NBC: Heady for Freddie

The Great Silverman Snatch on network row

At age 40, that rumpled Alexander of the television world, Fred Silverman, was running out of worlds to conquer. He started at CBS as a whiz kid just a few years out of college and in twelve years there, culminating as chief programmer for entertainment shows, he helped keep the Big Eye on top. Moving over to ABC as head of entertainment in 1975, he helped push it past CBS to No. 1. That left only NBC, currently bottom tube on network row. Last week, to lure Silverman away from ABC, NBC gave him the store. It named Silverman president and chief executive officer in charge of not only entertainment but news, sports, stations, everything.

So solid sterling is Silverman's reputation that the stock of ABC immediately dropped 1 1/2 points, while RCA, which owns NBC, rose by nearly the same amount. In the offices and hallways of Manhattan's RCA Building, exultation at the Great Silverman Snatch bubbled through every conversation. Said one executive, reflecting on the recent firing of 300 NBCers by the network: "After all this head chopping, they're doing what they should have done in the first place--getting somebody good at the top."

Silverman's contract with ABC runs through the first week of June, and ABC-TV President Fred Pierce made it clear that ABC would try to keep him until then. That would deprive NBC of his programming cunning during the next 4 1/2 months, when most of the key decisions will be made about next fall's schedule. "The longer ABC can keep Freddie from going to NBC, the better off it is," says Mike Dann, TV consultant and Silverman's longtime mentor. "By June ABC will have set up its plans until 1981, and NBC will be sinking--and sinking badly."

Dann is not exaggerating, and NBC is listing so badly in the ratings that the joke on Wall Street is, "What's the difference between the Titanic and NBC? Answer: the Titanic had an orchestra." Indeed, the malaise is so well diagnosed that NBC itself carries jokes about its incompetence. When President Carter's translator flubbed in Poland, Johnny Carson told his Tonight show audience that "later on Carter's Polish interpreter will be out here to explain why he was just made head of programming at NBC." Though NBC was second for much of the new season, it is now clearly in last place with a 17.9 average in the Nielsen ratings, compared with 20.7 for ABC and 18.8 for CBS.

It may be those ratings that led NBC President Herbert Schlosser to revamp completely his personnel lineup last fall and hand out all the pink slips, including many to top executives. When the new crew failed to improve matters, Schlosser's boss, RCA Chief Edgar Griffiths, decided to act. About a month ago, RCA Vice President George Fuchs was dispatched to offer Silverman Schlosser's job. Silverman was given more money than he was getting at ABC--$500,000, v. $350,000--but money was only part of the inducement, and doubtless the smaller part at that. What lured Silverman was having not just an entertainment division but an entire network to call his own--a challenge, as he says, "that goes well beyond the scope of my present duties or any I've performed in the past."

Indeed it does; Silverman may find it harder than he thinks to turn NBC around. At CBS he was working with what was then the most efficient network in television. When he arrived at ABC in 1975, the network, though long an underdog, was already well on the rise; Silverman merely accelerated the climb. NBC, by contrast, is clearly on the decline, and Silverman, who was accustomed to fast movement and quick decisions at ABC, will soon find himself coping with the most ponderous bureaucracy in the industry. Says Paramount Pictures President Michael Eisner, a former Silverman assistant: "Freddie has now met his mountain. If he climbs this one, he'll go down in entertainment history."

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