Word: tartikoff
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...Brandon Tartikoff watches from a cramped seat against the window. Wearing ! Reeboks, an open sport shirt and a Boris-and-Natasha wristwatch, he is an easygoing but focused presence. After a few rehearsals of the scene, he huddles quietly with director Hannah Hempstead. For the next run-through, the husband picks up the pastry tray without a smile and drops it abruptly in front of his wife...
...just plops it down," says Tartikoff, "we'll get a laugh...
They'd better. The show, Weekly World News (based on the supermarket tabloid of the same name), teeters precariously between sensationalism and spoof. It is one of those high-concept, high-wire acts that Tartikoff was known for at NBC, like the "MTV Cops" that eventually became Miami Vice (big hit), or the crime fighter who could transform himself into a jungle beast in Manimal (big bomb). Weekly World News, a proposed series for CBS that will air for two episodes this spring, is as good a show as any to serve notice to the TV world that Brandon Tartikoff...
...doubted he would return. As NBC Entertainment president for 11 1/2 years, Tartikoff was probably the most influential and broadly successful TV programmer of the 1980s. He guided NBC from last to first in the ratings, overseeing such hits as The Cosby Show, The A-Team, Cheers and L.A. Law. Later he was named chairman of Paramount Pictures, but he abruptly resigned in October 1992 after just 18 months on the job. The reasons, he insists, were strictly personal: on New Year's Day 1991 he and his daughter had been severely injured in a car accident near Lake Tahoe...
Four weeks ago, O'Brien's brand-new agent (he's a year younger than his client) suggested to Michaels that they make Conan the host. For Michaels, it was evidently an epiphany; to NBC, it was madness. But since Michaels is, in NBC's desperate post-Tartikoff era, the only putative in-house genius, his notion was not summarily dismissed. A few days later, O'Brien, with no preparation and no cue cards, hosted his make-believe show on the Tonight show set. "The kid is no pro," says an NBC programmer who watched the test, but immediately...