Business Notes

"Give the customers what they want" -- for more than a decade, NBC Entertainment chairman Brandon Tartikoff followed that ancient maxim with awesome consistency. Such small-screen phenoms as L.A. Law, Cheers and The Cosby Show entered American living rooms and hearts during King Brandon's reign, transforming NBC from a Johnny Carson joke into the industry powerhouse. NBC has led the networks in the annual ratings regatta since 1985, but this year's margin of victory (over No. 2 ABC) was as thin as a soap opera's plot.

Thus the credo "Quit while you're ahead" may have inspired last week's announcement: Tartikoff was leaving NBC to head Paramount Pictures.

Paramount can use the help. Ghost turned box offices into cash cows, but the studio remains a flophouse, home to such crowd displeasers as The Two Jakes and The Godfather Part III. What about rumors of a Paramount-NBC merger? | Nonsense, says Paramount chief executive Martin Davis -- at least for the near term.