Word: silverman
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...arch politics, discreet sex and graphic beheadings started big on Monday night with 70 million watching, and was still going strong at week's end as newspapers alertly provided daily plot summaries. The total audience: some 125 million. NBC President Fred Silverman may just turn his network around after all, and Shogōn may rank behind Roots I and II as television's most successful miniseries...
Only NBC is in the chips because Fred Silverman, the network's president, long ago put his bet on "reality programming" like Real People, Games People Play and Speak Up America. It may be a dubious TV genre-mixing 60 Minutes with The Gong Show-but it is one unaffected by the strike. With such shows, plus the World Series, Magazine with David Brinkley, Disney's Wonderful World and new episodes of three old series, NBC can boast that through the end of October, it will air 75% new programming. The capricious god who filched the Olympics from...
SHOGUN (Sept. 15-19, NBC). As his opening bid in this high-stakes game, Silverman has scheduled the twelve-hour mini-series of James Clavell's novel Shdgun. This saga of an Elizabethan seaman's initiation into the ways of feudal Japan has sold over 4 million copies, and soon another 3 million will be on sale. The NBC version cost over $20 million, perhaps the most ever spent for a TV film...
...wanting to give information-or comfort-to the unions involved, the networks refuse to say what they would do if the season is delayed. But it does not take a Fred Silverman to surmise that they would depend heavily on old movies, news, game shows, sports events and, of course, reruns- lots and lots of reruns. NBC has an advantage, if it can be called that, in having more unacted shows than the other two networks: Real People, Speak Up America and Games People Play. It also has TV rights to the World Series, which opens in early October...
...spotlight is now on Silverman. Some industry insiders say his future at NBC is riding on the network's success in the first few weeks of the fall TV season. But one West Coast producer says: "Freddie's fall schedule is a disaster. His presidency will be short-lived." Freddie Silverman last week beat Jane Cahill Pfeiffer in the rush to the executive lifeboats, but he may not make it next time...