20 Questions: Brandon Tartikoff

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.

1.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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 House 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.

5.

Playboy: As a child, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up? Tartikoff: All I wanted to do was play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was a baseball prodigy. I went to Dodger-town for a summer and played varsity ball in high school and college. But two things prevented me from fulfilling my dream: I (continued on page 232) Brandon Tartikoff (continued from page 169) 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.

6.

Playboy: You were a literature major at Yale, an aspiring novelist and a book reviewer for a small weekly newspaper. You must have surprised a lot of people when you suddenly decided to go into television.

Tartikoff: I never really fit in all that well at the Yale literature department, even before deciding to go into television. In my senior year, I had a tutorial with Robert Penn Warren and it was a disconcerting experience for both of us, though he was tremendously supportive of me and taught me a lot. Here was the author of All the King's Men trying to advise me on a novella I was writing about a protagonist named Saliva Schwartz, who was searching the country for a quartet of Siamese twins who were spreading a sexual disease. And when I told him I had decided to go into television, there was dead silence. Finally, he said, "Well, I wish I could help you, but I really don't know too many people in television." Which was fine, because there's nothing you can do to prepare yourself for a career in television other than watch it. I think studying literature was a better preparation than most, because the methods of storytelling really don't change from one medium to another. And I've since discovered that there is no proven path to a career in television. The best advice to young people is to work toward an entry-level job from the mail room or from a related industry such as advertising, where you can learn the business and make some contacts. The surest way not to get a job is to call on the networks directly. Networks and studios are places of highly specialized skills, not learning centers.

7.

Playboy: How did you get where you are?

Tartikoff: I worked my way up through the promo department at ABC; first in New Haven, then in Chicago. But I was always anxious to cross over into programing; and in 1975, I got a reel together of the best work I'd done on movie promotions and on a local, late-night comedy show I'd produced on my own time. I began sending it around and received two firm offers: a program-executive job at ABC in L.A. and a staff job on The Mike Douglas Show in Philadelphia. And NBC offered me the next writing job to open up on a new show they were putting together called Saturday Night Live. I thought about where I wanted to spend the next winter and picked L.A. And that's where I first worked with Fred Silverman. But a year later, I got an offer from Dick Ebersol at NBC, the executive who'd wanted to hire me for Saturday Night Live, to go over there as director of comedy development. I did, but the job just didn't work out. Historically, NBC had not done many half-hour comedies, and nothing I did in my first year could change that policy. I was frustrated and looking for a way out. Then, suddenly, NBC hired Fred Silverman, and he took me aside almost immediately to say, "The word is out that you're unhappy here. But stick around. Things will get interesting." Within months. I was named vice-president in charge of West Coast programing; and in 1980. I was jumped to president of the entertainment division.

8.

Playboy: Which shows do you consider to have been the most significant during your 11 years in television?

Tartikoff: One of the most important was QB VII, which not many viewers remember today. But that was the first miniseries and without it there would have been no Rich Man, Poor Man, Roots or Shõgun. In comedy, I think All in the Family and M*A*S*H have been the most significant, because before them. TV sitcoms were only about idealized people. Also, neither of those shows was an immediate hit, but their quality was apparent and the networks stayed with them until they found their audience--a gutsy and innovative programing strategy that TV executives are much less afraid to use today. Maybe Fred Silverman and I wouldn't have stuck with Hill Street Blues last season if it hadn't been for those two shows. Saturday Night Live was a significant show because it brought the disenfranchised Vietnam generation back to its TV screens. And 60 Minutes expanded the horizons of news and information programing while retaining the traditional mass-entertainment value of network television. I believe there will be much more journalism on prime time over the next ten years because 60 Minutes has shown that if it's good journalism, millions of Americans will be anxious to watch. Family was a ground-breaking show because it was the first weekly series to incorporate contemporary issues such as homosexuality, serious illness and extramarital affairs, issues that until then had been dealt with only in specials and movies of the week. And Dallas is enormously significant because of the societal changes it reflects. It's the first daytime show to succeed in prime time, and I think that's the result of the increased number of women in the work force. And it's also the first series in which the most popular character is the villain, which is probably the result of a post-Watergate, recessionary outlook. J.R. is TV's Darth Vader--the evil genius we love to hate, a protagonist previous generations would never have embraced.

9.

Playboy: Remember that marvelous scene in The Graduate in which the guy takes Dustin Hoffman aside and says, "Plastics"? Today he would say "Cable." What's your view of the future of cable television?

Tartikoff: After the initial rush to obtain cable franchises, everyone is suddenly going to realize that he has to program all those channels. And there simply isn't an infinite number of ideas and formats that haven't already been exhausted by the networks. The future of cable is going to include a lot of people in chairs talking to one another, a lot of call-in shows, amateur hours and badly lit, badly mixed attempts at late-night comedy. So far, the only cable program I've seen that displays any real ingenuity is The Ugly George Hour of Truth, Sex and Violence.

10.

Playboy: Cable has already reduced the ratings of the networks and the share will no doubt drop further as more homes are wired. What effect will that have on network programing?

Tartikoff: The penetration of cable has caused the standard of success for a network show to drop from, say, a 30 share to a 126 or a 27. And that. I think, has already improved the quality of network programing. Shows like Hill Street Blues and Taxi generally have a hard-core following that remains remarkably constant, regardless of what the gross high is. So now that the standard of success is lower, it's easier to carry quality dramas and intelligent comedies with their devotedly loyal 26-share audiences than it was when 30 was the cutoff point. But lower ratings also bring in fewer commercial dollars, so we'll see all three networks doing more series, fewer made-for-TV movies, a return to comedy-variety shows, more tape, less film and less action-adventure.

11.

Playboy: What do you dream about?

Tartikoff: Seventy percent of my dreams are about television. Not ideas for shows--you know, two detectives, one a boy, one a girl, and they live on a boat in San Pedro Harbor. Nothing like that. But I do have anxiety dreams about the ratings and fantasy dreams about meetings with producers and other executives.

At another network, I dreamed I was called into a meeting by the network president, who handed me a pistol and said. "The producer waiting in that office just gave us a bad show and we have to kill him. I want you to do it as a test of loyalty." So I went into the other room, showed the producer the gun and told him, "I'm not going to kill you and I think I know a way to get us out of here alive." Then I went into the office of the head of programing and tried to shoot this huge, white telephone on his desk so he couldn't call the guards at the gate to stop us. But when I pulled the trigger, a blank went off. The gun wasn't loaded. But the head of programing thought I was trying to assassinate him and began chasing me. Then everyone at the network was chasing me and the producer through the corridors, down the stairs and out into the parking lot. Then I woke up.

12.

Playboy: What is your typical day like?

Tartikoff: If I'm in L.A., my day starts at seven. It's already ten on the East Coast, so I immediately call New York and make the rounds of the people who work for me there, because by the time I get to the office at nine, they'll be out to lunch. Then I have a breakfast meeting with one of our program suppliers, because it's difficult to get all your meetings into a business day and you have to eat breakfast anyway. When I get to the office, the first thing I look at is the ratings. If something there needs attention--for example, if Real People is down a couple of points from the week before--I immediately get on the phone and beef up that show's promotional schedule for the following week. Then a reel of promo announcements arrives--all the spots that were cut the night before for the coming week's shows. We generally do ten of those a day and I always watch them. Then I'll have a meeting with one of the department heads, say, the person in charge of series development or talent and casting. It's especially important to keep up with the new faces. Was there someone at The Comedy Store last night who'd be perfect in one of our new sitcoms? Is someone knocking them dead off-Broadway who'd make a perfect lawyer or doctor or cop in a dramatic series? I'll have three or four programing meetings that are outgrowths of the earlier meetings. Then more meetings with producers. In between, I receive 75 to 100 calls a day, of which I can return only about 25, plus the calls I initiate. By 7:30 P.M., my day in L.A. is winding down. It takes half an hour to drive home, and by then, prime time is just beginning. In a sense, my day starts all over again at eight P.M. On most nights, there'll be one or more of our shows or the competition's shows that I'll want to see. And on the off night when there's nothing I have to watch, I go to the movies or the theater--two of my favorite activities in life. But even there I find myself playing the same games: looking at the fourth lead with an eye toward making him the husband on our new family show. Even during TV commercials, there's no escape, because a lot of stars--such as Sandy Duncan and John Travolta--have been found in commercials. Then, late at night and during weekends. I read scripts. Don't get me wrong. I'd rather be doing this than anything else in the world. But it is a relentless pursuit.

13.

Playboy: By your own account, the first thing you do after entering your office in the morning is read the ratings. Is that because those ratings matter more than anything else? What wouldn't you do for ratings?

Tartikoff: Each morning, when I pick up those overnights. I get the sinking feeling in my stomach that I used to get in school the day the grades came out. Being in television is like getting a report card every day. However, there are a lot of shows that would get a 60 or a 70 share, but I'll never put them on, because they appeal to our basest instincts. If there were a show akin to Battle of the Network Stars called Battle of the Races, don't tell me everybody in America wouldn't be watching. But that concept is so ugly and divisive that no network will ever put it on. Speaking more realistically, a three-hour movie about Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun was developed recently. It was interesting, but I said. "Let somebody else do that." The Guyana movie that eventually did air came to us first, but we chose not to do it. At some point, you have to live with yourself.

14.

Playboy: What shows would you like to do but can't because the ratings wouldn't be high enough?

Tartikoff: About a year ago. I was toying with a show called In Touch, but I was eventually convinced that it was "too soft." That's a television term, not a Playboy term. Along with informational segments, it would include profiles of maybe three ordinary people each week, real-life stories that dramatized some basic human values--sort of an everyman's 60 Minutes. Ultimately, it was a show that would encourage people to do something other than watch television. In my heart, I knew it would be one of the few TV shows I'd be really excited to watch. But I also knew it would never get more than a 15 share.

15.

Playboy: At what moments are you most aware of the awesome power of your job?

Tartikoff: I'm always aware of it. Look. I don't get 100 calls a day because I'm a hell of a guy. And even more power is evidenced by the fact that almost everyone in the world will return my call. But I never forget that when I leave the network, all of a sudden my phone calls won't be returned and my jokes won't be so funny. But most of all, power is being in a meeting with an Emmy-winning writer and a talented, A-list producer and my ideas are being listened to. When I say. "I love the guy. I love the girl, but make the dog a Chevy," and they say, "What color?" and "Should it have a landau rool?"--that's when I tell myself to be careful.

16.

Playboy: Are you ever uncomfortable because you have so much power at your age?

Tartikoff: Many of the people who come to sell me shows or do shows for me are much older than I and sometimes almost fatherly. That's an odd feeling more than an uncomfortable one. But because of my age. I'm sometimes intimidated by the wrong people. For example. I remember my first meeting with Norman Lear, a man whose accomplishments I truly revere. Yet he was just a guy who came into my office wearing a cardigan and a porkpie hat and we talked about shows. It was a very easy meeting. But I had butterflies in my stomach when I met Bill Dana, because he had played José Jimenez when I was a kid and I had all his albums. I still get butterflies when I'm with James Garner. Rock Hudson. James Arness, Dick Clark--people I used to watch on the little black-and-white TV set in my childhood room. Now they're live and in color and in my office--and I'm doing shows with them! I'd have to be dead not to feel something.

17.

Playboy: Very few top-level executives retire from the networks. Like Silverman, they are eventually fired or they quit and go on to careers in production. Why?

Tartikoff: Television is a burnout industry. Your body and mind take a lot of wear and tear with all the traveling and the long hours. There's a profound physical exhaustion that sets in simply because television is on 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The network is a machine that eats you up, and the machine always needs to be fed.

18.

Playboy: What if you're fired?

Tartikoff: The last time I was fired. I was a 16-year-old usher at the Alhambra Theater in San Francisco and they threw me out for taking long dinner breaks. So an experience many Americans my age have had many times has eluded me, and if they fire me now. I'll realize that, in the historical sense. I had it coming: It's been a long hot streak. But if I'm fired right now, after this television season, well. . . . Reshaping a network takes several years, and I've just begun the process. So I'd feel cheated, cut off. And that would probably cause me, out of ego, to stick around this business, hoping for another opportunity to put my programing ideas into practice, both to satisfy myself and--honestly, humanly--to show a lot of people how wrong they were. But if I get a fair chance and then fail. I'll leave this business forever and never look back. That's really all any of us ever has the right to ask for: one shot in life to put your best horses on the track and let them run for you. And if they lose, it's time to walk away.

19.

Playboy: Where do you see yourself at the age of 40?

Tartikoff: Doing something completely different, in a field where the challenges would be as great but where I'd have to start from scratch and see if I could do it all over again. Maybe I'll try to be the novelist Robert Penn Warren would have preferred me to become. Although now I think I'd change the Siamese twins to a Chevy.

20.

Playboy: Do you have any ambitions for the medium itself?

Tartikoff: I'd like to get television to its next level of development. It's unrealistic to think that anyone can wave a magic wand and suddenly every show will be good. There aren't enough writers and producers capable of turning out quality material that fast. But part of my love affair with the medium is that we're the same age and the possibility of growth still exists for both of us. I think it's time for the medium to grow up and start making a living in a responsible way and be a bigger contributor to society. Its wonder years are over. Now's the time to settle down and raise a family.