Goldberg Takes No. 2 Post at 20th Century-Fox Film

Leonard Goldberg, an independent producer who last year turned down a top job at ABC, on Sunday agreed to become president and chief operating officer of 20th Century-Fox Film beginning Dec. 1.

In accepting the No. 2 job, Goldberg goes to work for Barry Diller, the Fox chairman and chief executive who served as Goldberg’s assistant 20 years ago at ABC.

The 52-year-old Goldberg said that the role reversal won’t be difficult “because we’ve had the transition” years, when Goldberg offered projects to ABC while Diller was still working there as a network executive.

Since 1982, Goldberg has produced television shows and movies through two privately held companies: Leonard Goldberg Co. and Mandy Films. He was executive producer of “Space Camp,” released last summer by Fox, and is readying a half-hour comedy series, “The Cavanaughs,” scheduled to be begin next month on CBS.

In an earlier 10-year association with Aaron Spelling, he produced such hit TV series as “Charlie’s Angels,” “Fantasy Island,” “Starsky & Hutch,” Hart to Hart” and “Family.”

Goldberg said he has agreed to a three-year pact with Fox, but he declined to disclose the terms. He said, however, that his Fox contract will permit him to continue with projects already in development at his own companies which are headquartered at Paramount Pictures.

Goldberg also said that he will be compensated in part on the basis of Fox’s financial performance--a yardstick he failed to persuade ABC to accept last year, when that network wooed him for a job overseeing both television and movies.

Although Goldberg’s contract and Diller’s 5-year contract both end in 1989, the two men said the date is sheer coincidence. Goldberg said he sought a shorter contract “to see if I enjoy it and if Fox does.”

Fox has been without a president and chief operating officer since Alan Horn resigned those posts last August after serving less than a year. The parting was portrayed as amicable, but by all accounts, Horn was frustrated when Diller refused to relinquish much control over daily operations.

“I think I will feel very comfortable in doing that with Goldberg,” Diller said in a telephone interview Sunday. The relationship between the two executives should succeed, he said, “Because we’ve done it before. That’s always a good indicator.”

Both the motion picture and television divisions will report to Goldberg. The television division was organized just two months ago under a new president, Jonathan Dolgen, who retained his previous title of executive vice president of Fox Inc., the parent company of 20th Century-Fox Film, Fox Television Stations and Fox Broadcasting Co.

The executives who head Fox Television Stations and Fox Broadcasting will continue to report directly to Diller.

In a telephone interview, Goldberg said he believes Diller will be devoting more of his energies to those two companies, formed earlier this year after companies controlled by publisher Rupert Murdoch acquired six television stations from Metromedia Broadcasting Corp. With those stations, and another station acquisition pending in Boston, Murdoch and Diller have embarked on an ambitious plan to form a “fourth” television network.

“Those are the two areas of the company that are both the newest and most challenging,” Diller said. When asked if he would spend more time on the station group and the new network, he replied, “I actually have been.”

Goldberg and Diller worked together at ABC from 1966 to 1969, when Goldberg was vice president in charge of network TV programming and hired Diller as his assistant. During that period he introduced movies made for television.

Goldberg left in 1969 to join Screen Gems as a production executive, but Diller stayed at the network until 1974, when he quit to become Paramount Pictures’ chairman and chief executive at the age of 32.

Although Goldberg has spent most of his career as a network executive and independent producer, he also spent two years at the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn ad agency in the early 1960s. He holds an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“He’s smart; he’s really classy; he’s a gentleman. He ran the (ABC) network at a very good period,” said one executive at a rival studio. “He’s not in the youth mainstream, but he’s not dismissed as an old timer, either,” the executive said, asking not to be quoted by name. “That’s really the best addition Barry has made.”