Call Me Ted (19 page)
—Tom Cousins
(TOM COUSINS IS A PROMINENT REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER AND CIVIC LEADER IN ATLANTA. SOME OF HIS CLOSER FRIENDS CALL HIM CUZ.)
I remember going over to his little office on West Peachtree Street. His shirt had this frazzled collar and he sat behind a crummy, low wooden desk. I mean it looked like absolute poverty in a business office. He was asking me for a loan. He told me the banks wouldn’t lend him another dime and he was worried that he might not be able to make the next payroll coming up in ten days or something. I wasn’t much better off than he was back then, but I said, “Yeah, absolutely Ted. I’ll loan you the money.” He brightened up then and he said, “Cuz, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to be the fourth network,” and I’m thinking, “Oh this poor guy, he’s out of his mind.”
And he says, “I’m doing an earth station out in Cobb County and I’m getting on a satellite.” I barely knew about satellites at that point and I certainly didn’t know what an “earth station” was. Then he said, “I’m going to beam my signal up on this satellite and I’m going to be able to put Channel 17 all across America and I’m going to get national ad rates. And you know what I’m going to do next after I have the fourth network?”
I said, “No, Ted, what’s that?”
“I’m going to run for president and be elected.”
Now I thought to myself, “This guy is absolutely nuts—and I’ve just agreed to lend him all this money!” I said to Ted, “Oh, Ted, don’t tell anybody else about that, okay?” And he said, “Cuz, your trouble is you don’t understand the power of television. Let me show you.” He pulled a little book of matches out of his desk drawer and he said, “Okay, it’s Saturday morning at 7:30 and it’s
Captain Teddy’s Kiddy Hour,
and I come on television and I say, ‘Hey kids, today we’re going to play a game and it’s going to be so much fun. Now, don’t tell Mommy and Daddy, this is our secret between Captain Teddy and you. Now, everybody go get some matches. See Captain Teddy’s matches? Go get some just like this.’” Then he goes over to his window he says, “All right kids, everybody got your match? Go to the window and strike your match and light the curtain or the drape,” at which point he struck his match right near the old cheesecloth thing he had hanging in front of his window and then he flung the window open and he said to me, “At that point, I’d look out over Atlanta and watch it burn.” It was an incredible performance.
In the first place, he made his point. Television is so powerful that could happen. But number two it absolutely confirmed my conviction that he might be nuts.
Armed with the research data Bob Sieber cobbled together, we did our best to convince advertisers that the SuperStation was a smart place to put their money, but at first it was a hard sell. Early on, we were available in about 2 million households while the networks were seen in roughly 75 million. Our advertising sales team really had it rough. They were like that first wave of troops landing on the beaches of Normandy—they never really had a chance. Not only did people turn us down, more than a few literally laughed in our faces. I remember telling one buyer about how we planned to use TBS to compete as a “fourth network,” and he threw his head back and laughed so hard that his chair tipped over backward and he cracked his head on his office radiator. He almost died laughing at our sales pitch! It was nearly two full years before we got any meaningful national buys. Our first major customer was Jack Irving, at the advertising firm of Dancer Fitzgerald, which at the time represented some major advertisers, including General Mills and Toyota. Once we were able to work out some creative pricing plans, he became the first national advertiser to pay for TBS coverage outside Atlanta. What we were doing was so new and so unique that everyone was slow to adapt, but once a few of the bigger players validated our concept, the rest began to follow.
Our lack of Nielsen ratings continued to hold us back, so I kept after them to add us to their service. It became increasingly clear that the only reason they were freezing us out was because of pressure from ABC, NBC, and CBS and I decided that my only option was to threaten a lawsuit. My argument was that Neilsen’s refusal to measure our networks amounted to anti-competitive behavior by them and the networks. Estimating that they were costing us $10 million a year in lost revenues, I said I would seek treble damages in the amount of $30 million. This got their attention and it wasn’t long before they came back and said they would work on a rating plan for us.
Once we were being measured we tried everything we could think of to grow our ratings and as I was looking at the listings in
TV Guide,
it occurred to me that every other channel started and ended all their programming at the top and the bottom of the hour. Why don’t we try to break out of the crowd, I thought, and instead of ending a show just before 7:00 and starting the next one on the hour, what prevents us from extending a program through the end of the hour and starting the following one at 7:05? I envisioned that people watching our competition would start flipping around at the end of their show and while the other channels would all be running commercials, we’d be showing programming! (Besides, with a lot of shows the last five minutes are the best part.) Once a viewer came to us they’d be five minutes into the other networks’ shows so they might as well stick around and see what we had on at 7:05. Another benefit of this strategy was that we got our own little slot in every program guide. A group of channels would be listed together at the top and bottom of the hour, but we were all by ourselves on the :05 and :35. We tried it and immediately our Nielsen ratings improved. Before long, people referred to this practice as “Turner Time,” and it provided another way for us to stand out from the crowd.
Looking back, one of the lessons I learned from all of this is that when you start out on a new entrepreneurial venture, you might think you know what the roadblocks will be but you don’t really have any idea until after you get started. As an entrepreneur, you’re like a running back in a football game. He knows what hole he’s trying to run through, but once he’s through he’s in the open field and now he has to improvise. At first, the SuperStation’s big hurdle was getting the signal to the satellite but as soon as we did that, I was fighting in Washington with our program suppliers. Once that was sorted out, Nielsen and the advertisers became our problem. The list went on but the key for us was that we kept fighting. We never knew what wall we’d come up against next but whatever it was, we figured out a way to knock it down.
It was really an exciting time. Cable and satellite delivery were about to revolutionize the way people consumed television and viewers’ range of choice would increase in a way that few could have imagined. As a programmer in the middle of all this change, I spent a lot of time trying to invent other channels. A twenty-four-hour sports service made perfect sense and it wasn’t long before ESPN’s plans were developed (they ultimately launched in 1979). An all-movie format was also logical but HBO had a big first-mover advantage there. The other concept that struck me all the way back in 1975, when we first considered satellite delivery for Channel 17, was an all-news channel. To me, it was obvious, but it was also clear that the companies best positioned to do it were the Big Three broadcasters, or one of the news wire services. It would be an expensive venture and they were the only ones with the necessary infrastructure—from studios to bureaus to on-air talent—to pull this off. I assumed it was just a matter of time before one or more of these joined the cable fray with a new channel and for the next few years I read the TV trades to see which one would announce their news channel first.
Honestly, I was surprised that this window remained open long enough to give us the opportunity. The SuperStation was becoming a success, and it was only the beginning.
The America’s Cup
I
n every field that I’ve entered I’ve tried to do my very best. When I got into the television business I owned just two small UHF stations but I wanted to compete with the broadcast networks, and after buying the last-place Braves, winning the World Series was my goal. But in no part of my life was my competitive drive stronger than in my sailing career, and around the time of the SuperStation’s launch, my focus was on winning the sport’s ultimate trophy—the America’s Cup.
I first thought seriously about the America’s Cup in the late 1960s when my ability improved to the point that I was holding my own against the world’s best. By 1970 I was near the pinnacle of the sport, winning the SORC and the 5.5 Meter Gold Cup and performing well in several other high-profile competitions (including a first place finish in the World Ocean Racing Championship and a fourth place finish in the Fastnet Race). The sailing establishment took notice of my achievements and at the end of the season I was named 1970’s Yachtsman of the Year. When the America’s Cup was held that September I didn’t compete, but the Australians asked me to skipper their “trial horse” boat during their training. Helping these guys practice couldn’t match the excitement of the real competition but I did get a sense for how special the America’s Cup competition was and my appetite was whetted for my own run in 1974.
For me, the first step in pursuing the Cup was to be selected by a syndicate—a group of partners who finance the operation, build or acquire the boat, assemble the crew, and so forth. When George Hinman put his team together for a 1974 syndicate, he asked me to join. This was a great recognition for me, as Hinman was well respected in sailing circles and was in a position to pursue the best people in the sport. A great skipper in his own right, Hinman was also a former commodore of the New York Yacht Club. (The club’s custom was for their former chiefs to continue to be referred to as “Commodore,” and this was the case with George.)
While some Cup teams competed with existing boats, Hinman’s syndicate was building a new one specifically for the 1974 Cup races. To design his boat he hired Brit Chance, and the job of building the boat went to Bob Derecktor, who ran a yacht yard in Mamaroneck, New York, and was also considered to be at the top of his field. With this first-rate team assembled, Commodore Hinman’s next task was to raise the funds necessary to build the boat and run the operation. The total cost back then was about $1 million (more than $4 million in today’s dollars), and since this was before corporate sponsorships entered the sport, the money was generally raised from a group of individuals, with a half dozen or so putting up $100,000 or more. With no real financial return to be expected, these contributors were generally wealthy people who loved the sport and liked being associated with this prestigious event. (For example, included in Hinman’s group of investors that year were Reynolds du Pont and Texas oilman Perry Bass.)
Our boat would be named
Mariner,
and the plan was for her to be designed and built through the winter and spring of 1973–74 and launched in time for the preliminary trials, which were scheduled to begin in June. We’d spent the better part of the summer competing against other American boats for the right to represent the United States in a best 4 of 7 series against the winner of the foreign trials. By the early 1970s, a team from the United States had held the America’s Cup trophy for more than one hundred years, so the trials were usually the toughest competition. That summer four American yachts would compete. In addition to
Mariner
were the 1970 Cup winner
Intrepid,
another older yacht financed by Hinman’s syndicate called
Valiant,
and a new boat called
Courageous
.
I went into this campaign with high hopes but the summer of 1974 would prove to be one of the most difficult times in my life. Looking back, it is clear we were doomed from the start. For one thing, Brit Chance and I did not get along. Commodore Hinman had put us together, but if Chance had his choice of skippers or I my choice of designers, this pairing would not have been the result. We were two headstrong individuals and there was tension between us from day one. Fortunately Commodore Hinman allowed me to select my crew and I assembled a good one, consisting mostly of crewmen who had sailed with me over the years. One of the people with whom I didn’t have much experience was Dennis Conner, but I knew he was one of the best and I wanted him on my team.
Mariner
would be just the second twelve-meter yacht ever built from aluminum (
Courageous
being the first) and it featured a radical design. Below the stern was a unique step feature that had never been tried before in a sailing boat. Chance was known for pushing boundaries and we were all concerned that
Mariner
’s design was a big gamble. When we sailed her, our concerns were confirmed. She was slow. In early June we sailed informally against
Courageous
and were beaten badly.
The crew and I were convinced that we had a bad boat, but Chance told everyone that my team and I weren’t sailing her properly.
Mariner
had been built quickly and before we could conclude that the design was a problem, we wanted to be sure we did everything else we could to get her in good sailing condition. Later in June, with minor adjustments made, we sailed in the first of three sets of trials held by the New York Yacht Club, the entity responsible for deciding which boat would represent the United States. We had our backs against the wall and everyone grew increasingly tense. Chance continued to criticize my sailing but Hinman and others were concerned enough about
Mariner
’s design that we made the decision to rebuild the back third of the boat. Had she been built of wood, we wouldn’t have had this opportunity, but since
Mariner
’s hull was aluminum, it was possible to make rapid construction changes. Still, our boat would not be ready for the next round of trials in July, and instead, my crew and I watched the races from the sidelines. We were able to size up the other boats and observe their tactics but it was frustrating not being out competing. I tried my best to keep morale up but it wasn’t easy.