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Despite the spate of rumors, Tarses says she has been reassured that her job is not in jeopardy. "Basically I've been assured I'll be given time to fail," she says. That is echoed by her boss, ABC president Robert Iger. "The speculation as to whether we're happy or unhappy with her is ridiculously premature," says Iger. "She has my support. We have a very talented person in Jamie Tarses, and as far as we're concerned she's the right person for that job." Still, Tarses is realistic--or fatalistic--enough to know that such support could...
Hollywood's version of the old-boy network does appear to be engaged in an insidious form of hazing. "I think there is a fair amount of sexism and reverse ageism at work here," says Ted Harbert, Tarses' predecessor as ABC Entertainment chief. "That gets the skeptics going full speed." Still, her detractors say her behavior in the job has not helped her cause. They describe Tarses as both insecure and out of her depth, driving underlings hard and treating former friends and colleagues shabbily. She raised eyebrows by ordering two pilots co-produced by her boyfriend, former Letterman executive...
...outta-here without pausing at that crucial intermediary stop: Who is Jamie Tarses, and what has she done to deserve this? At 33, she's the youngest person--and the first woman--ever to run the entertainment division of one of the Big Three networks. Nearly a year ago, ABC hired her away from NBC, where she had gained fame for overseeing the development of such hits as Friends and Mad About You--just the sort of young, hip programmer who might be able to revitalize a struggling network with an impatient new corporate parent, the Walt Disney...
...into trouble even before she got the job, when word leaked out that in trying to extricate herself from her contract at NBC, she had raised allegations of sexual harassment against West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer. (Ohlmeyer denies the charges; Tarses has refused to comment on them.) Since joining ABC last June, she has weathered an almost nonstop run of bad-ratings news. ABC dropped even further into third place this past season, losing a startling 13% of its audience in the space of just a year. (Over the same period, the four broadcast networks collectively lost 6% of their...
...unfair to blame Tarses for ABC's bad season, since virtually all the shows the network aired were in the works before she arrived. Still, that hasn't stopped the Hollywood boo birds. She has been criticized for everything from poor scheduling during the May sweeps to giving only grudging approval to the network's one mid-season success, the Dan Aykroyd sitcom Soul Man. (Tarses admits she had problems with a first draft of the script but insists she was a solid backer of the show by the time it was finished...