Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...television viewers as well. But the issue emerged starkly a few days ago, when President Reagan showed up in the pressroom to announce a tentative agreement with the Soviets to reduce intermediate-range nuclear weapons. He had hardly finished when ABC's Sam Donaldson, CBS's Bill Plante and NBC's Chris Wallace simultaneously shouted questions at him for almost 20 seconds, creating an incredible din and an embarrassing spectacle. Reagan had little chance to respond to -- or sort out -- their jabbering. None of the correspondents would yield to the other, even though it was a live broadcast. Print reporters...
...fact that the American people had at last been able to witness the arrogance of electronic journalism. "The network correspondents quite often think they are more important than the President," says a Reagan aide. When Newsday's veteran White House hand, Saul Friedman, upbraided Wallace for his performance, the NBC man told him to lay off, since they were both in the same business. "Oh, no, we're not," shot back Friedman. That is the point. Do the highly charged careers of these television stars require them, even against their better judgment, to prance shamelessly on the electronic stage? Must...
...comes Cosby the publishing phenom. Three years ago Paul Bresnick, a senior editor at Doubleday and newly expectant father, came up with the idea for a book about being a dad. After his first two choices to write it were "thankfully not available," Bresnick approached Cosby, whose NBC series was just starting to take off. The result was Fatherhood, a collection of humorous anecdotes and observations, which spent more than a year on the best- seller list and sold 2.6 million hard-cover copies, edging past Iacocca to set a modern-day record. Naturally, that called for a sequel. Time...
...lack of anything you could feel good about watching with your family. It was all car chases and breasts and characters yelling at each other and saying Yowie!" Carsey and Werner (who had since left ABC and formed their own production company) revived their idea and took it to NBC, where Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff had been thinking of putting Cosby in a family series after seeing one of his monologues on the Tonight show...
...have to remember how different a show we were proposing," says Werner. "Instead of getting laughs from arguments and conflicts between the husband and wife, we were going for subtler humor." NBC decided to take a chance on it, with no expectations of a blockbuster hit. But the show's debut episode hit the Nielsen top ten, and by midseason had taken firm hold of the No. 1 spot. The Cosby Show's huge success boosted NBC's entire Thursday-night schedule, helped lift the network from last place to first in the ratings and has given nightmares to opposing...