B004YENES8 EBOK (10 page)

We were making my show, and I was generally pleased. I liked the look, and the scripts were solid, if not terrific. They were certainly well above the television series norm. I brought in comedy writer Gloria Banta to “female-ize” what it was we were doing. I was very nervous that my now Avedon-less staff was all middle-aged, white, and male.

Tyne Daly became our leader on the stage. She set the standard of excellence and attention to detail. The best writer I ever knew, Joel Oliansky,
¹⁸
became a devoted fan of the series and once told me that the best line of dialogue he had ever been exposed to on television was in those first six episodes. They were the words “thank you” spoken by Tyne’s Mary Beth Lacey in straightforward fashion as she unhappily learned from ballistics that it was her gun that had fired the shot that had killed a fleeing bank robber. Simple stories, simply told.

Chapter 13 

SCHEDULING HITS/ SCHEDULING FAILURES 

In the midst of this incredibly chaotic time,
Modesty Blaise
, my new pilot for ABC, was about to go into production at Paramount. I had sold this idea, based on the international comic strip heroine created by Peter O’Donnell, as sort of an
Avengers
in reverse—a bright, sophisticated, female James Bond, with her action-oriented male sidekick; it was to be a sexy, adult, action-adventure that should play at 10 pm. Mr. O’Donnell was (you should excuse the expression) gun-shy. Director Joseph Losey had made a theatrical film of his creation in the sixties starring Monica Vitti, Terrence Stamp, and Dirk Bogarde from a screenplay by Stanley Dubens. O’Donnell hated this bastardization of his work to such an extent that he repurchased the rights from the film’s distributor. In order to win over this caring writer, I had, some months before, gone to London at the behest of Paramount boss Nardino. My mission was successful then, but, more and more, I found myself failing the gentlemanly author through compromise.

I had sold a ten o’clock show. ABC now wanted a program for eight o’clock. We were rapidly moving away from the
Avengers
and James Bond and more toward a camp cartoon. My ideas for casting and writing seemed all wrong to the network, and—out of gratitude to Nardino for looking the other way while I launched
Cagney & Lacey
—I went along, believing this would please my beneficent Paramount employer.

We went from some very sophisticated actresses I had met to casting Ann Turkel, a fashion model of limited acting experience and, in my view, questionable dedication to the actor’s craft. When I would try to speak to her (as one would to Tyne Daly) about her character’s arc and background, she would talk to me about her hairdresser. When I would speculate on the pain suffered by the character of
Modesty Blaise
in childhood, she would respond with something like “my skin is very tawny in the sunlight.” I went to Nardino. I felt this was impossible and said so. Gary made it clear that this was who he and Tony Thomopolis (then head of the ABC network programming and development) wanted. And that’s who they got.

The March air date for
Cagney & Lacey
was drawing near. Harvey Shephard gave us what was then the most coveted time period in network television: 9 pm Thursday night.

We were to follow
Magnum
,
P.I.
on the CBS network, thus inheriting a 38 share of audience from this established monster hit. We were all ecstatic. The word throughout Hollywood and Madison Avenue was that here was a major success story about to happen. Imagine: a movie-for-television garners a 42 share, and, within months of that airing, it becomes a series and is scheduled to follow the biggest ratings winner on the number-one network. It couldn’t possibly miss.

A pretty fair schedule of on-air promos
¹⁹
was ordered. For my taste they were too action-oriented and not indicative of what the show was about. “You’re selling this like
Starsky and Hutch
in drag,” I would complain. I would for the nth time paraphrase my spouse: “It’s about two women who happen to be cops, not two cops who happen to be women.” The CBS promotion department was confident of the rightness of its path. I was not making friends there.

We opened on March 25 against
Nine to Five
, a new ABC comedy based on the Jane Fonda-Dolly Parton-Lily Tomlin movie of the same name. It used the same hit song for its TV opening as it had on the successful theatrical feature.

True to predictions, we did inherit
Magnum’s
38 share; we then promptly dropped to a 24 share. Millions of folks—fully 14 percent of the people watching television in America—simultaneously rose from their chairs and changed channels. It was a movement of seismic proportions.

It had to be a mistake, an aberration. No one at CBS panicked. It would correct itself the following week. Perhaps some Nielsen home in Detroit had a power outage. No one could explain it.

The next week we inherited a 38 share again. We immediately fell to a 25. It was not an aberration after all. Harvey Shephard was on the phone. It was Friday morning. “You are canceled,” he said.

I was not surprised. The news was devastating but not unexpected.

Shephard went on. Next week’s episode (our third of the six) would air as scheduled, but only because he could get nothing else on fast enough. (For the record, number three did no better than its predecessors.) Shephard was bitterly disappointed at all this but showed little emotion. It was like talking to a very stern parent after handing in a failing report card.

I wanted to know when he would broadcast the final three episodes. He speculated that it would be sometime during the summer.

“Jesus, Harvey, by then your fall schedule is set. Can’t I get on before the May meetings to have a shot for fall?”

Shephard was understandably incredulous. “Barney, you are canceled!”

“Let me tell you something, Harvey.” I felt my adrenalin pumping even as I formulated my argument. “I started in this business at MGM nearly twenty years ago. My boss was the very venerable Howard Strickling, and he used to say something about the movie business that also applies to television and this conversation: ‘If a picture opens and dies,’ he would say, ‘then it’s the picture’s fault. If it doesn’t open, then it’s the campaign’s fault.’ Harvey,” I went on, “we never opened! Over ten million Americans turned us off without even sampling the show. You owe me an opening.” Before he could acknowledge or counter this argument, I forged ahead. “Have you seen the demographics?”

“What demographics?” he wanted to know.

“For God’s sake, Harvey. ABC has demographics. What the hell’s going on over there at CBS?”

Shephard knew, of course, that my wife was an executive at ABC, that I might well have access to the kind of data to which I referred. I had, in fact, worked on some audience breakdowns, gleaned from Corday’s office, in the hope of tracking some kind of pattern over the six-show life of our series. I had hoped to be prepared with a potential sales argument for the May meetings. I hadn’t learned much, and what I had was, to say the least, incomplete. Despite my lack of preparation with these statistics, I grasped at anything to make my argument work.

“The goddamn demographics show that we shouldn’t be on at 9 pm,” I stated with authority. “We’re 120th among kids and 116th with teenagers, but with adult women we’re 24th—and we’re 28th among adults of both sexes. Clearly we should not be following a teen heartthrob like Tom Selleck, nor should we be on before 10 pm. We’re an adult show for God’s sake!”

I was losing him. TV executives do not like to be told their business by producers any more than the other way around. He did promise he would think about all this and that we would talk again later that afternoon. For now, he had a bigger problem. The numbers on
Cagney & Lacey
were so low that he was being heavily pressured by Universal Studios to resurrect one of their earlier-in-the-season cancellation casualties by allowing them to play out their heretofore unbroadcast episodes in the failed time slot now occupied by my show.

“They can’t do any worse,” Shephard shared.

“It sounds like a good audience flow from
Magnum
,” I conceded. “Good luck with it.”

The Universal series was
Simon and Simon
. Given the lead-in by
Magnum
,
P. I.
,
Simon and Simon
became one of the major hits of the decade for the CBS network. It was exactly the same show with the same cast on the same network that had failed so dismally in the fall on Tuesday nights. Now, on Thursdays in the spring, it would prove to be a smash. This was far from the first time such a thing had occurred.

In fact, this sort of thing happens frequently enough to be almost commonplace. Scheduling hits are almost as numerous as scheduling failures. Why, in the face of this recurring phenomena, network executives continue to prematurely truncate series before they are given an opportunity to find their audience is one of the great mysteries of the medium. No one benefits. It is not only costly for both network and supplier to develop and launch a new show, but this hair-trigger mania curtails creativity and benefits neither the advertiser nor the audience.

Back at Lacy Street, we were in production on our last of the six episodes. I saw no need to share the news of our cancellation with the cast. They had been working night and day and were, quite understandably, exhausted. I let Rosenbloom know, of course, and told him I was scheduled to speak to Harvey Shephard again that same afternoon. I finally returned Mike Piller’s call. He was then working under Tony Barr as our current programming liaison with CBS and years away from becoming the successful producer of some of the
Star Trek
adventures on UPN . It was in that Friday morning conversation that Piller gave me some information about the CBS plans for April that became the thrust of my afternoon confrontation with Shephard.

I was possessed by more than the desire to win. I knew that the cancellation of
Cagney & Lacey
would be perceived differently than the earlier demise of, say,
Simon and Simon
. There a cop show, featuring two private eyes, had failed. In the case of
Cagney & Lacey
, a police drama featuring two women had collapsed. That was the distinction. No one would consider not making another male-bonding show just because of the failure of one, but
Cagney & Lacey
would somehow be pointed to as demonstrable proof that a dramatic show with women as buddies could not succeed.

I was overwhelmed by the irony that my work would serve as yet another nail in the coffin of the women’s movement. The very group I had hoped to aid—to be a spokesperson for—was now about to suffer even greater indignity, and I would be the cause.

I wanted the opportunity to prove that
Cagney & Lacey
could work in a proper time period—and to be given that chance before the May scheduling meetings in New York. Shephard was in disbelief at my temerity and tenacity. I was undaunted.

“On Sunday, April 25, and on Monday, April 26, you are playing reruns of
Trapper John
and
Lou Grant
,” I began (using my notes from the day’s earlier phone conversation with CBS liaison Piller). “Give me those two 10 pm time periods, and I will send Meg and Tyne on the road and spend $25,000 of my own money on the campaign:
Cagney & Lacey
are back … to back!”

“Save your money,” was the terse response.

“Harvey,” I entreated, “what have you got to lose here? I can’t do worse than a rerun.”

Shephard replied in classic “read my lips” fashion. “Barney, you are canceled. Why are we having this conversation?”

“This is not a conversation,” I countered, “it’s an argument. I want to know why you won’t give this campaign a chance, and you’re not telling me.”

“I’m not going to give you two nights,” he said.

I took it as an opening. “All right, if I can only have the one, I’d prefer Sunday at ten. I believe that’s where we belong anyway.”

My hubris was undeniable. Shephard agreed to think about it.

“Don’t think too long,” I said. “I need time to get into
TV Guide
and to plan out the promotion tour.”

Rosenbloom consented to the expenditure of funds. Tyne and Meg agreed to go. Brocato began plotting out a tour of something more than a dozen key cities. With so little time before April 25, we would split up the two women and have them visit different cities simultaneously. Tyne would take the northern route east, Meg the southern. Both would leave immediately upon completion of photography of episode six. Harvey Shephard would make me wait until the following Tuesday for his essential permission.

“OK,” he said at last. “You will replace a
Trapper John
rerun on April 25.” I don’t think he stayed on the phone long enough to hear me say thank you.

Rosenbloom and I divided up the country as well. Each of us began calling CBS station managers in the cities Meg or Tyne would be visiting. In essence we said that our star was coming to town on such and such a date and for “x” amount of time; that she would be available for local promos or any publicity or promotion they might see fit. All were cooperative to one degree or another. I’m sure Tyne and Meg could write books of their own about this journey. They did “on air” conversations, phone interviews, and promos for the stations. They met with print journalists and did everything but open supermarkets. The whole thing went off without too many hitches, despite the reticence of some newspaper editors to meet with either of them and Meg’s falling asleep in an airport phone booth from exhaustion, which resulted in her missing one of her flights. The whole thing from plan to air date was three weeks.