Kickoff Time for TV’s Super Bowl of Glitz

It is 7 a.m. Tuesday, and the television set in the hotel room is switched to NBC’s “Today” program.

Bryant Gumbel opens by announcing that America’s most notorious death-row inmate has finally been executed in Florida.

“Ted Bundy has died today,” Gumbel says. Gumbel is somber. His co-host, Jane Pauley, is somber. There are weighty matters to contemplate, the heinous crimes Bundy committed, the issue of capital punishment. But suddenly, there is a knock on the hotel room door.

It is Winnie the Pooh.

Yes, a small person wearing a Winnie the Pooh costume is at the door delivering a press release from Walt Disney Television. He hands it over and waves goodby.

Consider this fleeting moment a microcosm of television industry reality, for on the floor of Houston’s sprawling George R. Brown Convention Center this week, Winnie the Pooh, not Ted Bundy the executed serial murderer, is the real world.

Spiderman and Zorro are there, delivering their greetings side by side. Kenny Rogers is there shaking hands. So are Yogi Bear, Joan Rivers, Don Cornelius, Robin Leach, Lou Rawls, Rex Reed, Dionne Warwick, Sally Jessy Raphael, Roy Clark, Steve Garvey, Fawn Hall and Siskel and Ebert.

A huge curious throng--including one of the crews from the CBS series “48 Hours” taping here--envelopes Geraldo Rivera as if he were the Pope. Morton Downey is around, taping his show. So is Judge Wapner.

The event is broadcasting’s Super Bowl of glitz and gluttony, otherwise known as the annual National Assn. of Television Program Executives (NATPE) conference.

This is the industry’s grand bazaar for syndicated (non-network) programming, where 225 production companies and distributors of all sizes are exhibiting their programs and stars for the benefit of the nation’s station executives.

Gathered under one enormous roof are international buyers, makers and sellers of programming ranging from such Hollywood giants as MCA TV and Paramount to a New York company selling “The Truth About Communism,” a 1962 documentary narrated by Ronald Reagan.

They’re all here, your friends with the trends. You want your trash TV? You got your trash TV. You want your crash TV--the new “RollerGames,” “American Gladiators” and “Interceptor”? You got your crash TV. And your smash TV, your clash TV and your cash TV.

Being here is like being hermetically sealed inside a gargantuan cocktail party abounding in food, booze, TV chatter and high-powered salesmanship.

Entering some of the swanky exhibitions is like entering a Mercedes Benz showroom teeming with salesmen in expensive dark suits. Only they’re selling Isuzus.

According to one industry source, the cost of mounting an exhibit here ranges from $50,000 for a budget stall to $1 million for a fully equipped, fully staffed Rodeo Drive model that merges the skills of Hollywood’s finest set designers and deal makers.

MCA resembles a posh club. Twentieth Century Fox has its own mezzanine. MTM looks like an old hotel. Receptionists in “Star Trek” costumes sit at a futuristic control panel outside lushly appointed Paramount.

Surrounded by potted plants, a black pianist in a white dinner jacket sits at an old piano playing “As Time Goes By” beneath electric fans at the entrance of Casablanca IV, which has become Rick’s cafe. Two barely clad Las Vegas showgirls stand outside an exhibit where the prospective new game show “Hotline” is being played with actual contestants in front of an audience.

And not far from the ring where superstars from the World Wrestling Federation perform daily, the star of “Monty’s Traveling Reptile Show” poses in front of an ABC News crew with an albino Burmese Python around his neck.

There’s no escaping the selling atmosphere, even in men’s room conversation: “He cleared 26% of the U.S., and they paid him a bonus.”

Just how much actual business is written here is debatable, however, depending on the show and the amount of exposure it has received prior to the conference. For most of the new ones, NAPTE is an ending, not a beginning.

“Every year is different,” said Ave Butensky, executive vice president of Fries Distribution Co., inside his firm’s upscale exhibit. “I got a thousand people coming in here saying, ‘I’ll try to come back, I’ll see ya.’ But who knows how many will come back?”

“RollerGames” was virtually a “go” even before NAPTE, said 31-year-old David R. Sams, co-creator/executive producer (with Michael J. Miller) of the Quintex Entertainment series.

Yes, get ready to r-r-r-r-rumble on Saturday nights, for the target of the funky “RollerGames” and “American Gladiator” is that American institution, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

“RollerGames” is scheduled to premiere in September (on KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles) with a two-hour special followed by 26 hourlong episodes. “They’re calling us ‘crash TV,’ a step beyond the current reality shows,” said former King World sales executive Sams. A giant step.

“RollerGames” is an upgraded, high-tech, tongue-in-checkbook, absolutely death-defying version of Roller Derby in which six “concept-driven” teams--Bad Attitude, Hot Flash, the Rockers, the Maniacs, the Violators and the T-Birds--compete on a huge figure-eight track featuring a 14-foot Wall of Death and a live alligator pit.

“The stations love the alligator pit,” Sams said. “Somebody asked me if we’re gonna have the alligators at NAPTE. I said, ‘No, we have enough roaming the floor.’ ”

“RollerGames” will have cheerleaders, a “sports center” for interviews and commentary, a commissioner (William J. Griffiths, operator of the old Roller Derby) and rock bands playing at half time. “This is total rock and roll TV,” Sams said. “We’ll even have cameras mounted on the helmets so that you can see the crashes at skate level.” And there will be crashes.

Unlike Roller Derby, Sams insists, however, “RollerGames will be on the level. “It is not orchestrated. The players (some of whom are from Roller Derby) will develop personalities, but they’ll be fighting for world championships. We’ll even have a league draft in March.” And with a straight face he adds: “Will we have drug testing? If it’s necessary.”

Isn’t there a strong chance that such a gimmick show will quickly burn out and last only one or two seasons? “Two seasons will buy my home in Bel-Air,” Sams replied.

Like “RollerGames,” Samuel Goldwyn Television’s “American Gladiators” is designed to pick off the principally young, male audience that went in a big way for the WWF wrestling spectaculars that occasionally alternated with--and even outdrew--”Saturday Night Live.”

Co-announced by former pro quarterback great Fran Tarkenton and former Chicago Bear Tim Wrightman, “American Gladiators” matches ordinary people against six inventively costumed “gladiators”--Cattalus, Lace, Willie, Dominos, Evander and Zap--in such events as power ball, pugel sticks and the always popular Velcro joust. In that one, the challenger and gladiator are dressed in Velcro body suits and dangled 10 feet above ground. The gladiator tries to throw his or her opponent against a Velcro-covered wall.

Says an excited Tarkenton on the promotion tape shown prospective clients: “The NFL is nuthin’ like this!”

Yet the future of “American Gladiators” is iffy at this point. It would hold challenger tryouts throughout the nation, with the top male and female challengers ultimately replacing two of the regular gladiators. Not Lace, one hopes, for she is billed as “controlling men for her own pleasure and making other women grovel at her feet.”

“This is a chance for the average man or woman to become a folk hero,” said Goldwyn Television President Dick Askin, who likens “American Gladiators” to “Battle of the Network Stars” and says the contests are not predetermined. “The thing we’re trying to avoid is the sleaze element,” he said.

“Interceptor” seems to avoid intelligence.

However, that may be a premature judgment. Fries Entertainment has only a paucity of promotional materials on hand--mainly consisting of a 6-foot-5 man dressed up in black leather as the Interceptor himself and an excerpt of the defunct British series on which the premise is based--to illustrate “Interceptor.” Bearing a resemblance to “The Running Man” movie, the show so far is down only for an hour special (on Channel 5 in Los Angeles) that would be a test for a possible series.

“Our development people were over in England and said they saw this terrible show that wasn’t developed properly,” said Fries senior Vice President Peter Schmid, who characterized the concept as an “adult comic book.”

The excerpt of the English series is unintentionally hilarious, showing contestants on dirt bikes roaring across an obstacle course while trying to avoid an “Interceptor” who carries a zapper. Meanwhile, a sort of director/authority figure gives them clues on getting through the course to a home base where a key awaits. Using the key, they unlock their backpacks and win the game and prizes.

“We’re going to do away with that English twit you saw,” said Schmid, who added that the look of the Interceptor may change too. “You’ll never know his identity. He should be mysterious. He may look like G.I. Joe or a Ninja,” Schmid said, producing drawings of both.

Or even Winnie the Pooh, for this is NAPTE.