The Big Rascals : The King Brothers Rule in TV Syndication

He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And, when they start not smiling back--that’s an earthquake. . . . A salesman has got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

--”Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller

When they laid down Charlie King, people passed by to pay tribute to a genuine American salesman, a deal-closer of the front rank.

“My father used to say, ‘Make a deal that both parties walk away from, smiling. Then give ‘em a little extra,’ ” said son Roger. His jaw hung like a bulldog’s, in awe of his father’s words. “He said sales is like a deli that gives you a big sandwich. They put a little extra in it for people with an appetite. And the people come back. He was right.”

Charlie King, a robust 350 pounds, sold fire alarms door to door. Once he came up with the idea for Jackpot Golf. Every hole in one at 200 yards won a new Cadillac. He never got sufficient dollars for the scheme.

Charlie never hit it big. But, fact is, he was ahead of his time. In 1964, he started something called King World Entertainment. He bought the TV syndication rights to “The Little Rascals.”

But when Charlie died during a sales trip to Texas 16 years ago at age 59, victim of a heart attack, King World was almost belly up. At one point, Charlie’s boys were on the verge of getting out of show biz all together and investing in a string of McDonald’s.

But they didn’t. Charlie’s legacy continued and exploded with Roger and Michael. The boys--both big, brash, brawling Jersey guys straight out of a Springsteen rhapsody--are now multi-multimillionaires.

In the ensuing years, the kids carried King World to the top of the curious world of TV syndication with three series--”The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

As son Michael puts it, “More people recognize Vanna White than they do Nancy Reagan.”

In January, they’ll launch a fourth show: “Inside Edition” with David Frost. Already, stations in 29 of the nation’s top 50 markets have purchased the “A Current Affair”-type half-hour newsmagazine program.

The boys are considered the King Rascals of Television. They earned profits of $100 million against $285 million in revenues for the year ending in August. Next year, Charlie’s boys are looking to top the half-billion mark.

“We’ve always liked to sell,” said Roger.

“We also like to party,” said Michael.

Changing an Image

For all their vitality, the sons are not especially beloved within their industry: “These guys are bullies,” said one syndication executive who deals with the Kings. (He spoke on condition that his name not be used. The King brothers should not be crossed, he said.)

For five years now, chairman Roger and president Michael have relentlessly reshaped the stereotype of the stodgy syndication salesman in the neon suit. Once dismissed as game-show schleppers, syndicators like the Kings are recognized now as the high-risk, high rollers of the business.

“You have to admire these guys,” said Scott Carlin, president of Lorimar Telepictures’ first-run sales division and a direct competitor of the Kings. (He sells “People’s Court,” a major hit in first-run syndication.) “They deserve what they get. They’re colorful characters--riding around in limousines and going to world championship prize fights and renting airplanes. But that’s part of their unique dynamism.”

Said the unnamed executive, however, “They squeeze the last dollar they can out of every deal and push to get just a little more blood out of one more turnip. They may be ruthless, but they are clearly the premier company in show business. Every agent, producer . . . everyone with any idea to pitch goes to them first.”

Said Roger, “Mike and I have sucked every brain that we respect in the industry.”

Roger’s dour look contrasts to the jocular, shoulder-punching style of younger brother Mike. But he is glib and in some remote ways performs like a chunky-style Rodney Dangerfield.

Michael King sat next to his big brother in King World’s expansive Manhattan headquarters, lit up another Marlboro and summed up their success: “Headline: Michael and Roger, Brain Suckers.”

Roger, 44, is a Kodiak bear of a man, slack-jawed, smart-alecky. He seems brash. Deeper down, though, there appears to be loads of self-doubt.

He is admittedly prone towards drug and alcohol abuse. Two years ago, he was arrested for cocaine possession, strong-arm robbery and auto theft in Fort Lauderdale. As he tells it now, he left a party “in a Mercedes and came back in a Yellow Cab.” Unfortunately, he was driving the cab, having commandeered it from its driver.

The robbery and theft charges were dropped, but Roger earned two years’ probation and a rehabilitation program that he now credits with changing his life.

“Drugs and alcohol put a minor dent in my little armor for a little while, but with the help of God and everything, I got through that part,” he told Calendar.

“Alcohol really affects the Irish,” chimed in Michael.

Michael is 40, prematurely gray and jolly. He does Ronald Reagan impressions, smokes too much, eats too much and sometimes, he acknowledges, drinks to excess. He works out every morning in the private gym he built at his Malibu beachfront home and spends a lot of time listening to Hollywood pitchmen trying to sell him the next “Wheel of Fortune.”

Childbirthing Too

Success has been as tough a taskmaster for Michael in its own way as it has been for Roger. He hasn’t hijacked any hacks, but he has heard enough bad pitches to drive anybody to drink.

“You would not believe the stupid ideas people try to sell. But Mike sits and listens to everyone because we never know what the next great idea could be,” Roger said, grinning the winner’s grin.

As the brother assigned to hearing up to two dozen pitches a week, Michael is not nearly so happy about it.

“I’ll never forget this one guy who came in with a show where people get married every day,” said Michael. “I told him there were laws against polygamy. But he tells me, no, it’s a different couple every day. So I ask him what we do after they get married. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we get new people to get married.’ So he wants us to just, you know, put a camera in the chapel. I tell him maybe we do our own ‘Divorce Court’ so we have an hour package: Get ‘em hitched and unhitched in the same time slot.”

“Hey!” deadpanned Roger. “How about childbirth somewhere in between?”

Michael sucked his Marlboro, pondering this new wrinkle.

“Wow,” he deadpanned. “A 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. bloc: ‘The Dating Game’ followed by our marriage show followed by ‘The Newlywed Game’ and ‘Divorce Court.’ ”

They burst into knee-slaps and giggles.

“Might work though,” Michael said thoughtfully. “Might work.”

Most Profitable

When the boys took King World public on the New York Stock Exchange four years ago, the stock shot up from $10 to $25 a share in two months. Shares have split one and a half times, so that one share bought in 1984 equals six shares in 1988. Profits continue to top each previous quarter’s profits. Even after the October 1987 stock market crash, King World continues to trade at $24 a share. (The King family owns 40% of the stock.)

King World is, quite simply, the most profitable TV programming-distribution conglomerate in America. It got to be that way because Michael and Roger changed the definition of syndication--the speculative, station-by-station licensing of non-network shows.

Until the Kings began the unprecedented hype of their hit programs “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” in 1984, few fully appreciated the seemingly endless profits to be made by being a kind of video Fuller Brush man. Making station visits in Duluth or Tucson or Tampa was an anachronism--the kind of living earned by desperate men who couldn’t make it in used car sales or the network executive suites.

Before King World, syndication meant old, old game shows and network reruns: “The Gale Storm Show,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and, until King World changed the rules, the most lucrative syndicated package of all, “MASH.”

When the 225 episodes of “MASH” first went into syndication, the Korean War comedy generated as much as $1 million a day for producer/syndicator 20th Century Fox. According to one Fox source, “MASH” still generates up to $1 million a week with Hawkeye, Radar and the whole madcap gang showing somewhere virtually every hour of the day, day in and day out, all over the globe.

But reruns get old and first-run production can be very expensive and very risky. Out of 200 new off-network shows being offered for syndication this year, maybe a dozen will survive, according to industry sources who regularly track the TV syndication business.

Except for a handful of cheaply made TV game shows, producing programs comparable to most prime-time offerings has traditionally been prohibitive without a network’s backing. With notable exceptions such as “Fame” (which began as a network show), off-network series were thinly plotted, thinly acted productions that rarely made a dent in prime, fringe or any of the other TV time periods so dear to advertisers.

But, in 1983, Roger and Michael struck a legendary deal with ex-talk show host Merv Griffin that forever changed that thinking. After picking up the production option on a couple of tired old daytime chestnuts, Griffin contracted with the Kings to market spruced-up, high-tech nighttime versions of “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!”

On the heels of the phenomenal success of those programs, the Kings contracted in 1986 with Chicago station WLS-TV to distribute one of its locally produced talk shows nationally. By year’s end, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was the third highest-rated show in syndication behind “Wheel” and “Jeopardy!”

“Now we’re looking for No. 4 and 5 while everybody else in the business is looking for No. 1, 2 and 3,” said Roger.

Today, according to Forbes Magazine, Griffin is one of the 100 richest men in America, chiefly on the strength of his two game shows. And the King brothers are not far behind.

The Griffin-King contract turned out to be the TV industry’s equivalent of the marriage of Sears to Roebuck.

The Rising Bar

These days, Roger and Michael are bi-coastal, spending as much time in Manhattan as they do in Malibu. Roger lives on the Atlantic Ocean in Bayhead, N.J. Michael’s mansion overlooks the Pacific.

Alfalfa, Buckwheat and the rest of the late lamented members of “Spanky and Our Gang” would have been jealous, or at least in awe. The offices of the King brothers are the ultimate “Little Rascals” clubhouses.

In his Santa Monica office, Michael King has a teak and ebony liquor cabinet that rises hydraulically. It sinks into the floor when he wants to hide the Courvoisier. From the 12th floor, he can look straight down Wilshire Boulevard at the Hollywood Hills shimmering in the hot smog beyond Century City.

Roger King has a home entertainment center in his Manhattan office, with enough cushioned seats in front of the VCR to accommodate all the Little Rascals, including Petey the Dog. To the east, the triple towers of ABC’s New York headquarters, CBS’ fabled “Black Rock” skyscraper and NBC’s roost in Rockefeller Center are all clearly visible from the 32nd floor.

(Ten years ago, King World sold Little Rascals reruns from the second floor of a mini-mall, over a barber shop in Summit, N.J.)

King World also has offices in Atlanta, New Jersey and Chicago. Its subsidiaries include Camelot Entertainment Sales, a TV advertising barter company. Camelot’s gross revenue projection for 1988 is $160 million.

The company also has been diversifying.

“Face it: We had no hard assets,” Michael said. Until this year, King World consisted chiefly of a couple of extremely valuable distribution contracts and a library of old films: the “Rascals” series and 68 classic features, including Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes adventures.

Five months ago, King World bought its first TV station: WIVB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Buffalo. Price tag: $100 million.

And King is also dabbling in production. The company entered into a partnership with ABC to develop a video version of “Monopoly” and worked out a deal with MCA to develop movies and TV projects.

Another partnership with half a dozen broadcast companies is beginning under the name “Research & Development Network.” The experimental project will test-market new series for syndication on one or more of the 22 stations owned by the broadcast companies to see how the shows may fare.

A King World

King World is literally spreading itself all over the world. There is already a successful French version of the Pat & Vanna show: “La Roue de la Fortune.” Surrogate Sajaks and their distaff letter-turners are popping up in Italy, Germany, Scotland. . . .

“We’ve sold the show in five different Communist countries. What does that tell you? Commies love it, too,” Michael said proudly.

There is a “Wheel” board game, a “Wheel” computer diskette and “Wheel” video games.

“Wheel’s” unparalleled success has given the Kings unparalleled leverage at contract time--a development that does not sit well with station owners. On the strength of “Wheel,” the Kings have forced stations to sign contracts at 100, 200 and sometimes 300% above the original fees. Broadcasters muttered words like “extortion” and “robbery,” but they paid.

In the past year, the high-pressure tactics have eased, say several sources, but the “Wheel”/”Jeopardy” package broadcast in pre-prime time (7 to 8 p.m.) is still the highest priced hour in syndication.

The brothers haven’t forgotten how recently they were in rags, not riches. They recall the years of scratching out a living selling TV ads or the seedy all-night TV talk show they hosted for a while in the mid-’70s in Florida or the tough time they had selling “The Little Rascals” in the late ‘60s when the series was regarded by many broadcasters as racist.

“I worked for (CBS board chairman) Larry Tisch a few years ago,” Michael said with half a laugh. “I was a waiter in one of his restaurants.”

‘I’m Alfalfa’

“Look at the way ‘The Little Rascals’ were,” said Roger. “They had black kids and stupid kids and smart kids. All the kids talked the same, not just the black kid or the white kid. That’s the way it used to be. That’s the way it was when we were growing up.”

“He was Spanky,” Roger said of baby brother Michael. “I’m Alfalfa. God knows I’m not Darla.”

“He was Butch when he was growing up,” said Michael, playfully punching the air to demonstrate the aggressive nature of his big (6-foot, 3-inch, 250 pound) brother.

“Neither one of us were Waldo,” Roger continued. “My sister Diana was definitely Darla.”

Diana King, King World vice president and secretary, now runs the New Jersey office. Brother Richie sells real estate in Florida and sister Karen married and moved to the West Coast. Neither has many direct dealings with the family business but are millionaires as a direct result of their inherited shares of King World stock.

Brother Bob is also a real estate developer in New Jersey, but he once headed the company before he and Roger had a pre-”Wheel” falling out about the direction the company should take.

“We can’t be in the same room with each other,” said Roger. Bob is a cautious, conservative businessman; Roger wheels and deals. The two attitudes mix about like Martin and Lewis, according to Roger. While Bob headed the company, King World very nearly went under.

Nothing In-Between

Next to Roger’s desk is a framed portrait of his father. Charlie King’s eyes were baggy so that they appeared to always be either sad or exuberant, never indifferent.

He was as flamboyant in his time as his sons are becoming in theirs.

He was 6-foot-3, like Roger, but even heavier. At one point, he tipped the scales at 350 pounds. With his trademark bowler hat and massive three-piece suit, Charlie was recognized as a hustler, even in his earliest days as a back-slapping radio time salesman. When he was making sales calls for such 1940s programs as “Gangbusters,” he wore a fresh red carnation in his lapel every day.

With his successes, he bought an estate in northern New Jersey in the early ‘50s, but there were also enormous failures. Michael recalled Charlie’s “Jackpot Golf”:

“The idea was to franchise driving ranges where you’d give away a Cadillac to somebody if they sank a hole in one from 220 yards,” he said. “Could’ve worked.”

But it didn’t and Charlie spent most of the ‘50s and early ‘60s selling TV reruns. He peddled freezers and fire alarms door-to-door. He lost the New Jersey estate and moved the family into a $150-a-month apartment.

“We moved 17 times,” Roger recalled. “We all had to get jobs as busboys or something to help support the family. There were 10 of us, including my father’s mother and aunt. He supported all of us. He looked like a senator--a cross between John Wayne and Jackie Gleason. But there was a time when he lost the business that my mom almost divorced him.”

Charlie never stopped scheming, though. He hatched the Santa Gram after his wife had taken the kids in the station wagon to visit Santa at a department store.

“He created the personalized record from Santa Claus with your own name in it: ‘Roger, Billy, Jane, hi, this is Santa!’ Then he’d sing a little bit,” Roger said. “He used to say, ‘I’ve got a million ideas and there are a million people out there who’ll steal them from me.’ ”

But they couldn’t steal “Little Rascals.” In 1964, he bought the syndication rights from Official Films for $250,000--$250,000 that he did not have. When Official Films executives found out, they exploded, as the King boys tell it. But Charlie sold the rerun package to a station within 24 hours, got a $50,000 advance and made the first installment on the syndication contract before the week was out.

“That’s the kind of guy he was,” Roger said with a lump in his throat.

The Wooing

They waited for Rita Moreno in the private dining room of the Westwood Marquis Hotel, plotting how they would get her to do a series for them. Roger drank water. Michael drank wine. A harpist nearby picked off songs from “Cats.”

Roger was describing his first vacation in years: “I had so much fun. Saw ‘Phantom of the Opera’ in London, which was great. Went to Paris, stayed one day at the Ritz and came back to Ascot the next day. Went out every night. Went to the South of France. Rented a boat. Stayed at the same hotel where Cosby stayed.”

By the time Moreno showed up, Roger had been through oysters, rack of lamb and fettuccine. Rita and her husband had a sip of champagne and had barely dug into their swordfishes before the wooing began.

Rita could be the next Oprah. Hostess Rita would do touching interviews with people who have triumphed over bad times.

“I just want to make certain that we are not taking advantage of people’s misfortunes,” she said. “My point of view is that the human spirit is really a remarkable thing. It’s so moving and so touching just to see it overcome terrible tragedy.

“Ultimately that’s what the show could be about: How people have so much more size, they’re so much stronger, so much more resilient than they know.”

Michael liked it.

“Get upper- and middle-class people who’ve been brought down,” he said. “There but for the grace of God.”

Roger remembered: “We had success after success after success and we got robbed and got robbed and got robbed, just like my father, but we came back.”

Rita’s show will reflect that spirit, he said.

And Rita likes the idea of letting the show evolve. One of her problems with commercial TV is its hurry-up, crass, quick-buck atmosphere. That’s why she doesn’t mind doing a PBS play for scale.

“I’m only getting paid $850 for a week’s work,” she said.

Said Roger, not missing a beat, “We’ll double your salary.”

The King Brothers’ Wheel of Money

Owning the top 3 syndicated TV programs makes the King Brothers a lot of money.

Wheel of Fortune 40 million viewers on 206 stations 1988 revenues: $120 million Jeopardy! 22 million viewers on 193 stations 1988 revenues: $70 million The Oprah Winfrey Show 12 million viewers on 201 stations 1988 revenues: $80 million The King Brothers’ money machine produced profits of $100 million on only $285 million income in the last fiscal year