Word: wolfing
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...their hearts, many TV producers probably fancy themselves Andy Warhols: pop artists who make the stuff of mass culture and commerce into art, as Warhol did with the Campbell's soup can. Dick Wolf thinks of himself as the Campbell Soup Co. The man who runs the Law & Order empire--on which, thanks to spin-offs and cable repeats, the sun never sets--had a first career in advertising, writing copy for the likes of Crest toothpaste. So it is without irony that he often compares his cop shows to the red-and-white can. "If you like soup...
This theory not only has made Wolf into a TV tycoon but also has changed TV drama itself. Wolf produces three L&O series for NBC (Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent) plus a reality series (Crime & Punishment), and he says he already knows what the fourth L&O series will be (we're guessing Law & Order: Hearty Beef with Country Vegetables). The original L&O is a cool-headed procedural and law drama; SVU handles emotion-charged sex-crimes cases; CI is a Columboesque whodunit. But the brand promises certain constants: competent mysteries, intelligent...
...Wolf, 56, is able to branch out like this because--in a business in which producers tend to see themselves as the visionaries and see the network brass as the businesspeople--he runs L&O like a CEO. Unlike such micromanagers as The Practice's David E. Kelley or The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin, he delegates heavily to his staff. And because his shows emphasize stories over character development, each actor is replaceable; L&O has run since 1990 without Friends-style salary increases or creative exhaustion. "Other shows eventually descend into a kind of soap opera," says Dragnet...
Today the L&O method is TV's dominant mode of dramamaking. CSI, CSI: Miami, Without a Trace--you can thank Wolf for TV's brand extensions, cop shows with sparingly defined characters and dramas with self-contained, noncontinuing stories. Ironically, Wolf started in TV as a writer for Hill Street Blues, which pioneered TV's previous trend: "story arcs," or plots that stretch out over several episodes or seasons. The approach made creators like Hill Street's Steven Bochco and The X-Files' Chris Carter into auteurs. But business-wise, story arcs are a problem. Much of the money...
...environment is not going to be the defining issue in an election when terrorism, war and a limping economy are stacked on top of it," says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. And it's partly owing, surely, to the fact that conservationists have been crying wolf for too long: by opposing every tree-cutting and development project across the West, they have diluted their credibility on the big issues...