NETWORKS IN A STEW OVERR UPSTART FOX’S COUP

This fall’s annual Emmy Award rites may be turning into a TV-industry cat fight.

A broadcast-rights bidding war that rivaled the spring run-up of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has prompted some Big Three network executives to indulge in a rare episode of Emmy bashing and Fox sniping.

Two weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch’s upstart Fox Broadcasting Co. outbid ABC, CBS and NBC for broadcast rights to the next three years of Emmy’s mutual admiration and prime-time back-patting.

This September’s broadcast on Fox’s lineup of independent stations will mark the first time in 34 years that the show has not been on one of the major networks.

Fox’s contract calls for $1.25 million for each of the three years of broadcasts.

Fox also agreed to pay an additional $250,000 license fee for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ “Television Hall of Fame” show, which the Big Three networks were not willing to consider carrying. It had run twice before and garnered low ratings.

According to academy executive director James Loper, the previous license fee for the three-hour Emmy Award broadcast was $750,000, less than what a network pays for a single episode of a prime-time dramatic series.

The combination of the higher license fee for the Emmys and the willingness to carry the “Hall of Fame” show is what persuaded the academy’s board of governors to choose Fox, Loper said.

In reaction to the academy decision, third-place ABC says it won’t provide public-relations staff to help out on awards night, and CBS is saying that it is unlikely to provide support for the show as “generously done in the past.” Front-running NBC says it will support the show as it always has.

As it looks now, the networks may be able to make their absences felt backstage, but not before the cameras, where it counts the most. No one at the networks has suggested they will not participate in the awards competition itself. Clips from shows broadcast during the ceremonies are supplied by producers, and stars decide individually whether to show up at the festivities.

“We will not step in to help Fox Broadcasting pull the show off,” said Robert Wright, vice president of public relations for ABC Entertainment in Century City. “I don’t see any reason why we should. . . . We’re just not going to help.”

Michael Buchanan, vice president for communications and information at CBS Entertainment in Television City: “No one has really made up their mind about how much peripheral support will be provided. . . . I think it’s clear there will be some pulling back.”

Fox Chairman Barry Diller said through a company spokesman that the networks’ complaints are “low-level sour grapes,” and the Emmy show will go on as planned.

“The fact that they’re not going to support the academy because they did not win on an offer is terribly unfair to an organization that supports the industry that they work for,” said Richard Frank, president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which administers the Emmy Awards.

At issue is a platoon of publicists and other public-relations personnel operating backstage at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium during the nightlong broadcast. Regardless of which network airs the annual show, each of the three traditionally has contributed 10 to 25 staffers to shepherd stars through the army of reporters and photographers covering the awards.

The publicists also are on hand to answer reporters’ questions (“How many Emmys is that so far for ABC?” or “When was the last time ‘Cosby’ didn’t win an Emmy?”); to protect stars who want to avoid answering certain questions (“Miss Collins doesn’t think it’s appropriate tonight to take questions about her divorce”), and see that a semblance of order is maintained amid the backstage chaos (“I’m sorry, a newspaper reporter isn’t allowed to ask questions during the TV interviews,” or “Stop that guy. He’s got the wrong color badge to be in the radio interview room”).

“Whether they help us or not,” said academy president Frank, “we’ll have just as many representatives from the press from around the world as we ever had. And I don’t believe in the long run they will not cooperate. I don’t think it’s in their best interest. After all, 90% of the shows that will win awards are network shows.”

Beyond the publicists, however, are deeper animosities resulting from the TV academy’s decision to grant the Emmy show to the 7-month-old Fox network. Fox’s seven-figure bid for the Emmys upset the neat three-way shuffle that has allowed ABC, CBS and NBC to broadcast the three-hour-plus awards show for what amounts to prime-time pocket change.

Indeed, the publicity-savvy networks tip their hats a bit to Fox for pulling off the Emmy coup in the first place.

“The sense of shock, the surprise, is really directed at the academy rather than Fox,” said CBS’ Buchanan. “Fox did what it should, but I really think the academy is sacrificing a lot.”

Yes and no, academy officials believe.

Although Fox is unlikely to deliver the kind of ratings that one of the Big Three networks can, they said, Fox is paying far more money for the show and has agreed to carry a second academy program that the other networks didn’t want.

“We are a nonprofit organization,” said Loper, the academy’s executive director, “and the more dollars that come in, the more it will allow us to do for the academy and its members.”

Said Frank: ‘I’m getting a little annoyed, frankly, at what’s coming back from the networks. They had every opportunity over a period of five months to come forward and make a new offer.”

For the past 11 years, the networks have negotiated a common license fee with the academy, rotating the Emmy telecast among them. CBS was to have carried the show this year.

Fox’s fledgling collection of prime-time shows will get a major promotional boost from the Emmy telecast.

The promotional boost is what has ABC’s Wright most exercised.

“I really feel that the academy has sold out for dollars,” said Wright.

“The academy wouldn’t exist without the three networks,” he said, adding that the academy was severing longtime ties to the networks in order to help “an up-and-coming competitor--vastly escalating the cost (of the rights).”

Loper said that is just the kind of reaction from the Big Three that the academy expected. “I think, frankly, that going with Fox is indicative of the changes that are taking place within the TV industry--the rise of the independent stations, the drop in the number of (audience) shares that the networks attract,” he said.

Added Frank: “Would they be doing this if CBS had gotten the show for all three years, or are they only doing it because they are worried about Fox? These are questions that have to be asked.”