NBC Plans News Magazine--Again

Brandon Tartikoff, whose executive responsibilities at NBC expanded this week to include heading a new program development committee, says he hopes to have a weekly news magazine on the prime-time schedule next fall--something the network has tried unsuccessfully 12 times before.

Indeed, said Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment and NBC Productions, he discussed ideas for such a series last month with NBC News President Michael Gartner and Gartner’s top aide, Tim Russert.

“We pitched them a format and they revised it somewhat,” he said. “Now we’re talking about who might be able to produce it.”

Tartikoff, who turns 40 in January and has been NBC’s chief programmer since 1980, spoke in a brief interview after NBC announced Tuesday that he had agreed to a new multi-year contract that will have him continuing as head of entertainment programming and production while taking on new duties overseeing the promotion and advertising department and the new program development committee.

Various formats for the newsmagazine series may be tried, Tartikoff said. But he emphasized that whichever one is chosen, NBC News would produce the series.

“There is no intent, nor should anybody read into this, that there’ll be an invasion of entertainment standards or values into what are the normal journalistic standards of NBC News,” he said.

Such concerns have been raised at all three networks regarding “reality” shows that appear to be news programs but are in fact projects of the network’s entertainment division, not its news division.

One example would be NBC’s “Destined to Live: 100 Roads to Recovery,” a documentary on breast cancer that aired Wednesday night and got generally good reviews. It was hosted and co-produced by Jill Eikenberry, a co-star of NBC’s “L.A. Law.”

Despite the program’s origins in the entertainment division, the network’s news division was asked several months ago to review and offer suggestions on the program.

“We looked for them (NBC News officials) to help us to develop the standards by which we could responsibly do this documentary, and they helped them (the show’s makers),” Tartikoff said.

But no such review was sought, an NBC News official says, for another documentary bought by NBC Entertainment--”Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” a special about satanism. Scheduled to air Oct. 25, “Devil Worship” is reported by talk-show host and former ABC News reporter Geraldo Rivera, whose company, the Investigative News Group, produced the show.

That’s a case where “an outside supplier comes to you with a pitch,” Tartikoff said. “You’re not going to fold them (such shows) into the news department.”

The new program development committee he heads has as its members John Agoglia, executive vice president under Tartikoff at NBC Productions, and the presidents of NBC’s TV station group, its television network, and its news and sports divisions--Al Jerome, Pier Mapes, Gartner and Arthur Watson, respectively.

They will meet regularly, starting this month, to kick around various program ideas, Tartikoff said, and to see that the ideas “actually get into action.”

Then, he said, the members would make sure that the pilot programs stemming from this brain-storming are made “and delivered in a timely fashion so when you see them, you can actually use them to help make decisions whether to renew or not renew” an existing series.