Word: dann
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...Here is Mike Dann, when he was senior vice president of CBS, asking his underlings for suggestions to keep the network No. 1. Their contributions: "Use soap-opera aspects of Peyton Place in all our daytime promos." "We should get Dick Van Dyke to host Born Free." "Ice shows are doing well. Sullivan can do Holiday...
Through all his 22 years in television, CBS Programming Chief Michael Dann, 48, suffered from insomnia and a nagging conscience. He worked obsessively 17 hours a day producing mass entertainment and trying to win the ratings game. But at the same time, he never let his own kids watch more than one program a week, and that one had to be good. He scheduled plenty of lowest-common-denominator entertainment, but he preferred to be known for quality specials and for the occasional counseling he gave the Democratic National Committee and the staff of Sesame Street. Lately he has talked...
...with the claim that it had become No. 1 in what really mattered-the "demographic" breakdowns; that is, its viewers were younger, wealthier, better educated, and thus more desirable to advertisers. Then, in 1968-69, NBC passed CBS in total audience for the first half of the season. Desperately, Dann countered with a few maneuvers: he rescheduled Hawaii Five-O, for example, so that it played opposite a more vulnerable NBC program. At season's end, when the whole game seemed to ride on the ratings of a Cinderella special, Dann sent a poignant wire to the managers...
...Paul Klein snorted: "They didn't win the season. They won their season. This is what McLuhan called 'the dinosaur effect.' CBS has blown to its biggest size just before extinction." Industry evolution has indeed swung toward the Klein emphasis on demographics. In February, Dann's CBS superiors overruled him on the 1970-71 schedule, choosing to replace several of his high-rated hits with series that would probably get a smaller but more salable audience. And he seemed to be rebuffed again two weeks ago, when CBS President Robert Wood told an affiliates meeting that...
...possible that Mike Dann will not be around for a rematch next year. He says that the years of 17-hour workdays and "all the press criticism" are beginning to get to him. He does not know exactly where he will go, or when. "It could be days, weeks, or even years," he said last week. All he really needs, as a sign-off, would be a truce luncheon and a first meeting with his NBC nemesis, Paul Klein. As might be expected, Klein has already vetoed any such possibility. "I don't want to meet Mike," he says...