff,” and buying an animated Japanese-made show based on a video game, ”Dragon Warrior,” and holiday specials on Medal of Honor winners, hosted by actor Cliff Robertson.
What played out was a transaction central to the TV industry, and especially important for WPWR, a precocious player on the Chicago media scene. Picking the right shows for the right price is critical, and, so far, WPWR has been doing a generally strong job.
”If WGN is the 5-ton gorilla, we`re the banana peel,” said Sabin, a TV junkie and well-regarded, imaginative programmer.
The peel is getting bigger.
Having gone on the air as Channel 60 eight years ago, WPWR is one of Chicago television`s success tales. Credit good, if far from flawless programming decisions; a schedule tailored to children, teens and young adults who make up a channel-switching generation not beholden to the traditional networks and stations; and marketplace changes that make it, increasingly, a prime independent (non-network) outlet for syndicated shows such as the ones Israel possesses.
On several recent days, more people watched WPWR-Ch. 50 than Fox Broadcasting`s WFLD-Ch. 32, an archfoe and Sabin`s former employer. On a recent Thursday, more watched its prime-time movie than watched WFLD`s.
Its Sunday morning of kids` shows draws 50 percent of the TV-viewing children in the market, while late-night reruns of the moth-eaten ”All in the Family” are a surprisingly consistent draw. In fact, Archie Bunker and family, for reasons that are far from clear, do far better on Channel 50
(10:30 to 11:30 p.m. weeknights) than most anywhere else in the country.
Now, none of this is vaguely akin to, say, ”The Cosby Show,” which draws millions of viewers and earns NBC hundreds of millions of dollars.
But they are victories nonetheless for a station that fights electronic guerrilla warfare. It may be dwarfed in revenue and ratings by the likes of WLS-Ch. 7 and WGN-Ch. 9, but it can be nettlesome to prime competitors-and fellow independents-WGBO-Ch. 66 and WFLD.
`Unique` approach
”They`re kind of a unique entity,” said Greg Meidel, executive vice president and general sales manager for Paramount Domestic Television. His firm sold Channel 50 a ratings hit, the first-run syndicated ”Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a perfect example of beating competitors to the punch and finding a winner.
”They`re not owned by a major group and don`t have a sister station,”
Meidel said. ”In competing for programming, they may have to go up against network-owned groups, Tribune Broadcasting and Fox. They have to be even more creative and find ways of generating viewer interest beyond traditional means.”
Johnathan Rodgers, general manager of WBBM-Ch. 2, is impressed. Like several other Channel 50 competitors, he discerns a strong station led by a distinctly private owner, Fred Eychaner, 45 (so private he declined several attempts to be photographed for this article); general manager Al DeVaney, 40, former general manager at WFLD; and Sabin, 33, a creature of the TV age who ran a junior-high-school business showing cartoons at children`s birthday parties.
”They`ve got a decent owner, a good general manager and an effective programmer,” Rodgers said.
Eychaner is a De Kalb native and graduate of Northwestern University`s Medill School of Journalism who long reflected the philosophy, manner and dress of one steeped in the 1960s, as he was.
These days, one finds an intense fellow of liberal-Democratic/progressive political and philanthropic bent who wears his hair short and is inclined to nice suits. He blends in at stock analyst meetings, such as one of media analysts that he attended in Los Angeles last week, all the while researching and plotting, seeking to add to a formidable list of savvy, even brilliant investments.
But it wasn`t long ago that Eychaner, who sold printing while at Northwestern, was given to an extremely long pony tail as he started an off-the-beaten-track printing firm on the North Side.
”I remember a guy who tucked his hair into his jacket and was very much a mystery figure to us, not saying much about his past,” said Tom Yoder, advertising director of the Chicago Reader, an Eychaner client since the weekly`s 1971 inception.
The Reader, along with other alternative and community papers, such as the Seed, found Eychaner`s Newsweb Corp., now headquartered at 3305 N. Ashland Ave., to be a low-cost, efficient printer with a compatible aura. When the plant opened, it was in an alley near Wilton and Belmont Avenues and had no sign, and the alley ”had one of the biggest rat problems I`ve seen,” said Reader co-founder Robert Roth.
Building of a station
But Eychaner didn`t become a real media player, and one able to contribute handily to candidates and progressive causes, until the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Typical was his adroit private purchases of 6.6 percent of the voting shares in the Cowles-family-controlled Des Moines Register & Tribune Co. He secured the shares at $15 apiece and later sold them at $300 apiece, making millions after real family feuding (he sided with dissident Cowles family members) prompted dueling purchase bids, liquidation of the company, and huge profits for many.
Then there was the building of Channel 50. It can be traced to a 1978 application by Eychaner`s Metrowest Corp. to the Federal Communications Commission for the license of Aurora-based Channel 60, which was not on the air. He got the license in 1982, going on the air in April with a mishmash of free and pay subscription offerings, starting with a tape of that day`s Boston Marathon.
In May that year, an Eychaner deal with White Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn led to a pay-subscription sports service, SportsVision, on Channel 60, whose lure was White Sox games. That meant that for parts of many days, the signal was scrambled if a viewer didn`t fork over money for the sporting events. It was a bad idea, and on Dec. 31, 1983, SportsVision headed to a cable-TV home.
End of the unsuccessful sports deal notwithstanding, Channel 60`s dial position was not enviable, especially with the advent of another independent, WGBO-Ch. 66, and given the fact that Channel 60 was actually two, not mutually hospitable, stations in one.
Yes, two in one, a rarity in TV. From 2:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., it was WPWR, and for the rest of the 24 hours it was Spanish-language WBBS, owned by Chicagoan Marcelino Mayares.
That helps explain a nifty, disputed and lucrative series of mid-1980s moves engineered by Eychaner that led to what`s now known as Channel 50, a 20,000-square foot, 45-employee operation at 2151 N. Elston Ave. (By comparison, WBBM-TV has 281 full-time employees.)
He spent about $1.5 million to buy a Gary commercial TV license for Gary- based Channel 56 from a group of local residents. That group had the license since 1979 but had never built a station. He also donated money to a group of northwest Indiana residents who had the license to Channel 50, a local educational station.
His donation was in return for their swapping their license for Channel 56`s, allowing Eychaner to turn Channel 50 commercial and giving him a potentially far better dial position.
Milton Grant, Channel 66`s owner, tried to stop the moves in front of the FCC but failed. Having made the swap of Channel 56-now an active PBS affiliate in northwest Indiana-for the Channel 50 position, Eychaner got lucky as developments in the Spanish-language TV market prompted Mayares to put his part of Channel 60 up for sale.
Eychaner bought him out for $11 million, meaning he had a license for Channel 50, then not on the air, and a license for Channel 60, a full-time operation. Then, in what Eychaner characterizes as serendipity, Minneapolis-based Home Shopping Network came looking for a Chicago outlet and bought Channel 60 from him for $25 million.
With a lot of cash in hand, Eychaner changed WPWR-Ch. 60 to WPWR-Ch. 50, operating with a license assigned to Gary and a transmitter atop the Sears Tower. More important, the move, which took place Jan. 17, 1987, lessened viewer confusion between Channel 60 and Grant`s Channel 66, and allowed WPWR to forcefully enter a brave new world of independent broadcasting.
Contrary programming
Traditionally, an independent station is marked by a double-digit UHF channel position, single-digit ratings and programming that counters what network affiliates offer. So, for instance, an independent may present entertainment versus the affiliates` early news; situation comedies versus late news; children`s programming versus mid-afternoon game and talk shows;
and entertainment geared to working women while the other stations are doing sports.
WPWR`s success comes at what might be the end of a boom period for independents. For economic and regulatory reasons, the mid-1970s began an explosion in independent stations, with the number rising from 79 nationwide to 340. With advertisers confident in both TV and the economy, they initially were gold mines, though recent years have seen the death of several dozen because of financial ills.
At the same time, in the past 15 years, the networks have seen their prime-time share drop from more than 90 percent of the viewing audience to the 65 percent share announced for the 1989-90 season. Viewers obviously are drifting to cable and their VCRs, but independents are picking off good numbers as well.
Crawling before they walked, as Sabin puts it, WPWR`s initial buys were for second- and third-tier shows that came cheaply, such as ”The Dating Game” and ”Newlywed Game” in the 6 to 7 p.m. slot (”prime access” in TV lingo), and ”Rod Serling`s Night Gallery” and ”Carson`s Comedy Classics,” namely highlights of ”Tonight” shows; and situation comedies such as
”McHale`s Navy,” ”F Troop” and ”Bewitched.”
In recent years, it made some terrific buys, such as ”Growing Pains,”
and some terrible ones, notably reruns of ”Webster,” a financially draining mistake that cost more than $2 million and flopped with viewers.
But most were good, and these days there are 10 hours of first-run programming each week, unusual for an independent station. The 10 hours includes shows such as ”Star Trek: The Next Generation,” ”War of the Worlds” and a Canadian children`s show, ”My Secret Identity.” Channel 50 generally pays $10 to $10,000 an episode or does barter deals in which each party gets rights to a certain number of commercials.
Viewership, revenue and, it`s believed, profits grow nicely, even if Channel 50 is in a different league from the big guys, generating about 4 percent of the market`s total annual revenue, or about $25 million. By comparison, WLS-Ch. 7 and WGN, which will battle this year for top honors, are around 25 percent apiece, or between $140 million and $150 million.
And Eychaner and DeVaney see some trends going their way, notably growth of the Fox network, which means more Fox programming that Channel 32 must take. Then, there`s superstation Channel 9`s growing sports affiliations.
Channel 66 fell on hard times in the late 1980s and declared bankruptcy. It is now out of bankruptcy-owned by an amalgam of program suppliers, syndicators and bond-holder representatives-but is generally considered to be in a weakened position.
Increasingly, Channel 50 may seem more the true independent, more flexible than the rest with scheduling, and a first or second stop for syndicators like Lou Israel.
No doubt it has formidable challenges. These include the need to develop a greater local identity, especially with creation of some sort of news operation. Also, there`s the matter of gaining greater consistency on cable outlets where the station`s number may be different from one Chicago area system to another.
In its favor could be the altered viewing habits of a new generation, which give fits to the old networks.
As WBBM`s Rodgers put it: ”There`s a whole generation, 35 years old and under, who aren`t wed to Channels 2 through 13. Those people treat every station equally.”
For Chicago TV viewers, it`s not out of the realm of possibility to consider the day when life starts at 50.
