Trying to Restore the Luster

When the Emmy Awards are presented Sunday on the Fox Broadcasting Co., the show will celebrate 40 years of television comedy. But behind the scenes is a long-simmering Hollywood drama--a nasty network feud that has threatened the very future of the awards and now is coming to a head.

At the heart of the matter is the simple, indisputable fact that ever since the young Fox network, in a brilliantly aggressive move, outbid ABC, CBS and NBC for the Emmy show and began airing it in 1987, the awards broadcast has lost the vast majority of its national audience.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the show--just that Fox is smaller and has less audience penetration than the Big Three networks. When NBC broadcast the Emmys in 1986, the year before Fox took over the show, 36% of the TV audience tuned in. Last year, Fox’s Emmy audience was down to 14%, a mere 12.3 million viewers watching as the TV industry honored its best work.

By contrast last year, the motion picture industry’s Academy Awards telecast on ABC attracted 48% of TV viewers.

Increasing and vocal criticism of the Emmy telecast was heard in high TV quarters, pointedly charging that the awards were becoming a non-event. Brandon Tartikoff, then head of NBC Entertainment and currently chairman of Paramount Pictures, said after the dismal ratings delivered by the 1990 telecast that the show was “now worthless. The awards have been tremendously damaged.”

It was not, however, a one-sided story. Fox, after all, was just trying to establish itself as a major player. The Big Three, which previously carried the Emmys on a rotating basis, could easily have matched Fox’s bid--$3.5 million for TV rights from 1987-89 and nearly $9 million for a three-year renewal in 1990--instead of pouting resentfully at being outsmarted by feisty Fox.

And the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which supports itself by selling the rights to the Emmy show, was criticized for grabbing the higher bid, surely knowing that it would mean a smaller audience and thus, eventually, perhaps a loss of prestige for the awards.

Cut to the present.

As finishing touches are put on the 43rd annual Emmy broadcast, which will be hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis, Jerry Seinfeld and Dennis Miller, industry concern over the awards has become so desperate that steps are finally being taken to get the show back on the Big Three networks.

In interviews with The Times, Barry Diller, chairman of Fox Inc., said he favors a four-network rotation and is willing to give up the 1992 Emmy telecast; Leo Chaloukian, president of the TV academy, reported that negotiations are being instigated with the Big Three, and Ted Harbert, vice president of prime time for ABC, acknowledged an internal memo at his network expressing interest in the Emmys and “outlining our goals--basically in price and the nature of the telecast.”

There are obstacles, to be sure, from egos to harbored resentments to reports that the Big Three, feeling they now are in a position to dictate Emmy terms, already have tried to low-ball the TV academy with cut-rate offers to take the awards back. Several sources claim Diller is trying to unload the show because the ratings no longer are worth the price, a charge he sharply denies.

“Honestly, that’s not the reason,” said Diller, speaking of Fox’s annual cost, which is about $3 million for the payment to the academy plus a reported $2 million for production of the show. “We will do a little better than break even with the show this year. And our (Fox’s) owned stations will make $1 million.”

Diller said he decided about 3 1/2 months ago to try to regain industry support for the awards by returning the show to a network rotation for the final two years of Fox’s exclusive contract, starting with Sunday’s broadcast. But the Big Three apparently were not willing. He said he told the networks:

“It (the show) is not costing us money. We’ll prove it. If there’s any shortfall between what you get from the Emmys and what you have to pay for it, we’ll pay the difference.”

According to one source, the thinking at the Big Three is to wait for another Emmy ratings flop, “then pick up the pieces cheaply. They made an offer to the academy that was maybe one-third (of the existing price for the awards broadcast). The academy is probably willing to take less now, but it was like rubbing people’s noses in it.”

Said Diller: “We felt the only way the show was going to get industry support was if it was on all the networks again. This has been a terrible year for free broadcast television. The (show) is the one thing that celebrates TV. When it was on the networks, it got very good ratings. Our audience profile is not wholly consistent with the Emmys. For the industry, the best thing for the Emmys is to be on a four-network rotation. I thought they’d love it.”

But, Diller said, his optimism for an immediate positive reaction from the Big Three--to take over Sunday’s show (“They could have done it up to 3 1/2 months ago”) or announcing a rotation for next year to build industry support again--was not warranted. “There was one roadblock after another,” he said.

Not everyone at the Big Three even wants Fox to be included in a rotation--partly because of the low ratings of its smaller audience and, to some degree, because of lingering resentment against the upstart network. But the academy favors including Fox. And many at ABC, CBS and NBC agree on the necessity of rebuilding the Emmys, if possible.

One source, however, said, “There’s some feeling that if the academy doesn’t make an arrangement with the other three networks, they’ll come up with their own awards show.”

“I heard a rumor to that effect,” Chaloukian said. “It would be a terrible mistake.”

Said ABC’s Harbert: “The Emmys aren’t as important to the viewer as they used to be when they were put on in September on one of the three major networks. The decision by Fox and the academy to put it on in August is unfortunate.” (Fox and the TV academy reportedly feared a repeat of the heavy counter-programming that the Big Three threw at them last September.)

Harbert confirmed that “the networks are talking about what we can offer” the academy. He added: “I know about Fox agreeing that they want to get back into the rotation. And I’m thrilled that the academy wants to get back into the circulation business. The networks are making a good, reasonable offer. It may not be as good as Fox’s, but I haven’t heard about low-balling.”

Strong feelings about the Emmy dilemma abound among TV power brokers.

“All of us have been talking about the state of the Emmys,” said Alan Berger, head of TV at the ICM theatrical agency. “The saddest thing is that now when TV needs it the most, the Emmys are not getting the best and largest possible exposure.”

“The entire (show-business) community,” added Leslie Moonves, president of Lorimar TV, “wants the show to become a much more important event than it currently is. It is our one time of the year to shine. And when you get an audience share in the mid-teens, it’s disappointing. Clearly we’re doing something wrong. Fox is doing its best, but certain markets don’t get Fox. The show should alternate among the four networks.”

Steve Sohmer, executive producer of Sunday’s Emmys, could be a hero if his comedy-themed show draws a bigger audience than last year. It is so laugh-oriented that the final three awards, he said, are all for sitcoms--best actor, actress and series.

Meanwhile, just a few weeks later--on Sept. 11--media consultant Gene Walsh, a former NBC executive who opposed selling the Emmy show to Fox, will challenge Chaloukian for the presidency of the TV academy in a vote by the organization’s board of governors. Among Walsh’s ideas: simulcasting next year’s Emmy Awards on ABC, CBS and NBC in a dramatic move to “get back into the same ballpark as the Oscars.”

Emmy’s Falling Numbers

Through the 1970s and early ‘80s, when ABC, CBS and NBC ruled the nation’s airwaves, the annual Emmy broadcast attracted tens of millions of viewers. The show alternated on each of the three networks, but, in 1987, it went to the then-new Fox Broadcasting Co. The size of the audience dropped 75% that first year, and it has not grown appreciably since. Source: Academy of Television Arts and Sciences