A Giant Leap to No. 2

By Richard Zoglin

Programmer Brandon Tartikoff leads NBC out of the cellar

Fade in: Midnight at the Tartikoff home in the Coldwater Canyon section of Beverly Hills. Baby Daughter Calla Lianne has awakened, and her parents are trying to lull her back to sleep to the strains of the Tonight show. The guest is Comedian Bill Cosby, who is doing a funny routine about the trials of middle-aged parents. As the father watches, a light goes on in his head.

Montage: Actors being hired, sets being built, scenes being rehearsed.

Cut to: NBC's offices in Burbank, several months later. Network executives are celebrating the latest Nielsen ratings: after nine straight seasons in last place in the prime-time race, NBC has finally moved up to No. 2. Its new hit The Cosby Show, a sitcom about the trials of middle-aged parents, is a major reason.

Brandon Tartikoff s ideas do not always follow such a smooth path to success, but no one is more entitled to celebrate. For nearly five years the boyish but driven president of NBC Entertainment has been trying to write a happy ending for one of the longest-running sob stories in TV history. Season in, season out, NBC rethought its strategy, retooled its schedule, introduced a slew of new shows--and wound up, as usual, deep in the ratings cellar. Asked early this fall if he had anything else to throw in if his new schedule fizzled, Tartikoff replied, "My resignation."

But the schedule has hardly fizzled. Besides The Cosby Show, NBC has another successful new series in Michael Landon's Highway to Heaven, and several returning shows are also doing well. These, combined with such high-rated TV movies as last week's Fatal Vision, have helped the network vault into a strong second position, only three-tenths of a rating point behind CBS for the season so far, and 1.6 points ahead of the sinking ABC.

That Tartikoff was able to survive so long and eventually prevail in a notoriously precarious job is just one of many anomalies about him. A graduate of Yale, where he majored in English, Tartikoff, 35, has the wit and offhand manner of a hip assistant professor. In the office he often appears in crew-neck sweaters and never wears a watch. The modest three-bedroom home where he lives with his wife Lilly and daughter lacks such California status symbols as a swimming pool and tennis court. During off-hours, Tartikoff enjoys shooting baskets (on his one extravagance, a home court that his wife gave him for Father's Day) and playing third base in a Saturday-morning softball league ("a smart ballplayer and a good spray hitter," appraises one teammate). Moreover, in a business where the top dogs are usually tightlipped, Tartikoff is candid and accessible--qualities that have made him the most publicized network programmer since his legendary mentor, Fred Silverman.

The son of a clothing manufacturer, Tartikoff grew up on Long Island, where he used to stay home from school to watch sitcoms like December Bride and My Little Margie. He foresaw his calling on a Sunday night in 1959, when he sat cross-legged in front of the family set to watch the premiere episode of Dennis the Menace. "After it was over," Tartikoff recalls, "I turned to my parents and said, 'They could have made that show much better.' "

Tartikoff began to prove he could do better when, at 23, he went to work as director of advertising and promotion at WLS-TV in Chicago. He impressed his boss, Lewis Erlicht (now president of ABC Entertainment), with successful gimmicks like "Gorilla My Dreams Week," a festival of ape movies. Fred Silverman, then ABC'S programming chief, soon hired him, but Tartikoff left after a year to join NBC. Silverman later became president of NBC and promoted Tartikoff to the top programming slot in January 1980.

After Grant Tinker replaced Silverman in 1981, Tartikoff seemed a sure bet to take the fall for NBC's ratings troubles. But Tinker stuck with him. "I think he is the best guy to do that job -- it's that simple," says the NBC chairman. One of Tartikoff s severest problems was that top producers were reluctant to bring their shows to NBC. "The unfortunate thing for the last-place ball team is that you don't get to hit against your own pitching," he explains. "Producers went to NBC third because they didn't want their new show to face a 40-share on ABC called Happy Days or Three's Company. "NBC's solution was to convince producers that the network would stick with new shows longer. "We wanted to give the audience time to find a show, and the creative community appreciated that," Tartikoff says.

Indeed, NBC stuck with adventurous shows like St. Elsewhere and Cheers even when their early ratings were disappointing. "I don't give the public what they want," Tartikoff says. "I'm more interested in giving them what they will want. I like to challenge the audience. That's not to say that you don't do your share of pandering." Some would place in the latter category NBC's mass-appeal show The A-Team, which was based on an idea Tartikoff hatched after meeting Mr. T at a boxing match. He came into the office one day and wrote a note: "A-Team. Magnificent Seven, Dirty Dozen, Mission Impossible, Road Warrior all rolled into one, and Mr. T drives the car." The rest is Nielsen history. "I am not an intellectual," says Tartikoff. "I have very restrained, middle-class tastes."

While working in Chicago in the early '70s, Tartikoff discovered that he had Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer that he survived after more than a year of radiation treatments and chemotherapy. He worked straight through it, but the experience made him realize that "you're not given an unlimited time on this earth, and you shouldn't fritter it away." Tartikoff does not look like a man given to frittering as he flings out nonstop ideas, jots his notes and takes aim at the No. 1 slot in the ratings. Says he: "I think I feel more pressure than I did when we were No. 3. 1 don't want to blow this opportunity."

-- By Richard Zoglin. Reported by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Denise Worrell