Event Programming

Nor did we who were working in the theater feel that anything important had happened when after the war we saw television sets appear in bars. Even in the early fifties most of what we saw on television was wrestling -- OK, I'm exaggerating, sporting events. Television sets were expensive . . . . we hardly knew anyone who owned one, and those who did seemed to spend most of their time talking to repair men about how to get a picture.

But Dumont came along and the networks faced up to the fact that they would have to deal with this new medium and not stay with the safe and secure and lucrative world of radio, and all of a sudden television was going full blast.

But that was in the fifties, and this is only the nineties and television grew and grew until it dominated the entertainment industry, and now it seems to be facing a whole new period of splintering, changing, losing the easy domination of the audience once enjoyed by the three networks.

What is happening? Where is the audience? Why has this most incredible of mediums become passˇ, in large part ignored, at least as far as entertainment is concerned? People still seem to abandon other activities to watch major sporting events or something like the Academy Awards, but except for these very special, highly promoted programs, there seems to be no excitement about television, no anticipation of a special event, no talk about the show "the morning after." Why?

Maybe because television has abandoned the idea of events. One of the most exciting concepts for television was the mini-series (a hateful term). I don't mean a two part movie-of-the-week now given the pretentious title of miniseries, but the real novel for television. The event that everyone watched and everyone talked about the next day.

It started with a special audience who watched The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth R. People talked about the show, talked about the episodes, panicked when they missed an episode, worried that there might not be a re-run. I guess it was Screen Gems that did the first American Miniseries, although it was about the English, QB VIII. Everyone was very excited about it and the networks began to buy novels and adapt them so that you could play out a whole novel over several nights. Usually they played in the movie nights, until Fred Silverman decided to schedule Roots all at once in one week and changed miniseries presentation forever, well almost forever. Remember Centennial, which played anyplace there was an open night so that no one could ever find it?

I'm not going to do a lot of research on this phenomenon. I'm not going to list all of the miniseries and their ratings. All I am trying to say is that these mini-series, or novels for television or whatever they were called, became events. People marked off their calendars to watch Captains and Kings, Shogun or East Of Eden and, of course, Masterpiece Theater never stopped doing their massive minis and everyone talked about them. Everyone wanted to be a part of the experience of watching, or discussing it the next day. People rushed through dinner. They made a point of being home, they watched and they talked and they had a good time. And, even though their popularity has waned, at least with the networks, when an exciting series like Lonesome Dove played it happened again. That audience that seems to have fractionalized or drifted away came right back and watched, and talked about it and was sorry when it was over.

Why don't we care about television events any more? Why don't we talk about them? Is it all financial . . . are the books too expensive? All we talk about are ratings and salaries. The headlines in the paper tell you about ratings, the gossip columns talk about costs, license fees and salaries. It's very depressing to me that the folks at my gym all got very excited about a show I worked on recently because it was number four in the weekly ratings. Why should they know or care? They just "loved the show" because it was a "hit". They didn't have to see it.

I think maybe we should re-write our contracts. Maybe it should be a violation of our Guild Agreements to publish ratings, license fees and salaries. Maybe we should stop thinking of who won the hour, the minute, the second as the most important news of the day. First of all, it's all in the interpretation. Network A won the week in terms of "raw numbers" but Network C actually won because they had the highest numbers in the important demographic group, but Network B dominated the important hour leading into local news. So, playing the "numbers game" may be fascinating for research people and vital for those scheduling the networks, but since the pubic doesn't have to do either of these two things, wouldn't it be more fun for them to get interested in the shows, in their content rather than their numbers?

I think we need to start creating excitement about our product and then maybe that lost audience would return. It wasn't only miniseries that became major events on television. Every year there were a couple of movies that everyone talked about, and even episodes of series that everyone looked forward to seeing and wanted to experience together. Rhoda's wedding, Edith Bunker's dealing with rape, the last episode of The Fugitive, the first blacks on Gunsmoke, the President of the United States on Laugh-In. We need to start putting excitement back into television. We have to start being excited about it again.

We are so depressed, we are so negative, and there is a reason. A lot of what we have been doing for the past twelve years has been depressing. We have gone more and more to "reality" shows, not just those shows designated as "reality shows," but the dramatic shows are almost all based on "true stones," real events taken from the headlines. What happened to making up stories? Isn't that why most of us chose to go into this business? Had we desired to be biographers or historians, we would have been quietly writing or teaching at some university. No, we chose the world of make-believe, the world of "what if." We could create a world, populate it with interesting characters, use our imaginations, inspire other people, give young people hope and ambition and have a really good time. Every day of our lives was an event because we did shows of heightened reality. We dealt with stories of the heart, stories of the imagination. We didn't try to imitate life. We created a larger than life world, a world where anything could, and usually did happen. That's why people watched. It took them out of themselves, took them away from the problems and worries and detail of their lives. The shows excited and amazed them, freed them, made them happy or made them sad, made them laugh or made them cry for those fantastic imaginary people we created.

So let's try to look at television as the new and exciting medium it once was. It still can be since it will be delivered to its audience in many ways in the coming years. Let's think again in terms of using our imaginations, creating magic and creating events.

Let's do ourselves a favor. Let's try to convince the people in management that it's OK to have some fun, to make up stories, to play some games. I'm not a gambler, but I would wager that most of us didn't "just love math" when we were in school, even if some of us managed to do pretty well in it. So, if we didn't love math, it doesn't seem fair that we are spending our lives in the "numbers" game. Anyway, I have always believed that if we are allowed to do the show that really excites us, we'll really excite the audience and the numbers will work out just fine.

We know there are about two events in the year when people make a point of watching television. Let's not try to change everything all at once. This year let's aim for five events. After that, anything can happen.

Ethel Winant has just finished work on the hour-long CBS Special The Legend of The Beverly Hillbillies . . . She is in preproduction on a four-hour miniseries for NBC and in development with Frances Ford Coppola on a "live" Playhouse 90 Production.