Word: silverman
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...Silverman is probably the first network programmer who grew up laughing ?and crying?at TV. Since his father was a television repairman, his family started sitting around the tube earlier than most. After high school in Rego Park, a middleclass, largely Jewish neighborhood 20 minutes by subway from Manhattan, Freddie went to Syracuse University in upstate New York. He majored in broadcasting at Syracuse's School of Speech and Dramatic Arts and then went to graduate school at Ohio State. In 1959, with what now seems like inspired prescience, he wrote his master's thesis on ABC. "The phrase...
...eating, drinking and smoking too much." His eyes are strangely hooded, like Bert Lance's, as if he has just awakened?or is about to go to sleep. He is graying early, and he could easily be mistaken for someone ten years older than he is. In person, Silverman is affable but tentative. He does not shake hands but thrusts forth his fingers instead, as if afraid that the full package might not be returned. At CBS he was known as a hypochondriac who would run off about once a week for an EKG at Roosevelt Hospital. "He just doesn...
...determined to put it on top and keep it there. "He's fearful and panicked and fixing and playing, as if he were losing not winning," marvels one friend. A puzzle? Not really. "To Freddie," explains Dann, "it isn't enough to succeed. The other guy has to fail." Silverman says somewhat the same thing, but less bluntly: "I think there is a philosophy that is good no matter what you are doing. That is to always act as if you're in last place. You just shouldn't take success for granted, because you can turn around...
Aside from tales for the kids, Silverman rarely reads anything but scripts; when he does, his tastes run to popular bestsellers like James Clavell's Shogun. Though he now has the use of a company limo, he and Cathy, an attractive woman with short, dark hair, live in most ways like Middle Americans. Their apartment is furnished like a suburban split-level, and when they buy paintings, they try them out first on the walls, just to make sure that they like the colors. Freddie is vague about the artists' names...
Still, what seems mellow to Silverman would send most people rushing for the Valium, and Freddie cannot walk past a TV set without stopping. Like Captain Caveman, everything he sees he devours, and nearly everything...