CNBC

In the midnineties, I stopped doing movies so I could be a stay-at-home dad for my son, who was entering first grade.

I began to develop a syndicated show with King World, the people then responsible for Oprah, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy among others, and now Dr. Phil as well.

I knew Michael King through my friend John Gabriel. I knew Roger King, the major honcho, because he once joined Dabney Coleman and me when he saw us having dinner together. Roger left his table and sat with us. As the evening was winding down, he offered Dabney and me four thousand dollars a piece if we would fly with him in his private jet to Las Vegas. I think he said four thousand knowing he’d easily go to five. We chose not to go. Looking back, just as with Julie Christie that night who wanted Warren and me to join her and a friend and go somewhere, I’m sorry we didn’t. Of course, my biggest mistake in this area was not going on that safari with Johnny Carson.

My idea for the syndicated show at King World was to have a group of humorous people sit around and discuss whatever—variations of which have been done in the years since, some successful, some not.

The fellows at King World kept suggesting I have more “elements.” I came up with the idea of taking a crew to a stable near Central Park in New York, where I was told there was a horse who could type. We were going to put a typewriter under a horse’s hoof. He would then bring his hoof down and, of course, smash the typewriter, and I would be outraged at my producer who had given me the information on the horse’s typing ability.

Right around then I got an offer to replace Tom Snyder on CNBC—he was leaving to do a show following David Letterman on CBS. The King brothers graciously let me accept it and didn’t ask for any compensation.

Several years later I called Roger King on behalf of a friend of mine, and again he was friendly and gracious. About a month after I called him, I read in the paper that he had died suddenly. I’m sorry I never got to know him better, as I understand he was one of a kind.

I first met Tom Snyder when I was a regular guest on his Tomorrow Show in the eighties. One week he was scheduled to go to Egypt to interview Anwar Sadat. The producer, Roger Ailes, suggested I guest host for the week. The Sadat interview fell through, but Tom graciously let me host for the week, anyway.

Tom Snyder was always terrific to me—never competitive, always supportive, and a great audience. That’s why I cringe every time I think of something I said to him on the phone when he took a call from me on the air shortly before I began my show in his time slot. I said I was concerned because there was no studio audience, and if by chance I said something amusing, there would only be silence. I then added, “You don’t have to worry about that, because you laugh at your own jokes.”

There was silence for a second and then we moved on, as though I hadn’t said something incredibly rude.

In the last years of his life, Tom and I would talk on the phone, and he sounded the same as he always did—vibrant, high energy, a big personality. Tom had worked for years in radio, and when I started doing commentary on CBS radio I suggested to him that he consider doing a radio show again. He was ill, but I knew he could do it from home. He seemed agreeable, so I made a few calls, but before anything could happen he phoned and said he’d thought more about it and decided he didn’t want to do it.

We never discussed his illness, but clearly that had something to do with it, although you’d never know that from listening to him on the phone.

I consider that line about Tom laughing at his own jokes one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said. The lesson I took away from it is that I who consciously always try to make people feel better am perfectly capable of unknowingly being hurtful. It makes me more vigilant of my own behavior. The problem is we’re not aware when we’re making mistakes, otherwise we wouldn’t make them.

I’ve unknowingly behaved inappropriately since then, but my rudeness toward Tom still bothers me. May he rest in peace.

When I first came on CNBC at ten o’clock I was supposed to be “the dessert” following Geraldo Rivera, who did nightly panel discussions about the O.J. Simpson case. One day I got a call from an executive at CNBC telling me that the head of the network, Roger Ailes, wanted me to know that Geraldo got a very high rating. He gave me the number. I got a very low rating, and he gave me the number, and the show following mine, which was all about sex, got a very high number. My guest was a person in show business, not the most famous you can imagine. I asked what Roger wanted me to do. He said, “He just wants you to have that information.” I said, “Well, if I were covering the O.J. Simpson trial or doing shows about sex, I would have a high rating as well.” There was a silence, and the fellow on the other end of the phone said, “Roger just wanted you to know.” Clearly a polite warning.

Since for me doing shows about sex was out of the question, I began to cover the O.J. Simpson case and soon was getting ratings comparable to Geraldo’s. I had now entered the world of lawyers, but it was not my first experience.

That went back about ten years earlier when I was supposed to be doing a movie with a female star, and I was working on the script with the writer for months. At the last moment, the female star withdrew from the picture and the producers decided not to go forward with another actress. If they had called me and given me some explanation, I probably would have let it go at that, but since I had been working on the script with the writer for months for no salary, I decided to sue them, even though there wasn’t a signed contract, which in the movie business isn’t that unusual. This was the first and only time I brought a suit. I’ve never been sued.

My lawyers warned me that the attorney for the other side was a real killer. I remember lying in bed in Los Angeles the night before he was to take my deposition and wondering what he could possibly say to me, since I felt I was completely in the right and had worked so long on the script. I imagined him digging out bad reviews from my past and reading them to me, but I’m always prepared for any kind of a confrontation, so even though it was nerve-racking, part of me looked forward to it.

When I entered the room to be deposed, all the lawyers and the producers were sitting there. I looked at their lawyer, and he was a most imposing figure, muscular, big, and very smart-looking. He asked with disdain who wasI, anyway, to claim that I had worked on the script with the writer! He said, “Are you even a member of the Writers Guild?” He obviously hadn’t done his homework. I said, “I am.” He sneered at me and asked, “Under what circumstances did you enter the Writers Guild?” I said, “When the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio asked me to write the screenplay of Woody Allen’s hit Broadway show Play It Again, Sam. He stared at me a moment and said, with some amusement, “Strike my question.”

They actually had asked Renée Taylor and Joe Bologna to do the screenplay, but since I had earlier worked successfully with them, they asked the studio if I could join the screenwriting team. When Renée and Joe decided that they would prefer to work on their own script, the studio went forward with me alone.

When I asked one of the executives why they were willing to do that he said, “Well, you were doing all the talking at the meeting, anyway.” The movie was to star another actor, because Woody wanted to do two things on the movie, star and write, I assume, but when Woody Allen opened in Bananas, a hit movie he had cowritten, starred in, and directed, they decided to go back to Woody to star in the movie version of his play in which he had starred on Broadway. Woody read my script, was very complimentary, but felt it required more of an actor than he was. I didn’t agree but thought he had certainly earned the right to write the screenplay of his own hit play, which he did. We went back and forth in the deposition after that, and I believe it all ended with the producer’s willingness to pay the costs of my lawyers. I didn’t earn any money, but I felt I had made a point. That was my first experience with attorneys.

My experience with them continued later when I was covering the O.J. Simpson case. I had a live debate with Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was on O.J. Simpson’s so-called dream team. More than one attorney around CNBC wondered aloud how Charles Grodin, who a year before had been starring in a movie with a Saint Bernard, could possibly debate the renowned Professor Dershowitz from Harvard.

It was an hour and a half debate and the response favored me 85 percent to 15 percent. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was against O.J. Simpson. Later, more recently, I ran into Barry Scheck, the head of the Innocence Project with Peter Neufeld, another member of the dream team. The Innocence Project is a wonderful organization that uses DNA as a way of getting innocent people out of prison. I now support them financially and sometimes write about them for the New York Daily NewsWeb site as well as doing commentaries in support of them.

About a year before I became a supporter of the Project, Barry Scheck confronted me at a book party and said that he had watched my show with his teenage son one night a decade earlier and heard me wonder aloud how the defense team could sleep at night. I said, “Someone who does such good work in getting innocent people freed with DNA evidence shouldn’t be representing O.J. Simpson.” Other words were exchanged, and he turned his back on me and walked away, saying, “You should have more respect for the adversary system.” I called after him, “I’m sure you’re right.” I doubt he knew I was being facetious. Given that he knew how I felt about him, I still can’t understand why he’d watch me with his teenage son.

I think the jury system is flawed, because some cases are so incredibly complicated that they are, in my opinion, beyond a layperson’s understanding of the law. I believe we should throw it out and have three judges unanimously rule one way or another on cases.

Recently, I was a character witness in a case. The defense attorney described my journalistic background for the past thirteen years, and the prosecutor described me simply as a professional actor. Lawyers want to win, and sometimes it seems to me that the truth is most often secondary—at best.

No wonder I like to watch comedy tapes at night rather than courtroom shows.

At CNBC, there was a regular turnover in executives. Two really stand out. One was a woman who shouted at my producer in a meeting about guests, “No more old people!” She was referring to two show business icons who had been my guests. The other was a man who regularly called meetings of the staffs of the shows. I chose never to attend. He seemed to demoralize everyone with his comments and wasn’t there very long. He had an odd habit of rocking on his heels as he spoke.

I don’t know if these people are out of the business, but I haven’t heard either of their names in years.

A startling thing happened when a top executive at NBC called me to say the head of NBC News asked him to tell me that I had stumbled the night before. He meant my rating wasn’t at its usual level. I asked him if he had seen the show. He said, “No.” That told me that content was irrelevant. The show consisted of the videos I had shot at the Bedford Hills maximum security prison that led to four women being granted clemency. In fairness, he did say that whatever I had done could be used in the later part of the show. The show should begin with what today would be called a hot topic. I chose not to follow his advice.

I once had a meeting with this head of NBC News who told me a story about how his friend Don Henley of the Eagles always taped my show if he couldn’t see it when it was on. He said Don asked him if he had seen a particular monologue I had done. The man, standing right in front of me, snorted in disdain and said, “Oh, God, no!”—like that was out of the question.

There’s an explanation for his rude behavior. It’s certainly not exclusive to him. Many people in the news business have a patronizing attitude toward anyone who enters their field from elsewhere. They make false assumptions about lack of qualifications.

The truth is that throughout my life I’ve followed the news—social and political issues—a lot more than I’ve followed show business, and I believe the success of my show speaks for itself. Also, I’ve been asked to broadcast commentary all these years. The people in our country who may have something useful to say obviously are not all working in the news business.

A man whom I’ve found equally if not more offensive than the network executive is Steven Brill, the founder of Court TV. We’ve never met, but once we were both at a party at Judge Catherine Cryer’s home and I chose not to walk over and speak to him. I would hate to cause discord at someone’s party, and discord at least would have erupted had I spoken to Mr. Brill.

He once wrote in a newsletter of some kind that while he found me appealing in the Beethoven movies (a not so subtle dig), he wondered how CNBC could have me sitting in the host’s chair. He acknowledged that he had never heard me say anything questionable, “But what if something happens while he’s anchoring his show?” Surely, he said, NBC wasn’t suggesting that I was in the category of Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams.

I found his observation insulting. I had recently covered the war in Kosovo, where things were happening all the time. You talk on a live satellite to the correspondent on the scene, and he tells you what’s happening. No one has ever accused me of asking unworthy questions.

This mystifying of what it takes to be a good reporter is a joke. You don’t have to be an expert at anything, just know the subject well enough to ask intelligent questions. In my observation, too often the so-called experts aren’t experts, and that clearly applies to Mr. Brill.

Ironically, three of my biggest supporters were the three anchors of the network news, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings, as well as Tim Russert and Jim Lehrer. I say this because they each chose to make it clear to me, not as a result of Mr. Brill’s comment but just because they chose to.

If I sound riled up at Steven Brill, it’s because I am. That’s the effect arrogance has on me.

I debated whether I wanted to put the following story in this book. I felt if Steven Brill’s name ever came up in conversation I would share it with friends, and while I undoubtedly won’t know most of the people reading this book, I figure if you’ve come this far, that’s friendly enough for me.

Sometime in the nineties, Roger Ailes, who runs the Fox Cable Network and was then running CNBC, put together a whole evening’s special with eleven television hosts onstage, most of them notable journalists. Among them was the late Tim Russert.

Roger had me seated center stage with five journalists to my right and five to my left. We would each host a segment of the evening.

The fella who was second in command to Roger told me that his father called him after the special to say he felt I should have hosted the entire special.

His father was Fred Friendly, Edward R. Murrow’s producer and a legend in the news business.

I should have asked Andy to have his dad give Steven Brill a call.