In 1980, at the age of 31, Brandon Tartikoff was named president of the entertainment division of NBC-TV--one of the youngest chief programers in television history. His TV career started in 1971, when he landed a job in the promotion department of the ABC affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut; he was a natural and everything he touched turned to gold. After he succeeded to the promotion staff at the ABC affiliate in Chicago, he developed Hodgkin's disease, from which he completely recovered. His work didn't seem to suffer, and he was quickly noticed by television's then wonder boy, Fred Silverman, who personally lifted Tartikoff out of the rank and file and deposited him in the fast lane, where he has been racing ever since. Sam Merrill caught up with Tartikoff in his New York apartment at eight A.M., followed him through a day at the office, a business dinner, the airing of a Steve Martin special and the all-night party that followed.

Q 1

PLAYBOY: A few years ago, T-and-A shows were very much the fashion on television. Now they're out. Why?

Brandon Tartikoff: Television is sort of paradoxical when it comes to sexuality. On the one hand, it's a very intimate medium. People watch it in the privacy of their own homes, often in their bedrooms. They're comfortable, relaxed and in a very receptive mood for material that might appeal to their prurient interest. But on the other hand, there is, at least to me, something very unsexy about watching a girl who is less than two feet tall--unless she's Tinker Bell.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Television is still very much a male-dominated industry, especially at the upper-executive level. It must be difficult for you guys to select potential new male sex stars.

Brandon Tartikoff: One of the biggest problems television faces is the absence of women executives, especially since women make up about 62 percent of the prime-time viewing audience. So, every day, I find myself in the ridiculous position of sitting around with a bunch of men, trying to figure out what shows women will want to watch. And to compound the insult, we also have to decide what men those women will be attracted to. I make all my final decisions with the help of a trio of very discriminating "man watchers" who work at NBC in secretarial capacities. When the time comes to cast a leading man in a series, I troop the three of them into my office and ask, "Would you want to go to bed with this guy?" Invariably, the actors we think are going to be the breakout leading men of the future are the ones the women find least attractive. Another problem in selecting potential new TV sex stars--male or female--is that it's tough for a viewer to be attracted to someone who can't act. The very few performers who are both sexy and talented generally become feature-film stars.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Despite the demise of the jiggle shows on network television, critics continue to point to the medium's rampant exploitation of women--to the fact that men outnumber women at least two to one as series characters and that female sexuality is used by advertisers to sell everything. How do you respond to those charges?

Brandon Tartikoff: Sexploitation is still present at every level of the industry. The content of this medium is frankly designed to be compatible with the advertisements that appear in it. Personally, I think the sexiest things on TV are the commercials. And that dates back to those pinup calendars advertising brake fluid and rebuilt transmissions that you used to see on gas-station walls. Now the ads are for designer jeans and soft drinks and vacations, but that pinup concept remains the same: Use sex to attract attention, then make your best pitch. I'd like to see television stop taking that course of least resistance and imagination. In our own shows, I've worked actively to exclude the gratuitous use of T and A, the well-endowed woman running down the hall in the background of a scene. To watch TV, you'd think only well-endowed women were ever in a hurry to get somewhere. And, come to think of it, maybe that is a reflection of real life. Don't misunderstand me. I love sex on television. But to me, romance is sexy, pornography is not. And virtually all the sex we see on network television today occurs outside marriage or anything else we might consider a meaningful relationship. Just look at the state of sexual relationships on all three networks. Hart to Hart is the only current series on which a husband and wife actually appear to be attracted to each other. And there isn't a single sitcom--not one!--that features a stable nuclear family.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Fred Silverman, the previous boy genius of television, was, like all the programers before him, a child of radio. You're the first head of a network division to emerge from the TV generation. How important was television in your childhood?

Brandon Tartikoff: Sports was the most active and consuming interest of my childhood, but I also watched a lot of television and learned a lot from it. I watched everything from bowling shows to Playhouse 90. Nothing on TV could bore me except Art Linkletter's Home Party. And TV did have an effect on me right from the beginning. In first grade, I was a member of a four-kid gang that went around imitating TV Westerns. We'd disrupt class to play out scenes, picking up chairs and hitting people over the head with them--except, unlike on TV, the chairs didn't break, the kids did. Finally, the teacher called my parents in and said, "Obviously, he's being influenced by these TV shows, and if he's to continue in this class, you've got to agree not to let him watch television anymore." So, from first to second grade, there was a dark period during which I didn't watch TV at all. And I calmed down and the gang broke up. So now I find it amusing to read all the studies about violence on television's having no correlation with real-life behavior.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: As a child, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

Brandon Tartikoff: All I wanted to do was play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was a baseball prodigy. I went to Dodgertown for a summer and played varsity ball in high school and college. But two things prevented me from fulfilling my dream: I couldn't hit a slider and the Dodgers moved to L.A. Toward the end of college, having hit under .250 for the previous three seasons, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't in a slump and I'd better start thinking about a different career. The choice was simple. Next to baseball, I liked television the most.