Word: silvermans
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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...
What had gone wrong for Silverman, whose shrewd instincts once earned him the sobriquet the Man with the Golden Gut? Answer: a combination of great expectations, poor management and bad luck. When Silverman took over the network, too many people-himself included -believed he could reverse the tailspin with little more than some savvy program shuffling. But there were few winners to shuffle, and no Dallas-size megabits that can help a network vault from third place to first. Says Ethel Winant, Silverman's vice president of mini-series and novels-for-TV: "You can't snap your...
...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 to promote...
...Brad" Bradshaw, who had been president of Atlantic Richfield (Arco) oil company for 16 years before replacing Edgar Griffiths at the helm of RCA, is known as the Mountie of American corporate chiefs: he always gets his man. This spring he was headhunting for a successor to Silverman. In May he had lunch with Tinker, whom he had never met, at Perino's in Los Angeles. "My impression was that Bradshaw was just doing his homework for his new job, getting the feel of the medium," Tinker recalled as he relaxed last week...