Word: harbert
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...press conference in Los Angeles this summer, ABC Entertainment president Ted Harbert shocked a gathering of critics and reporters by announcing the end of a TV tradition. Henceforth, he said, ABC would ask producers to eliminate or drastically reduce the opening-credit sequences in their prime-time shows -- and with them theopening theme songs. The goal is to reduce program downtime, when viewers are most tempted to grab the remote control and switch the channel. Logical, perhaps, but rather coldhearted. Imagine Mary Tyler Moore without Mary to "turn the world on with her smile," Gilligan's Island without its bouncy...
...least the premiere; the majority won't air the series at all. Though most are in smaller markets, the defections could seriously hurt the show's ratings. Advertisers, meanwhile, have been wary. Although ad time on the first episode is sold out, ABC entertainment president Ted Harbert admits the show has "not been a huge sales bonanza. There's a wait-and-see attitude...
...quietly trying to downplay the show's racy content. The network sent its affiliates two episodes in addition to the pilot (neither segment has as much explicit material) and got Bochco to trim 15 seconds from the first show's lovemaking scene. ABC's Harbert says that scene is the "high benchmark" for what the series will allow; half the episodes, he promises, will have no nudity at all. "Given that our schedule is so dominated by family programming, such as Roseanne and Home Improvement, we felt there is room for a show that stretches the boundaries, so long...
...have gotten made." The network standards-and-practices departments are already increasing their vigilance. "We're used to dealing with Standards & Practices on a daily basis in terms of language and violence," says Langley of Cop Files. "But they've become even more cautious recently." ABC Entertainment chief Ted Harbert, speaking to affiliates in June, promised that the network would "work to keep the violence to the absolute minimum" this fall. George Vradenburg 3d, executive vice president of Fox Inc., vows "increased attention not only to the depiction of violence but also to whether there are appropriate ways to resolve...
...last year of $6 billion, beat a number of international rivals to take on Kuwait's dirty work by simply sending in its own army of 100 sanitation workers within days of the war's end. "We just wanted to get started," says the company's Kuwait manager, Nick Harbert. "If they wanted to pay us, fine. If they wanted us to leave, that was fine...