Wishing Grant could tinker with prime-time

By BRIAN LOWRY

April 30, 2003 12 AM PT

Try to design a TV executive from scratch and the prototype would resemble Grant Tinker: smart, tough, with a polished demeanor but also a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor -- someone who stresses that he can’t write, direct or act, labeling himself a “facilitator” for those who can.

Tinker, 77, enjoyed historic runs atop storied TV production powerhouse MTM in the 1970s and NBC in the ‘80s, occupying a view from both sides of the producing equation. And with no dog in the fight, he’s worth hearing when he joins the chorus calling the current system for generating prime-time series inequitable, even as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to revise media-ownership rules in June.

Without sounding like someone yearning for the good old days, Tinker suggested over lunch in Beverly Hills that the old way of doing business was less likely to cheat not only producers but the public. For networks, he said, it’s human nature to exploit the freedoms allowed them, noting, “If you have all of the reins in your hands, you’re going to ride wherever you want to ride.”

The raw numbers show that networks are producing about four times as many projects for themselves since the elimination a decade ago of federal rules limiting their right to do so. Last year, Disney raised eyebrows by supplying almost 90% of series candidates for its network, ABC.

How much programming the networks buy from sister studios this year will become clear next month, when they unveil next season’s lineups to advertisers. In the interim, a coalition of producers is lobbying to set aside 25% of major-network schedules for outside suppliers, which amounts to trying to roll a boulder uphill.

Actually demonstrating how backroom shenanigans influence what programs the public sees is perhaps the most confounding challenge in seeking to drive home the importance of the media consolidation debate. Trying to prove a negative brings to mind comic George Carlin’s observation about why the AM radio dial ends at 530, leaving us to wonder what great stuff we might be missing on 420.

So what are we missing now? “Shows are bought and scheduled for the wrong reasons,” Tinker said. “They’re business reasons, as opposed to ‘Boy, I love that show and I think it could work.’ So the audience gets robbed, but it’s out of sight, because no one will ever know what could have happened.”

The discussion, in fact, has largely focused on economics -- whether producers or conglomerates profit from programming, which is easily dismissed as a dispute between the rich and the wealthy. Yet Tinker calls that “relatively unimportant” next to the TV audience’s being “so cheated by the way all of this happens.” Even the proliferation of cheaper so-called reality shows, he said, is merely a byproduct of the present system.

“Reality -- which is a boom, and one of these days a bust -- isn’t the villain here,” Tinker said. “It’s that they gave the networks the ability to control everything.”

According to Tinker, the issue isn’t just which shows get ordered but where they are scheduled. Even if independently supplied shows get on, they’re less apt to occupy desirable time periods than their network-owned counterparts, making failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, because such choices are subjective, it’s difficult to legislate a solution, even if time were set aside.

“All they’d be doing is living up to the letter of the law and not really doing the outside producers any favors,” he said. “They say, ‘We love your show, we’ll put it on Friday night at 10,’ where it’s bound to fail. Talk about not being a level playing field; it’s like a precipice.... There are so many reasons not to do it fairly. Even if networks say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ when push comes to shove, your show does look a little better.” As for networks’ insisting they put on only the best shows without regard to ownership: Again, who’s to say? Tinker notes that the math alone -- with three-quarters of network productions coming from affiliated suppliers -- puts the lie to that claim.

“If 88% of a network’s schedule comes from the people they’re in business with to begin with, you know that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You couldn’t get that lucky -- that all of your stuff would be better than the other guys’ stuff.”

In the not-too-distant past, production entities like MTM, New World, Orion TV, Stephen J. Cannell and Aaron Spelling could go to the mat with a network, fighting for their programs. If the process was messy, Tinker sees it as a marked improvement over having a single company on both sides of the negotiating table.

“I always thought it was a very fair fight,” he said. “You could always walk away from something if you were a network, and the guy could go next door or across the street. I thought that was a relatively fair give and take. That system kind of worked.”

Today, Orion TV no longer exists. New World and MTM were absorbed by News Corp., the parent of 20th Century Fox. Spelling’s company is owned by Viacom, and Cannell, along with a lot of other independent producers, is off writing novels.

The concentration of power, meanwhile, has left producers few buffers against creative interference.

“My feeling is it’s a more abused process than it’s ever been, this ‘producing the producers.’ ... Would I tell Jim Brooks and Allan Burns how to write a scene?” he asked, referring to the creators of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” “No chance. My job was to encourage them and occasionally go to the network and fight for something, but I wouldn’t presume to try to do their jobs, and a lot of network people do.”

Tinker admits he’s relieved to be on the sidelines, having told NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker at an event last year that he couldn’t fathom doing his job now: “It’s so different, and I think so less fun.”

Less fun and, almost certainly, less fair.

Murder! Sex! Exclusive!

Apparently, you can take the producer out of the tabloids but not the tabloid out of the producer -- in this case, “Entertainment Tonight” executive producer Linda Bell Blue, who previously held that position on the now-defunct “Hard Copy.”

“ET” has remained popular under Blue’s stewardship, but the show has also acquired a tabloid streak that can be incongruous with its name -- highlighted by last week’s extensive coverage of murdered Modesto woman Laci Peterson. Other than the victim’s being attractive and the fact we’re in sweeps, it’s hard to see where the “entertainment” part kicked in.

An “ET” spokeswoman declined to comment on the program’s editorial decisions, which seem increasingly skewed toward celebrity scandal, liberal use of the word “exclusive” and items such as this week’s “Playmate Plastic Surgery Nightmare.” At a USC forum on media ownership Monday, writer William Blinn dryly observed, “The line between news and entertainment isn’t blurred; it’s smeared.” Indeed, even with entertainment news, it’s wise to watch where you step.

Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at [email protected].