It`s 1992 and women television executives are still looking up at the glass ceiling. Some can touch it, some can see through it and some have climbed around it.
But most agree it`s still there and it hasn`t been cracked.
”There is definitely an old boys network where women are not accepted,” said Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, executive producer of ”Designing Women.”
”We don`t play golf and make business deals on golf courses. Women don`t belong to the same clubs that men do. We will have to try harder.”
”I was never a member of the boys club,” said Joan Barnett, who ran NBC`s movie department from 1979 to 1982. ”I was always an outsider. I felt I was treated differently because I was a woman.”
”We all think, deep in our minds, that we can attribute all the evils to this business to a men`s club,” said Susan Baerwald, the former head of mini- series at NBC and an independent producer. ”I can`t be that cynical.”
The firing of ”Tonight Show” executive producer Helen Kushnick has again revived the long-simmering issue of television`s Boys Club, which many women have blamed for blocking their rise into network broadcasting`s upper echelon. For the first time in many years, the issue is being discussed publicly.
”Can a Woman Do a Power Job in the Industry and Be Taken Seriously?”
was the topic last week at the Women in Film symposium.
”Her firing triggered this,” said Harriet Silverman, executive director of the 1,600-member group whose membership includes some of Hollywood`s most powerful women.
”I am not certain what happened. But it does seem to indicate that women are more vulnerable, and a man of equal strength and courage would not be attacked in a like manner.”
Ironically, Silverman said she invited a number of male executives to join the unprecedented panel discussion, but she said, ”They all were conveniently out of town.”
”I think we are in trouble,” TV producer Judy Polone said at the symposium. ”I don`t think there are enough women in power positions or in any positions. It is sad. Our business is sick. It is time for all of us to look inside ourselves and do something about it.”
The other panelists-Disney executive Jane Goldenring, entertainment attorney Mary Ledding and Kushnick-agreed.
”There is still an old boys network,” said Goldenring, a former aide to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), ”and a lot of the networking that gets done on the very top levels are areas where women are not friends with these guys. Therefore, a lot of that kind of deal-making that gets done, we can`t get into.
”The more women that push through, the more chance we have to create our own network or push into the old one.”
Ledding said: ”There are fewer and fewer women out there” in top jobs because many women quit the entertainment industry when they realized they had no future.
She said there was a brief period when women were being pushed ahead at the networks, but there has been a ”contraction. The pendulum is swinging back and we have to be vigilant.”
Silverman said the discussion was aimed at ”opening a dialogue because more and more women are hoping to crack the glass ceiling (a term that suggests woman can see the offices of power above them but can`t enter) and don`t want to be considered in stereotypes.”
While Kushnick`s public firing might have provided impetus for the symposium at the American Film Institute, the deeper issue is sexism throughout network broadcasting, and whether any woman can rise to the top in an industry historically controlled by the ”Boys Club.”
One look at Entertainment Weekly`s just-published annual list of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood adds fuel to the discussion. The only woman to make this top-10 list was Madonna-at 10th. She is identified not as an executive, but as a ”singer, dancer, provocateur” who has a $60 million deal with Time Warner, which is run by co-chief executives Steven J. Ross and Gerald M. Levin. The two men tied for No. 2 on the list.
The only woman on the list who heads a TV network is Kay Koplovitz, the chief executive of USA cable, who ranked 96th. CBS Entertainment president Jeff Sagansky is No. 5, CNN`s Ted Turner is at 6, ABC Entertainment president Robert Iger is No. 18 and his counterpart at NBC, Warren Littlefield, is No. 30.
There are fewer women on this year`s list than in either of the previous two annual Entertainment Weekly rankings.
”If the entertainment business is dominated by men, then the list mostly has men on it,” said Steve Reddicliffe, who compiled the list. ”This is the reflection of the way it is.”
Wednesday Paramount Communications Inc. named producer Sherry Lansing as its new studio chief, but she will not wield the same powers held by Brandon Tartikoff, who resigned last week.
Lansing will become the first female studio chief since Dawn Steel, who resigned as president of Columbia Pictures in January 1990. Lansing also has been production chief at 20th Century Fox.
Kushnick, who said she was unable to discuss her ouster from the
”Tonight” show because she is still negotiating her settlement with NBC, said that once women do obtain power, they must promote and encourage other women.
”A lot of women don`t like working with women,” she said. ”You have to be comfortable with women, not think there is something wrong with you-and you are not going to be one of the guys if you choose to work with a woman.”
Silverman said Women in Film`s membership seems divided on just how much of a role sexism played in that firing, but many seem to agree there are limitations within the industry. ”Many are skeptical that it is a sexist issue,” she said. ”They don`t want to believe it, even though they have experienced it.”
In the 40-plus years of network television, no woman has ever run a commercial network. Jane Pfeiffer was chairman of NBC but reported to Fred Silverman, who was the president of NBC and chief executive officer.
”It was one of the few examples in American business where the chairman reported to the president,” said former NBC corporate spokesman M.S. Rukeyser. Pfeiffer was fired after 19 months.
Barbara Corday, who is now the executive producer of ”Knots Landing,”
was briefly second in command at CBS Entertainment. Others, like Lin Bolen, now an independent producer, got close. She was second in command on the West Coast for NBC during the mid-`70s, but the network seat of power was in New York.
In the less traditional arena of cable television, women such as USA`s Koplovitz, whose network mixes sports, cartoons, reruns and TV movies, have broken through. USA, which launched the Sci-Fi Channel last March, is considered one of the most profitable cable operations.
Geraldine Laybourne is the president of Nickelodeon and Sharon Patrick is the president of Rainbow, the umbrella company for AMC, Bravo and SportsChannel America.
When it comes to producing TV shows, many of the medium`s successful TV producers in Hollywood are women, including ”Murphy Brown`s” Diane English and Bloodworth-Thomason.
Arsenio Hall, Leno`s late-night rival, has three women vice presidents. Lucie Salhany, the chairman of 20th Television, the TV production arm of Twentieth Century Fox, is one of the most powerful women in broadcasting, but she is at a movie studio and must sell her shows to the networks. Buyers, not sellers, are the real power players.
”No women can say yes and the project goes to film,” said Barbara Brogliotti, senior vice president of publicity at Warner Bros. ”Do we have equal standing? No.”
The result of being excluded from the top spots at the networks has provided many women with lucrative production jobs-entrepreneurs who sell shows to the networks and cable companies. Ironically, these women can make much more money than the network executives who greenlight their projects.
But women still trying to climb the corporate ladder wonder if Kushnick`s highly publicized firing will limit their careers. Will it make the men who run the networks hesitate promoting such women? The Women in Film symposium will address this issue. Most women interviewed doubt it.
But Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Fay Kanin, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and its current treasurer, thinks Kushnick`s case could be harmful. ”Once it broke, the paranoia about strong women came to the fore again,” Kanin said.
Others like Kim Swann, a vice president at Hall`s communication company, and Sandi Fullerton, who directs Hall`s talk show, are outraged by Kushnick`s charges of sexism.
”It was an easy way out,” Swann said. ”It is an old boys network, and you have to learn when you sit at the table to play ball.”
Julie Hoover, an ABC corporate spokeswoman, said the issue of a lack of women in power positions in broadcasting actually extends to women in corporate America.
”It`s the same problem women have had at other companies,” she said.
”A woman has never run IBM or any other major company, with the exception of cosmetics. Women historically did not have the same opportunities and didn`t have the same expectations of themselves.”
Fred Silverman, who ran the programming departments at CBS, ABC and NBC, believes the atmosphere is changing at the networks.
”Women vice presidents are poised to make the transition to running things,” he said. ”There was a lot of seeding and that will bear fruit.”
ABC`s Hoover agrees. ”We have a special program to help women in lower management to move into upper management,” she said. ”The company is making affirmative efforts to get women into the pipeline.”
Schultz said that NBC has ”numerous programs for all employees designed to promote from within the company as well as to promote employees from lower and middle management to senior mangement.”
CBS officials did not respond.
