The office of General Electric Chairman CEO Jack Welch
52nd floor 30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York City
August 28, 1986
I’m not sure what Brandon Tartikoff was expecting when he was summoned to Jack Welch’s new office that day in 1986. After all, he now had a new boss. GE, with Welch at the helm, had just closed on its acquisition of RCA, which included the NBC network subsidiary. Up to that point, GE’s main connection to the television industry was manufacturing TV sets, but Jack knew enough to know GE needed Tartikoff to be part of the package.
Brandon Tartikoff was NBC’s golden boy. When he succeeded Fred Silverman as network entertainment president in 1981, he was the youngest person ever to hold that position. He jumped in feet first, energizing NBC’s limp primetime schedule one series at a time, starting with Miami Vice, Golden Girls, and Hill Street Blues. Then he rebranded the Thursday-night lineup into Must-See TV, anchored by The Cosby Show and Family Ties, and by spring 1986, NBC finished number one in the ratings for the first time in its history. Welch knew strong ratings would translate into hundreds of millions of dollars from NBC to GE coffers. He was determined to keep the golden boy committed to the peacock network even though Tartikoff worked without a contract. He was not only the creative inspiration behind NBC’s newfound success, but a critical link to maintaining loyalty and support from the troops leery of “a GE suit” taking charge.
Standing at the doorway of Welch’s Rockefeller Center office that day, Brandon looked like every mother’s son—an affable, unassuming, lanky Yale grad known for his love affair with television. Welch bounded from his desk, hand outstretched, and bellowed, “Hello, Brandon; great job on the season win! That’s what we want to see!” Brandon flashed his familiar boyish grin, shook Jack’s hand, and looked over in my direction. We traded hellos and I gave him a look that said, “Don’t worry; this is not going to be painful.”
“Listen, Brandon, we appreciate what you are doing with NBC,” Jack said, “and we want to know we can count on you going forward just as much as you can count on us.” He handed an envelope to the young genius. Inside was a check for $1 million—a no-strings bonus to assure Brandon’s continued contributions during my first year as his new NBC boss. Brandon didn’t even flinch; his voice was steady and even. “It’s been very gratifying to do this the way Grant and I had planned a few years ago: to be best and then to be first. Don’t worry, Jack. I’m in.”
It didn’t surprise me that Brandon would acknowledge the powerful influence of Grant Tinker this way. They had made quite a team. Brandon was the 30-something wunderkind to Tinker’s 60-something seasoned producer. As NBC president, Tinker had stabilized a free-falling NBC. In 5 years, he had managed to transform the third-place network, barely mustering $48 million in pretax operating, into a ratings leader generating more than $150 million in annual pretax profit. Through it all, he restored calm and dignity to NBC’s chaotic entertainment division. Grant Tinker was a star who promoted an atmosphere of confidence and patience.
Now that he was stepping down as president, Tinker worked hard behind the scenes to convince RCA that the next president should come from within. But GE was adamant about being in control, and Jack had already decided I was going to take the reins at NBC. Brandon, for his part, wanted more recognition for his contributions to NBC’s turnaround. So he welcomed me as the new kid on the block, someone who would respect his programming expertise.
Still, I knew I was stepping into a quagmire. No one gave me credit for the television savvy I had picked up at Cox Cable. To make things worse, there was long-standing animosity between NBC and RCA. NBC felt it had been abused and neglected by a corporate parent with industrial interests and no creative sensibilities. They expected GE to be just the same, if not more so.
By late June 1987, all this was compounded by the striking National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians paralyzing our television production and program schedule. In my first public comments sharing the dais with Grant Tinker and Fred Silverman, my two predecessors, at an industry lunch amid state senate and gubernatorial elections, I tried making the best of it with what I hoped was a little humor:
“Unlike a lot of people who will be making speeches in California over the next couple of months, I am not running for anything—but that hasn’t always been the case. In my first year in this job I was definitely running for something. Namely—for cover! With the NABET strike, downsizing, and my memo on forming a Political Action Committee, I felt like checking into St. Elsewhere for an image transplant.”
I set out from day one to immerse myself in NBC’s business and creative culture. I quickly learned that TV program development is an inexact science. There is no sure path to a hit series that could be worth hundreds of millions in advertising revenues and syndicated license fees. But some people have a knack for knowing a winning script when they read it or spotting a performer with star potential in an audition. Observing Brandon’s knack for both was one of the few pleasures of my first year at NBC. He was comfortable enough in his own skin to be a respectful listener in program meetings and still deliver a blunt assessment. His candid, fluid rapport with series producers allowed him to be both encouraging and critical as he skillfully traversed their Hollywood egos and eccentricities.
Some of our best times together were visiting the sets of NBC’s hit shows like Cheers, Family Ties, or The Cosby Show. Whenever we stopped by, it was clear that the performers and everyone behind the scenes adored Brandon. Because he respected their craft, he won their loyalty. They might well have pushed me aside as an outsider when I first arrived at NBC, but Brandon Tartikoff was my link. Brandon was a very good promoter of our shows, and all the producers knew it. So I made it a point to listen and learn.
While he was with us, Brandon brainstormed many different shows. Some flopped, others were wildly popular. His mind was always fixed on series concepts. One night when he was up tending to his infant daughter, Brandon caught Bill Cosby on The Tonight Show doing a hilarious stand-up routine about family life. The next day he approached the comedian about creating and starring in a domestic sitcom that became The Cosby Show. He conceived of an MTV-style cop show that eventually became Miami Vice.
During his time at NBC, Brandon demonstrated nothing less than genius. Working closely with Warren Littlefield, marketing chief John Miller, and his marketing co-creator, Vince Manze, he developed the concept of Must-See TV. Together they created an aura of change that was exactly what we needed. Independent producer Stephen J. Cannell attributed NBC’s success to Brandon’s “fine creative instincts” and willingness to take chances. Even after he cultivated the cornerstones of NBC’s revival—The Cosby Show, Cheers, The A-Team, Golden Girls, and LA Law—Brandon was preoccupied with creating a new batch of series hits. He was like a traffic cop, masterfully managing teams of people, identifying promising scripts, producing series pilots, and shepherding new and aging shows.
And when things didn’t go well, he was quick to take responsibility and set a new course. As NBC’s primetime lead and series unraveled, his post-season assessment April 17, 1990 (courtesy of USC’s Tartikoff Collection), was focused on positioning for the fall. “What we need is to put the blinders on, focus on the development, and stop reading the [trade] papers. These people are not our friends and have been rooting for our demise for the last 4 years. They’re going to be disappointed once again. Keep the faith,” Brandon wrote me.
Brandon and I would sit down at the end of every calendar year to assess the past year and plan for the future. He chose to work without a contract; he stayed because he wanted to, not because he had to. He was always worried about every show produced on his watch, and that tires a person out even if they are successful.
By 1991, Brandon was tormented by circling Hollywood agents who tried everything to lure him from NBC to run a studio. Eventually, he did just that. He went to Paramount at the urging of Creative Artists Agency’s Michael Ovitz, who kept reminding Brandon he had maxed out on television experiences. In a letter of parting thoughts he wrote me June 26, 1991, on Paramount letterhead, Brandon was critical of scheduling moves made by his second-in-command, Warren Littlefield. “You can see help and vision is needed,” Tartikoff wrote. “It hurts me to see NBC get beaten by itself.”
So Brandon left NBC for Paramount in 1991. That same year he was involved in a horrible car accident with his young daughter, Calla, near the family’s summer home in Lake Tahoe. Suzanne and I spent about a week with his wife, Lilly Tartikoff, and both their families, keeping vigil at Washoe Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, where Calla was in serious condition and Brandon was recuperating from a broken rib and pelvis. Their parents were charming, substantive people. Lilly’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and Brandon’s parents were among the 61 passengers who survived the deadliest-ever collision of fully fueled Pan American and KLM jets on a foggy Canary Islands runway on March 27, 1977. Lilly was a wonderful wife to Brandon. She was his counselor and helper and a major part of the civility of Brandon’s own success. We have remained close to Lilly and her family over the years.
◆ Brandon Tartikoff, from his 1992 memoir The Last Great Ride. Success is a matter of how smoothly and how wisely you adjust to the shock of the new.
It had been a little over a year since I left the catbird seat at a television network for a new job at Paramount. I knew the television business was changing. But I never realized just how fundamental those changes would be or how fast the future was rushing toward us.
During a meeting in Wright’s hotel suite during the National Association of Television Program Executives in Houston in March 1990, I told him that I thought the time had come for me to leave. I had done this job for 12 years, and every year was like a dog year—each year feels like 7. My original inner circle had moved on, and I was starting to feel like Peter Pan. Every fall I greeted a new batch of eager young faces at the staff meeting, all expecting me to take them to Never-Never Land. Maybe it was time for me to grow up.
I had finally come to a crossroads, about to leave NBC, a place I’d both grown up in and helped grow.
Bob’s a savvy guy. He had doubtless sensed my restlessness before the conversation and couldn’t have been more gracious. Inevitably our talk drifted to my future plans. I had been seriously considering a venture into independent production. I wanted to follow through on some of my own ideas as a producer instead of trying to persuade others to execute them. And I had several series commitments at NBC which gave me some advantage and security in the risky development of shows. I told him I planned to leave in 6 months, by June. Bob asked me for an extra year to effect a more orderly transition. How could I say no to a person who let me operate with total creative autonomy for 5 years? ◆
About a year after the accident, Brandon left Paramount to spend more time with 8-year-old Calla during her long recuperation from the serious brain injury she sustained in the crash. His return to television included producing the short-lived late-night talk show Last Call and The Steve Banks Show for public television. He briefly served as chairman of New World Entertainment and co-chaired AOL’s Entertainment Asylum, the first-ever interactive broadcast studio. But he continued to frequently pen me letters offering valuable friendly advice about programs, producers, and other NBC executives. Like in October 1992 when he encouraged me to launch a weekday-afternoon version of Today to liven up NBC’s sagging daytime ratings (I wish I had!) or explaining in early October 1992 why he encouraged actor Tim Robbins’s guest hosting of NBC’s Saturday Night Live but had nothing to do with what became his controversial live monologue at the opening of the late-night show.
Brandon was only 48 when he died August 27, 1997, from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Brandon Tartikoff and I shared a common core. We both were natives from the South Shore of Long Island, New York, making our way to Hollywood by different paths. Brandon’s father worked in the garment district. My father was a heating and cooling contractor, and my mother an elementary school teacher. Our parents were old-school. Brandon, who was 6 years my junior, was the youngest network entertainment president ever when he accepted the job in 1981 at age 32. I was the youngest president/CEO of NBC when I was appointed in 1986 at age 43.
During his time at NBC, Brandon cultivated the urban-adult, slice-of-life comedies and dramas that defined NBC’s revitalized brand. He godfathered the Must-See TV Thursday lineup long before the marketing slogan was officially launched in fall 1993. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Brandon Tartikoff completely revitalized NBC’s primetime schedule, providing a solid springboard for a complete reinvention of the network. I know he would have been a leading force for transformation of our entire industry, had he lived long enough.
◆ Herbert Schlosser. In broadcasting, when the ratings are good, the meetings are short.
Primetime is not the profit center now that it used to be for anyone. But NBC was focused on primetime because it finally became the top-rated network, and Grant Tinker, a handsome gentleman and skilled program producer with great taste, made it happen. So Bob had a tough act to follow. Bob took his lumps at the beginning, but GE backed him, and then he began to make the structural changes necessary to create entire new businesses like cable. ◆
Warren Littlefield, who was Brandon’s deputy during the development of the greatest hit shows of that time, assumed management of Must-See TV and other program development as NBC’s entertainment chief. Although he developed many new cutting-edge hits, Warren was judged very harshly in the shadow of Brandon’s success and never won the individual recognition he thought he’d earned. Almost as soon as Warren took over, Brandon’s popular program lineup began winding down right in the midst of the worst advertising recession since World War II. There was a lot of pressure at the time to just get rid of everyone who rode out the early 1990s recession, to clear the decks and start all over.
Warren eventually shared the job with and reported to Don Ohlmeyer. It was an awkward pairing from the start, but necessary, and somehow NBC got healthy quickly. Don brought a whole different energy and life to the place. He was a very big contributor with his larger-than-life presence, saying, “We can do this!” But some of the programs that got us healthy were continuations of earlier hits, like Frasier, which was a spin-off from Cheers. It was Warren who developed and got that on the air. He also developed ER and Friends under Ohlmeyer’s 6-year leadership.
We had stellar successes. Seinfeld lasted 6 years at a full 27 episodes per season, ER ran for 10 years; so did Friends. They were among the last of the great adult comedies and dramas before reality TV set in and changed American primetime sensibilities yet again.
And after those shows became enormously successful, Warren was constantly under the gun from people saying “What have you done for us lately?” He and Ohlmeyer put 25 shows on the air, for 10 or 12 episodes each, and they all failed. That’s a lot of shows. The first episode of every comedy cost about $1 million, and the first episode of every drama was about $3 million. You’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars by the time you are finished with this whole thing. We spent $40 million or $50 million every year on program development, for 5 or 6 years, that didn’t produce a hit. Suddenly the words of CBS founder William Paley, often quoted by Brandon Tartikoff, were coming back to me: “No show that’s a hit costs too much and no show that’s a failure can be cheap enough.”
The relative few hit shows were so strong they sustained us during this process, so we didn’t resort to producing the suddenly popular reality shows until we had to. They were just coming on when Jeff Zucker became involved in entertainment programming. And they became a substitute for our inability to create sustainable drama and comedy shows. We were not always able to get the right shows on the air at the right time. The problem couldn’t be solved with money, because a good program and a bad program often cost exactly the same. There are no guarantees about what will resonate with viewers.
Must-See TV had long legs. It lasted less than a decade but heavily contributed to making NBC a money machine for GE for twice as long, or about 17 years. In that time period, we just had a few bad years, and that was mostly due to the recession of 1991–93 and a poor programming cycle that came at a time when we were taking heavy losses on our first organically grown cable channel, CNBC.
In 1993, just as Must-See TV was taking hold, the rules that prohibited broadcast networks from sharing in syndication profits were abolished. Before that, the inequities were dramatic. For instance, NBC spent $2 million per episode to produce ER, but once the show moved to aftermarket syndication, Warner Bros., which owned the show, was entitled to all the sales revenue—$10 million per episode. The change in that law, known in the industry as fin-syn, shorthand for financial interest and syndication, was a watershed event. It set off an explosion of primetime economics. NBC and the other TV networks suddenly had a new steady revenue stream.
The financial interest and syndication rule battles impacted every one of NBC’s program negotiation and creative relationships. Miami Vice was a good example. That show, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas and produced by Universal, was a hit from its very first episode in 1984. It was a very good contemporary show that just knocked you out with its fast cars and sex appeal, fashionable clothes, and music rolled up in a way that was acceptable to network censors at that time. It was the most expensive show we had on the air then. So when its ratings began to decline in the fourth season, I saw it as an opportunity to propose a renewal in which NBC and Universal would share the future risks and rewards.
Universal would not hear of it. Sid Sheinberg, the studio’s president and chief operating officer, was among the Hollywood heavyweights who did not want to share their wealth with the broadcast TV networks. He wanted NBC to continue underwriting all production costs, including the usual deficits.
“We’ve got this problem,” I told Sheinberg over the phone.
“I don’t have a problem,” the onetime Texas lawyer fired back. “You have a problem!”
“Well, if we decide not to renew the show, then you have a problem.”
“Then I will just take the show to another TV network!” Sheinberg threatened.
I reminded him that even the most wildly popular series can get lost in the shuffle when moved to another network, especially when its ratings begin to fall. It’s not a pretty picture. I proposed evenly splitting the show’s production deficit and ownership, an idea Sheinberg flatly rejected. Then I offered to pick up the entire deficit in exchange for complete ownership of the series, including previously aired episodes. That would have preserved a huge syndicated interest for Universal while sparing the studio any future deficit.
“No!” he shouted. “I don’t want to see you network guys owning any shows! I am a studio and I should never be selling you any of my rights! I’d rather have the show go off the air!”
And that’s exactly what happened. When Sheinberg abruptly yanked Miami Vice off the air as a result of that conversation, I knew the system was broken and it needed to be fixed. But I was pretty much out on a limb alone in the early 1990s, fighting Hollywood and Washington for those rights. My counterparts at CBS and ABC did not feel as compelled, and the Fox network was still new and too young to care.
Our work with legislators in Washington, where I spent a tremendous amount of time, finally broke that counterproductive cycle. It took more than a decade to change the regulations and longer than that to alter Hollywood’s mindset. It seemed with the renewal of every Must-See TV hit series, a new battle had to be forged.
Taking control of content development under financial interest and syndication deregulation (fin-syn) allowed us to have a vibrant NBC productions organization. It allowed us to devote resources and talent to producing shows instead of just underwriting other people’s ideas. The tenor of our negotiations and relationships with talent changed as a result because we finally could keep the cost of production in check. Overall, the return on investment in the shows we produced was multiplied many times. We had no idea just how critical this would be 3 decades later in an age of streaming media and exploiting content libraries for billions of dollars annually in a multiscreen universe. Our fin-syn efforts look brilliant today since the broadcast TV networks would be buried relying only on linear advertising. They’d be dead!
The problem with hit shows is that they eventually end, and you have to begin again from scratch with no guarantees you can achieve another spark. We owned the business in 1995 when Seinfeld was number one and anchoring our primetime ratings. By 1997, the tables were turned and we were desperate to renew Seinfeld. I personally negotiated with Michael Ovitz to keep Seinfeld on the air. He controlled that show because of his position as Jerry’s agent and was a forceful personality; he also received a cut from the show. But we knew Jerry’s interest was waning.
The final negotiation with Jerry took place at my Trump Towers apartment in New York City with Jack Welch, me, Jerry, and his manager, George Shapiro. We all knew each other well and rather quickly settled on one more season of the show. Jerry was to be paid $67 million for one season under his personal services contract. (NBC paid separately for the show, about $3 million per episode because of an expensive supporting cast. So we were spending nearly $200 million on that one series.)
Then Jerry started to hesitate. He had demonstrated he could succeed at the daunting task of being series producer, writer, and star without help from his longtime writing partner, Larry David, who had left 2 years earlier. It’s fair to say Jerry found it very difficult. He wanted it to be the funniest show ever written. He was concerned about slipping ratings; he wanted to go out on top. So it was like being in jail. It wasn’t fun anymore—but it couldn’t have been more lucrative.
Jack Welch was flabbergasted by Jerry’s hesitation. Why would anybody turn down $67 million for a year’s work regardless of the ratings performance?! That 2-hour meeting broke without a signed contract. We all agreed to give Jerry some breathing room. Later that night, Jerry telephoned me. “Bob, I don’t want to do it. We really should stop here. I just don’t feel comfortable doing it.” I asked him to take a day and speak with his team. But he called back the next day, firmly declining the offer. That was the end of it. It was a matter of professional pride for Jerry; it was never just about the money. That NBC’s Must-See TV hinged on his show was our good fortune and, in the end, our problem.
The irony is that the show has earned over $500 million in secondary rights since it went off the air. Seinfeld is the best-managed and most successful off-air show of all time.
Donald Trump represented a completely different kind of negotiator and on-air talent.
Donald Trump and The Apprentice debuted on NBC in January 2004 in the waning days of Must-See TV. The series ran for 6 seasons and spawned The Celebrity Apprentice. But Trump, whom I had known from earlier real estate development dealings, kept on running right through the 2016 presidential race. When I ran GE Capital, Trump tried to convince GE to move its newly acquired RCA and NBC from Rockefeller Center into a Television City he proposed to build on land he bought for $40 million out of bankruptcy from the Pennsylvania Railroad. He came over to my GE Capital office in Greenwich to make the pitch, and our discussions went on for some time while I got other bids, which I used to negotiate a better deal for GE at 30 Rock.
As head of NBC, I got into business with him as half owner of his Miss Universe pageant and eventually The Apprentice, which suited him perfectly. I made him executive producer of Miss Universe because he was complaining about the judges and production, and he knew how to make it work for television. I remember Trump telling me, “You know me—the two things I really love in life are women and food!” He brought order to all of the shows he was part of. As ratings for The Apprentice rose, so did Trump’s fees. The great negotiator claims to have made more than $213 million over 14 seasons from The Apprentice and related branded products, many of which bore his likeness.
By 2015, Trump was skillfully capitalizing on his TV-honed brand as a leading Republican presidential candidate. Suzanne and I were all too familiar with his cocky, abrasive style as longtime friends with Donald and his wife, Melania.
The rest of the world was taking a deep dive into his character. Trump is always looking for action and not afraid to negotiate with anyone—even members of Congress. He is extremely win-oriented; that is his whole being, and he’s very good at sharpening and using the tools he has available. These would be very useful leadership attributes at this point in our country’s history. I think people underestimate Trump’s ability and cunning. He has brought to the forefront important matters like immigration and jobs in a way that can no longer be ignored. So he will bring sharp focus on the issues he can exploit, and influence others to take positions and action. It doesn’t mean if he got elected he would be able to get any of it done. But he would be a fierce advocate. He would take no prisoners. His allegiance to party would be secondary to his allegiance to his own ideas and agenda. Running for office has given him political credibility. Trump will be a national political figure for many years to come.
The fine art of negotiation determines how successful your business can be, whether it is a public corporation or a nonprofit. It is your ability to persuade others to follow a strategy, to embrace a vision, to do what needs to be done. That was an especially tricky task when it came to NBC programming because of the unpredictable nature of personalities and circumstances. There was so much over which you had no control. The best you could do was to empower others to do your bidding, challenge conventions at every turn, and keep a handle on all the moving parts. Rule changes and new technology continuously reset boundaries and expectations. But the process remains the same: leverage what you know, yield to what you don’t know, and ardently pursue what you want. The deregulation of the broadcast networks’ financial interest in the ongoing revenues of series they underwrote leveled the playing field for us as program producers and distributors. That equalizing act altered all of television program dynamics and economics.
So, too, with the change in state laws governing insurance claims for autistic patients, who previously had struggled for any kind of coverage or recognition. The grueling grassroots crusades we waged to win insurance reform in more than 40 states were not unlike the individual victories NBC scored with program producers, particularly in the 1990s, when the TV network system was in flux. Every new negotiation brought with it the opportunity to push the envelope a little more. You can’t push people in new directions without expecting pushback on the way to exciting results. If you accept the responsibility to be a powerful force for good and for necessary change, and to create something of value that didn’t exist before, then the conflict and chaos are just temporary means to a more satisfying end.
That’s the way I ventured into NBC’s TV program culture and challenges in 1986, and into autism’s troubled, disconnected landscape in 2004 (more on that in Act 3). The difference was that at NBC I had Brandon Tartikoff as a knowledgeable, innovative navigator. Suzanne and I, along with our early supporters, were on our own fashioning Autism Speaks, with only my instincts and principles that had served me so well in the business world. As it turned out, fighting to broaden insurance coverage for autism wasn’t so different from changing regulations in advertising-supported television. They were necessary reforms for progress. Once goals and strategies were set and cloaked in a marketing campaign that everyone could understand—whether it was Must-See TV at NBC or raising awareness at Autism Speaks—we focused tirelessly on the risk-taking. Nothing could have been achieved without it.