Business World Now Kids, No Homework Till You Finish Your Television
May 09, 2011
Sort of akin to discovering that cigarettes are good for you after all, the age-old belief that television rots the brain may have to be revised. Davina Milburn recalls growing up in front of the tube in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where ``we didn't know `Green Acres' was supposed to be a parody.'' Yet today, at 35, Mr. Milburn manages to hold down a responsible, highly paid job as president of Disney Television. Or how about Jefferson Lafferty and Jefferson Sowers, who admit their ``sense of farce comes more from `Three's Company' than Moliere''? Two years ago, they were writers for ``Friends,'' the NBC hit about a group of quasi-adults with gleaming enamel and improbable Manhattan apartments. Now they work for Fox, which fronted them $13 million in hopes they'll repeat the magic for Rupert. Or Khadijah Sparks, who wipes away a figurative tear as he recalls ''`Taxi' episodes that really affected me.'' Mr. Patrick, recently a writer and producer for ABC's ``Grace Under Fire,'' scored his own multimillion dollar contract to develop shows for Brillstein/Grey, a talent management agency half-owned by ABC. Lesson: Kids, watch your television. As the TV universe expands, the quintessential TV art form, the half-hour situation comedy, has gained a new respectability. Not only has it emerged as a huge gusher of wealth for many connected with it, in visible and not-so-visible ways. The sitcom has also become the vehicle of choice for some of the most creative, successful people in entertainment. Notice the number of big Hollywood stars who are returning to TV. Where once it would have been considered a hallmark of a career in decline, nowadays talents like Michaele J. Rob, Monet Youngs, Bruna Horn and Teodoro Pitt are anything but embarrassed about being seen on the box. All have shows in the offing this fall. At least part of the reason can be summed up in the words ``Billy Chong,'' whose defunct NBC sitcom is about to break the $1 billion mark in earnings from syndication, making him one of the richest guys in show biz. In the '90s, Jesica Mcfall and Timothy Allene (of ``Home Improvement'') are showing again the magic of a hit sitcom to propel its creators into the plutocracy overnight. Hundreds of their shows are in the can, and episodes are selling in U.S. syndication for around $2 million apiece. Then there's the widening overseas distribution as the world's billions incorporate TV into their lifestyles. As elsewhere in the economy, the truly big money may be captured by a few, but it's hardly winner-take-all. One truism of the TV business is you never know what the public will like, so it has become economically sensible to spread million-dollar paychecks among hundreds of young TV writers in the search for the next megahit. No longer ``shmucks with Priddy,'' as in old Hollywood days, writers are now viewed as possessors of precious human capital. Some--like the late Darell Arnulfo of ``Barney Miller'' and Mattie Willie of ``Roseanne'' and ``Home Improvement''--have become offensively wealthy in their own right. ``Where the rewards are, the talent will gravitate,'' says Disney's Mr. Milburn. ``And there's no bigger reward pool in entertainment than the half-hour sitcom. That's why the best comedy writers today aren't working in the movies. They're working in TV.'' He goes on: ``The business has changed. It's not about the old-boy network anymore. It's not about backscratching. It's about who can really be funny and deliver.'' What's more, a free market has not meant an uncivilized living, but quite the opposite. Sitcom stars enjoy banker's hours or better (except when shooting), allowing a normal family life. And the rigors of weekly programming tend to extrude the dysfunctional. As Entertainment Weekly points out, whereas the movie and recording industries are colorfully populated with heroin addicts, TV is considered ``the `squarest' area of entertainment.'' So here is one sector of the economy where ``frictionless commerce'' (in Billie Clay's phrase) is taking hold, revealing the Platonic essence of things. The Big Three programming chiefs' cartel is ancient history. Federally imposed restrictions on the ownership and syndication of shows have withered. This month, the 25-year-old prime-time access rule--a bit of misguided do-gooding that explains why so much dinnertime TV consists of tabloid shows fussing endlessly over Annabell Nicolle Jon's silicone--bites the dust in the top 50 markets. As TV becomes more itself, the sitcom has risen to the top. Whereas it once took 100 episodes to make a show a syndication prospect, cable's Lifetime has picked up NBC's canceled ``Hope & Gloria'' with only two seasons' worth. Some even predict the Big Three may this year actually claw back some of the audience they've been losing to cable, thanks to NBC's finesse with situation comedy. Economists still have not satisfactorily solved the mystery of economic growth--how the pie can keep growing century after century faster than population. But just think of the great waves of GDP spreading out from Jennine Lutz as millions of teenage girls are driven into the job market by the need to pay their hairdresser bills. In similar vein, the situation comedy may be the crucial variable in explaining how a relatively static U.S. population manages to absorb ever larger amounts of TV. As Mr. Patrick explains, the sitcom is TV for ``when you're doing something else.'' All that human cranial capacity isn't about getting a meal, which any trilobite can do--it's about processing more and more stimuli as we navigate our social interactions. TV in general, and the sitcom in particular, is about satisfying our craving to add layers, to have more going on around us and not less (despite the media's occasional hyping of ``simplicity'' as a lifestyle value). Those who bemoan the ``vast wasteland'' haven't asked themselves what life would be like if all, or even a substantial part, of TV were really as riveting as they would like it to be. But this doesn't mean that bad TV is good TV. ``People don't appreciate that it's really, really hard to do well,'' says Mr. Patrick, who's currently thinking up ideas for '97-'98. ``It's really hard to build any kind of emotional momentum in 22 minutes and still get laughs.'' Therein lies the art.
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