The other day, someone asked Steven Brill about the upcoming trial. Without hesitation, Brill wanted to know, “Which one?”
The curious young man was referring to O.J. Simpson, of course, and Brill, founder and CEO of Court TV, probably knew as much. It didn’t matter. Why blow such a stellar opportunity to run down the Court TV menu?
Last week, American Lawyer Media, L.P., co-owner of cable’s Court TV (an offshoot of Brill’s American Lawyer magazine), ran a full-page ad in the New York Times alerting readers and potential television viewers that, unlike the big three networks and CNN, covering high-profile trials is an everyday occurrence on Court TV.
It’s obvious what was at work here: Brill wants and needs to lure those viewers who are finding the network coverage of the Simpson trial to be TV worth watching.
In its third year, Court TV is once again positioning itself for another ratings jump with a high-profile case and, more important, a chance to convince skeptical viewers that a 24-hour channel devoted exclusively to real courtroom trials need not be a monumental bore.
For that, Brill has followed Simpson trial coverage on the networks with keen interest-interest that network coverage of the Simpson trial will shuttle viewers to Court TV much the way CNN builds news dependence when the networks are unable to clear their daytime schedules fast enough for breaking news.
“People keep asking me whether we feel we’re being undercut-that the networks are finally seeing the possibility of covering hearings and they’re stealing our thunder,” says Brill.
“It’s not that way at all. What it does, basically, is legitimize what we’ve been saying about long-form TV, that people don’t turn it off because you don’t have things perfectly scripted, perfect cuts or mood music; that, in fact, you get long pauses and glasses clicking and people coughing.”
Court TV has covered nearly 200 civic and criminal trials, from child custody to public official corruption, but the channel has won critical attention for coverage of such sensational cases as the William Kennedy Smith rape trial and the Menendez murder case.
Brill says it’s impossible to measure an exact cause-and-effect certain trials have on subscribers and cable systems deciding to carry the network. Only 14.4 million homes receive Court TV; MTV, in contrast, is in nearly 60 million households.
But the lengthy, sensational cases of Erik and Lyle Menendez provided both a media buzz and a business boom to the channel, luring viewers caught up in the theater of the trial itself and the channel’s no-frills “color” commentary. Shortly after the Menendez trial, Court TV added an additional 3 million viewers nationwide.
The Menendez trials also helped the careers of defense attorney Leslie Abramson, now a familiar presence on network television, and anchor-producer Cynthia McFadden, who was hired away from Court TV by ABC News.
Rising quickly is the baby-faced Terry Moran, a straight-shooting reporter who covered the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings and the $105 million jury award against General Motors over the death of a young man in a GM truck crash, and who relentlessly drilled the producers of the made-for-TV film on the Menendez brothers, though apparently to little avail.
“One thing we try and make clear is that, one, we’re not here to sensationalize anything and, two, we’re not a murder channel,” Brill says.
“We like the fact that, ratingswise, the Menendez trial on a day-to-day basis got similar ratings of many other cases that had nothing to do with murder. It’s just that Menendez went on and on and people started to know and like, or dislike, the major players. They started to form their opinions by watching the facts, not a docudrama from producers who do certain things for dramatic appeal.”
In fact, Court TV now produces more than a dozen programs in addition to live trial coverage, including a newsmagazine and a non-fiction version of NBC’s “Law & Order,” where cameras follow specific cases through the legal system.
Court TV also put together specials on a single trial, looking at, say, the Menendez trials the same weekend as a network made-for-TV movie based on the case, showing the vast differences between fact and fiction.
“We’re a serious, public-service channel,” Brill says. “And while the networks might be seeing the O.J. trial as specialty coverage, we see it as just another trial. This is business as usual for us.”
Brill admits that his concern remains the same: Be fair, be right and hope viewers like what they see once they arrive.
