Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years on three different networks. It won high ratings for CBS and ABC, and a higher profile for its star. It provided thrills, laughter and tears. But last week, after a chaotic three-year run on NBC, The Fred Silverman Show was canceled. Silverman, 43, resigned as president of NBC when his new boss, RCA Chairman Thornton Bradshaw, 63, refused to guarantee him a free hand. Fred's successor: Grant Tinker, 55, whose MTM Enterprises has produced such classy fare as Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Lou Grant and NBC's own Hill Street Blues. Says TV Consultant Mike...
Since 1978, when Silverman went to NBC after spectacular success as a programming wiz at the other two networks, his failures had come as fast and furiously as they might in a mini-series based on the story of Job. Prime time at NBC was a gutted ghetto, its Nielsen rating for the past season an anemic 16.6, compared with 19.8 for CBS and 18.2 for ABC. Daytime programming, where big money is made to the sound of soap-opera sighs and game-show squeals, was in even worse shape: of 22 daytime shows on the three networks, NBC...
...NBC president, Silverman was responsible for much more than prime time. There were affiliates to woo, newsmen to mollify, boardroom games to play. "Silverman tried to be a one-man band," notes Perry Lafferty, NBC's senior vice president of programs and talent on the West Coast. "But he encountered a string of bad luck-a crucial ingredient in this business. He had to cope with an actors' strike, a writers' strike and the loss of the Moscow Olympics last year." The Olympics boycott cost NBC a write-off of $33.7 million-and an invaluable opportunity...
...when the time came to replace Silverman, this is the man I'd like to have." The two men met again three weeks later. "After lunch at Perino's," Bradshaw recalls saying to Tinker, "I thought you'd be the ideal person to run NBC. Is that a ridiculous thought?" "As a matter of fact, it isn't," came the reply. "Fine," said Bradshaw, "it's settled." The Silverman Era was over...
...Fred Silverman saga unfolded at the corporate level last week, a play-within-a-play held the stage at NBC News. The theme was strikingly similar: Will he stay or will he go? The protagonist: boyish Tom Brokaw, 41, for five years the button-bright host of the Today show...