At Network Chiefs' Powwow, It's All About Blowing Smoke

BEVERLY HILLS, Oct. 16

Every year to kick off the new TV season, the heads of the broadcast networks' programming departments reluctantly get up onstage to take questions from a moderator as industry suits look on and The Reporters Who Cover Television take notes.

This annual exercise has fallen very far on the Interest-O-Meter since its glory days -- such as when Michael Moore was the moderator and demanded the programming chiefs sing "The Patty Duke Show" theme song to punish one of them for saying he was ridding all his series of theme songs because that was sure to keep viewers from defecting to cable TV.

But this year's lunch at the Beverly Hilton Hotel was going to be one of the most exciting season-kickoff lunches ever. Actual bloodshed was anticipated.

That's because ABC Entertainment chief Steve McPherson can't stand NBC programming chief Ben Silverman, who replaced McPherson's BFF Kevin Reilly, who got sacked by NBC but now is running programming at Fox.

At the summer TV press tour, McPherson said, among other things, that Silverman was "either clueless or stupid" for saying he'd talked to Isaiah Washington about joining the cast of NBC's new "Bionic Woman" before ABC-parent Disney had announced it had kicked Washington off "Grey's Anatomy."

All eyes were going to be on Silverman, McPherson and Reilly. If CBS programming chief Nina Tassler and CW programming chief Dawn Ostroff wanted a chance at even being mentioned in trade paper reports on the lunch, they'd need to either shed clothes or make out.

And, if only the lunch organizers had asked a journalist to moderate the lunch, it might have been fabulous.

Instead, they asked a clown: filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld, whose credits include "The Addams Family" flicks, "Men in Black," "Get Shorty" and, in television, the new "Pushing Daisies."

Sonnenfeld began by telling the crowd -- at 1,000, the largest season-kickoff lunch audience ever -- he wanted to take a minute or two to talk about his little colonel, and how it was like the city of Philadelphia -- not the biggest city in the country, but still plenty huge.

He noted he had series in development at all of the networks except CW and asked Ostroff at what point her network would be able to afford to hire him. She said they only work with directors who know how to deliver a great pilot. Then she grew frightened and added, "That's obviously a joke."

Ostroff went on to whirl and spin, telling Sonnenfeld how good a job CW's done this season, being the youngest network, just celebrating its first anniversary, had a really good development season, made pilots for new series that were "very buzzed about," blah, blah, blah.