Spectator Let's Not Make a Deal
By KURT ANDERSEN
Ever since the go-go '80s gave way to the gone-gone '90s, a certain swath of the press has been itching for a revival of glamorous corporate takeovers. There's no business as sexy as show business, and this summer the wishful murmurs in New York City and Los Angeles have proliferated, become louder, zanier: Bill Gates is buying Whittle Communications, Disney is buying Whittle, Paramount is buying Viacom and its MTV Networks, Ted Turner is buying a movie studio . . . And, of course, Bill Cosby is buying NBC.
! There tends to be an inverse relationship between the amount of press coverage each rumor receives and the likelihood of a deal. The Cosby gambit -- which was floated and came to nothing last fall, which generated a respectful Wall Street Journal article in June and a breathless feature in the current Vanity Fair -- is thus among the more implausible. It is also the most annoying, because Cosby's hangers-on are so strenuously pushing the notion, because it is such an indulgence of Cosby's self-righteous vanity, and because the story is a fabric of so many spurious bits of conventional wisdom.
1. Cosby is an entertainment genius. Because he was the star of a hugely popular sitcom on NBC, reporters accept the idea that he's qualified to run a TV network. After all, the man now running NBC, Robert Wright, is new to show business and uniformly derided by those who work with him. What entertainment wizardry has Cosby wrought since Cosby? He has made two movies that bombed; a game show, You Bet Your Life, that bombed; and a didactically uplifting sitcom, Here and Now, that bombed.
2. Cosby is driven by his civil rights zeal. If an ambition to be America's most prominent black big shot is zeal for civil rights, then sure. But Cosby's moralist impulses are often a crank's misguided preachiness. In 1988 he joined the race-baiting Tawana Brawley scam. His NBC, according to associates, would have no place for a bad-attitude show such as The Simpsons.
3. Cosby is serious about NBC. You can't find anyone at NBC or GE who thinks so. "It's a self-promotion," Wright told TIME correspondent Jeffrey Ressner. Norman Brokaw, Cosby's William Morris agent, insists it's not. But why, nine months after Brokaw first confirmed the story to reporters, have there been two additional waves of Cosby leaks to the press -- yet nothing concrete to show for all the talk? The comedian apparently suffers from Woody Allen Syndrome -- the need to be considered a really serious person.
4. Wall Street is hot to finance Cosby. Brokaw says he's vetting eager financiers, including four investment banks; but one of those says it's not involved, and a Cosby associate says he and his new partner, Robert Wussler, have had "meaningful" discussions only with Goldman Sachs.
5. Cosby's rich enough to make the deal happen himself. But his people say now that he has no intention of investing a bit of his considerable fortune in NBC. So what does he bring to the table? According to someone involved in the ostensible deal: "Stature, name, the affiliates ((like him)). He's one of 100 people in the world whom people love to sit down with." In other words, he'd be a celebrity figurehead.
6. Cosby has recruited a golden boy to run NBC with him. Wussler was a wunderkind back in 1976 when he became president of CBS, a job he managed to keep for just 18 months. Wussler next joined Ted Turner, for whom he pushed the doomed, capricious attempt to buy CBS. Wussler's last job was at the satellite-communications firm Comsat, where, most notably, he spent millions to bail out a pair of black businessmen who wanted to own Denver's N.B.A. franchise.
7. GE must be negotiating with Cosby. A Cosby associate says the timing of their bid depends on "the availability of the GE people," suggesting that continuing discussions are on hold. But there have been no discussions. Cosby did talk to both Wright and GE chairman Jack Welch at two social events during the past two months, but they've told associates he said nothing to them about buying the network.
8. GE has taken a bath on NBC. In the seven years since GE bought RCA, of which NBC was a part, the company has sold off the NBC radio stations and RCA's substantial defense businesses. Thus, in the end, the company has paid relatively little for NBC itself -- probably no more than half the $6.4 billion figure routinely quoted in news stories. GE expects NBC's profits this year to be $350 million, up 70%.
9. But once the fall season starts, and NBC remains in third place with failing new shows like Cafe Americain and failing old shows like Tonight, GE may feel less committed to the TV business. Sometimes the conventional wisdom can be correct.