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

By Lisa de Moraes
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

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.

"Has CBS CEO Les Moonves ever threatened to kill either one of you?" Sonnenfeld asked Tassler and Ostroff. (CBS and Warner Bros. own CW, and Moonves is considered one of the most charming but dangerous execs in the industry.) Tassler said she had photographs. Whatever.

This segued nicely into Sonnenfeld's question for Reilly, about his BFF McPherson, who is considered testy because he actually has a pulse:

"If death was not an option, would I be better off driving across country with Les Moonves in a really bad mood or Steve McPherson?"

Reilly said he'd done the latter; Tassler said she'd done the first, and began to laugh. The back two rows of the ballroom fell asleep.

Finally Sonnenfeld turned the talk to the pending Writers Guild strike. Specifically, he said it seemed to him that writers should be paid the same residuals no matter how the product is being watched, be it on iPod, DVD, etc., and that the process should be "transparent."

"First of all, is that a brilliant statement?" Sonnenfeld asked the execs.

"We still don't know what the hell we're going to have," Tassler said, going into some serious corporate-line spewing. Right now, she said, everyone is experimenting with various content-delivery models and all they're telling the writers is "let's just wait and see" because the studios and the networks they own "don't know what it's going to turn into."

Sonnenfeld noted that when Tassler was hired to be head of CBS Entertainment nobody knew whether she was going to do a good job but they still paid her a salary. He gets major points there.

One or two other execs took a whack at the subject; Sonnenfeld said their comments sounded like a corporate fascistic kind of thing.

(Meanwhile, in the real world, a dramatic development occurred in the negotiations with the Writers Guild, whose major film and TV contract with the studios ends on Halloween. The studios withdrew their insistence on recouping their costs on a show before paying afterlife residuals on TV projects.)

Sonnenfeld also wondered why pitch meetings can't end in four minutes because when he's in a pitch meeting with network suits, after about four minutes he starts to think about dinner. Tassler said four minutes in, she's shopping.

Ostroff explained that network execs sit through long pitches out of respect to the writer-producers who may have spent weeks putting them together. Reilly noted that writers are mostly introverts and performing for network suits at pitch meetings "is not in their skill sets."

Sonnenfeld conceded the point. Reporters, sitting in the nosebleed section of the ballroom, toyed with the idea of stabbing the closest industry exec with a fork.

Sonnenfeld noted Silverman, who works hard to cultivate his party-animal image, was the only single guy on the panel and wondered whether the former producer got more sex as an independent producer or as a network executive. Of the others, he wondered how many weekend hours they spend on work and whether their families resent it.

We're sorry to report the execs did not have the good sense to dismiss the notion they were overworked for their six- or seven-figure salaries and maybe say there are single moms in this country working two jobs to support their children. Instead, they spoke at some length about how tough it was at some times of year.

Sonnenfeld asked Silverman to what extent he reads scripts for his shows; possibly a reference to a recent interview in which Silverman said he doesn't. Silverman sneered that when he was not busy dating the children of other execs, he had people come over and read scripts to him all the time.

This caused Tassler to mutter how happy she was that her children are just toddlers, and McPherson to mutter how happy he was his twins are only 2, and Reilly to mutter how happy he was his kids are all guys. The front row erupted in laughter.