An Underdose of Talent

The networks' handling of election returns last week should have been television's finest hour, but instead it was only the longest day (see THE PRESS). That was doubly unfortunate, since viewers have come to expect more from TV journalism than TV entertainment. On any night of the week, the 1966-67 season has proved to be so dreary and derivative that even the networks have given up and are tossing out a big block of expensive shows that only recently were touted as hot stuff.

So many of the shows are being dropped, in fact, that Milton Berle, one of the victims, has proposed that all his fellow dumpees sign off together in one single special titled Exit Laughing or the Nielsen Follies. Berle's company includes Tammy Grimes, Jean Arthur, Roger Miller, Shane, Hawk, Twelve O' Clock High, The Hero, The Rounders, Run, Buddy, Run and The Man Who Never Was. All are going off the air, leaving the field to such high-type shows as Gilligan's Island, Green Acres and Peyton Place.

If these survivors are to stand as the criterion for the best in television entertainment, the networks are in worse trouble than they know. Or maybe they do know. If so, why do they so often pick wrong?

Voracious Appetite. That is a question that programming Vice Presidents Len Goldberg (ABC), Mike Dann (CBS) and Mort Werner (NBC) ponder in the small hours of the night. Their major problem is that, in prime time alone, the three of them are responsible for filling 75 hours a week. "We do not suffer," Goldberg says, in the understatement of the minute, "from an overdose of good shows." That is because TV obviously suffers from a severe underdose of talent. There are just not enough good writers and performers to satisfy television's voracious appetite, so even the best entertainers can rarely sustain anything beyond mediocrity.

In the course of a year, the network programming departments examine 1,200 story ideas, most of them submitted by packaging producers, not counting a few by little old ladies with simply unforgettable adventures. Of these suggestions, 350 or so actually are turned into scripts. The next stage is supposed to be a pilot production, but since a one-hour pilot film costs upwards of $350,000, only 90 are ventured a year, and less than half of that number ever get on the air.

Then there is the problem of finding the right format for a series. Solution: imitate successful formulas. After The Man from U.N.C.L.E. proved a hit, the television brains dreamed up The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and presumably will follow next year with Son of the Man and the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. It all reached a ridiculous if predictable end last week when CBS and NBC an nounced their latest replacement series --Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice. Terrific is a Milquetoast gas-station attendant who takes a pill and becomes a sort of CIA Superman. Nice is a Milquetoast chemist who takes a potion and becomes a police-department Superman. The quest for originality, in short, stops at the Nielsen lists, and fresh ideas are in as short supply as fresh talent.

Since Dann, Goldberg and Werner are largely responsible for what goes into the camera and out into televisionland, the quality of their judgment goes to the heart of TV's failures. Should the three men reflect their own and critics' sophisticated tastes, or assume that the average viewer simply wants mindless rubbish? Says Werner: "It's a very difficult assignment to second-guess the public taste. I don't program for myself." Admits Goldberg: "What I like wouldn't be successful." Adds Dann: "I don't enjoy most of what's on TV. My tastes are considerably different from the objective evaluations I have to give to the programs that I pick."

Nielsen Roulette. In practice, the networks try to find a show that will appeal to mass audiences and thus advertisers. The presold quality of the film Bridge on the River Kwai, for example, was a natural for sponsors. But Bridge was unusual, and most of prime-time TV is filled with routine copycat programming. To advertisers who want to reach audiences that number in the tens of millions, the temptation to buy lowbrow entertainment is too great to resist. When the audiences, according to the Nielsen ratings, fail to materialize, the sponsors quickly opt to drop, but ironically, they come back again and again only to repeat the same mistakes.

Small wonder, then, that the business of TV programming has become a game of Nielsen roulette--and that programming vice presidents are jettisoned almost as precipitously as the shows that they father. Goldberg, a 32-year-old former ratings statistician, took over last spring as ABC's third program chief in four years. Werner, 50, a veritable veteran, has been in office since 1961, but increasingly shares responsibilities with his rising aides. Ebullient Mike Dann, 45, has lasted nearly four years at CBS. One story, perhaps apocryphal, illustrates the quality of talent that the network program bosses must have to survive. Seems that Dann and CBS Board Chairman William Paley screened a new show together. Afterward, Paley pronounced himself happy with what he saw, whereupon Dann whipped out a prepared memo in praise of the series. In another pocket--just in case--was a memo recommending that the show be dumped.

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