Word: tartikoff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lead-off batter is Brandon Tartikoff, a sharp-fielding spray hitter in his sixth season as president of NBC Entertainment and third baseman on the company softball team. As Tartikoff steps to the plate against the Warner Bros. squad, a giant radio in the bleachers begins to blast out the driving theme song from Miami Vice. Inspired, Tartikoff slaps a double, leading NBC to a four-run inning. The team's "music manager" puckishly announces that all who have not hit safely must henceforth bat to the somewhat less blood- quickening theme from Punky Brewster...
...their weekend softball games in Burbank, Calif., as in their offices nearby, Tartikoff and his NBC crew radiate the highly competitive, slightly giddy elan of a Cinderella team, up from nowhere to challenge the league leader. They have every reason to feel peacocky. After running dead last in ) prime-time audience ratings for nine years, NBC since September '84 has scrambled to within a tenth of a rating point of the dominant network, CBS, in that arcane but widely accepted Nielsen yardstick of "television homes." For those who count heads rather than houses, NBC leads in the number of viewers...
...producer of Back to the Future, Steven Spielberg, to mastermind a suspense anthology series called Amazing Stories. With Hollywood's alltime hitmaker anchoring the Sunday night lineup, and with a flock of summer comers, Tinker figures that "this fall may be the time when NBC blows right by everybody." Tartikoff seems energized by the thrill of the chase. "In the past," he says, "every time a show bit the dust, you figured you'd be joining it. This kind of pressure is easier...
Indeed, NBC stuck with adventurous shows like St. Elsewhere and Cheers even when their early ratings were disappointing. "I don't give the public what they want," Tartikoff says. "I'm more interested in giving them what they will want. I like to challenge the audience. That's not to say that you don't do your share of pandering." Some would place in the latter category NBC's mass-appeal show The A-Team, which was based on an idea Tartikoff hatched after meeting Mr. T at a boxing match. He came into...
While working in Chicago in the early '70s, Tartikoff discovered that he had Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer that he survived after more than a year of radiation treatments and chemotherapy. He worked straight through it, but the experience made him realize that "you're not given an unlimited time on this earth, and you shouldn't fritter it away." Tartikoff does not look like a man given to frittering as he flings out nonstop ideas, jots his notes and takes aim at the No. 1 slot in the ratings. Says he: "I think...