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POINT AFTER
What Are Friends
For?
NBC peacock Don Ohlmeyer's brushback of the World Series
didn't help
his ratings
by Steve
Lopez
Posted: Tue October 21, 1997
Just in case you needed one more piece of evidence that there are no
great thinkers in television programming, it came last
Friday when an NBC big shot had conniptions over the
possibility that the World Series would wipe out a night of
"must-see
TV."
Baseball's image has nose-dived in recent years, but this
was a new low for the game—being insulted by the very
network that was about to broadcast the Fall
Classic. Don Ohlmeyer, president of NBC West Coast, whatever
that means, said he was rooting
for either the Florida Marlins or the Cleveland Indians to
sweep the Series and get out of the way of the new national
pastime: watching
Friends,
Seinfeld and
ER on Thursday
nights.
If the Series went to a fifth game, those ratings
blockbusters would be knocked off the air, which rattled
Ohlmeyer because they figure to pull more viewers than any
baseball game. "We're looking for four and out,"
Ohlmeyer said during a conference call
with members of the New York media who cover the television
industry. When his words appeared in print nationwide last
Saturday, they must have endeared him to the citizens of
Florida and Ohio, not to mention his bosses and all the
advertisers who
ponied up millions for World Series airtime. Generally a Series
has to go at least six games before a network profits, but
Ohlmeyer was pulling for the sweep. "The faster it's
over with, the better it is," he
said.
It must be this special feel for drama that put Ohlmeyer, a
former sports guru at ABC and an ardent O.J. Simpson
apologist, at the top of the television entertainment
industry. He also said that if it were up to him, NBC would
completely dump baseball,
whose ratings for even its showcase event have been mostly
in decline during the '90s: "I would love it if
somebody wanted it right
now.... If the A&E channel called, I'd take the
call."
You can understand why the guy is so worked up. If you had
only one decent night of shows a week—which is all it
takes to be considered a genius in the programming
business—would you want to lose it to a bunch of jocks who
don't even play in the biggest
television markets? Imagine how frustrating it must be to
reach the level of importance at which you can decide
something as cosmically vital as which new sitcom will
follow
Seinfeld, yet you don't have quite enough power to realign baseball
so that every team plays in either New York or Los Angeles,
or to ensure that no game invades the sacred time slot of a
ratings winner. Ohlmeyer said last year's postseason
baseball games
interrupted the momentum of NBC's fall lineup, "and we never
recovered from
it."
From one NBC official's perspective, stupid comments by
network TV bosses are no aberration—they're part of a rich
and storied tradition. That man is Ohlmeyer's good buddy
Dick Ebersol, who also happens to be president of NBC
Sports. "I'm the guy who
two years ago said baseball shouldn't be on NBC again this
century," says Ebersol, who was in a lather at the
time over a failed
TV venture with Major League Baseball called The Baseball
Network. Then five months later he was back in cahoots with
baseball,
divvying up postseason rights with Fox. "All major
television executives say really dumb and silly things from
time to time," says Ebersol. "Obviously this was
Don's turn. We've got a fortune invested in
baseball."
It's $400 million, to be precise, which is what NBC paid
Major League Baseball for its share of postseason rights
through 2000. Ohlmeyer must have checked the contract
moments after running his mouth because barely had he
finished with the New York
media than he was on the phone to Ebersol, confessing his sins.
"Don and I are inseparable best friends of 30
years," says Ebersol, "and he called me within a
half hour to say he'd said something really stupid and he
really regretted
it."
Ohlmeyer couldn't be reached for comment, but Ebersol says
he put Ohlmeyer and acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig
on the phone together during the Game 1 broadcast—which
had a little bit of baseball sprinkled in among endless
pitches for NBC
shows—to clear the
air.
If he'd been using his head, Ohlmeyer might have suggested
a lineup change in the broadcast booth for Thursday
night—when there
will be a game on NBC—so people wouldn't forget about his
prize sitcoms. Who would you rather have calling the game?
That love boat crew of Costas, Morgan and Uecker, whose
Mr. Belvedere sank years ago? Or Seinfeld, Kramer and Costanza, who used
to work for the Yankees? Talk about must-see
TV.
Illustration by Evangelos
Viglis
Issue date: October 27, 1997
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