Word: frost
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...series had by no means been an assured commercial success from the start. It represented a bold gamble by Frost. He had been in Australia when Nixon left the White House on Aug. 9, 1974?and he immediately decided to try to pin the fading ex-President down to a TV contract. To Frost, Nixon's "likely unavailability" was a challenge; it was "the appeal of the impossible" that lured him. He telephoned an offer from Australia. For nearly a year, Nixon showed no interest...
...July 1975, after Nixon had signed his $2 million memoirs contract, he sent his agent, Irving ("Swifty") Lazar, to talk to the TV networks in New York. When Frost found out about this he offered Nixon a flat $500,000 for four shows. NBC was also bidding, and Lazar coaxed Frost into raising the ante to $600,000, plus a reported 20% of any profits. Helping Frost land the contract was Herbert Klein, Nixon's longtime press confidant, who felt that Frost was not the kind of U.S. journalist who is "always trying to put in his own opinions." Klein...
With the contract in his pocket, Frost still had no one to air the shows he would produce. CBS was shy of "checkbook journalism" after having been widely criticized for buying an interview with Nixon's former chief of staff, Haldeman. News executives at some networks were willing to put Nixon on the air, but only if their own journalistic stars could do the grilling. Undaunted, Frost got Syndicast, a New York-based independent TV marketing agency, to sell broadcasting rights to individual stations. He contracted with Pacific Video in Los Angeles to do the taping. Both were...
Investors like Jimmy Goldsmith, the banker-owner of the French magazine L'Express, helped Frost meet his $2.5 million in production costs. Frost will retain about half of all profits...
While advertising for the controversial shows sold slowly in the U.S., foreign networks were much less hesitant. The rights to foreign broadcasts alone have netted Frost $1 million so far, putting the production into the black. Final profits are expected to exceed $2 million. This means Nixon may pick up $1 million or more for undergoing his grilling by Frost. It might seem, with this on top of his memoir proceeds, that abuse of office pays. Without Watergate, Nixon's views would hardly command such sums...