Brandon Stoddard Resigns as Head of ABC Entertainment : ‘It’s Just No Fun Anymore’

In a move that caught the television industry by surprise, Brandon Stoddard resigned Tuesday as president of ABC Entertainment, saying “it’s just no fun anymore.”

Always the reluctant administrator since taking over the top programming position on Nov. 12, 1985, Stoddard will stay on until his successor is named “in a couple of days.”

Then he will become president of an as-yet-untitled and much broadened in-house production division at ABC that will supply the network with series, movies and miniseries--a job nearly identical to the one he had before taking over responsibility for the development, production and scheduling of ABC’s entertainment programs.

“I guess what this really is about is returning to fun for myself,” Stoddard said in an interview. “Many people know that I haven’t been the happiest guy in the world in the (entertainment president’s) job. I always perceived before taking it, and I’m very aware now, that it’s an awful lot of frustration and not a lot of laughs.”

Stoddard’s resignation came at an awkward time for ABC.

While Stoddard certainly leaves the network in better shape than it was in when he took over, in terms of quality and ratings, ABC is locked in a desperate battle for second-place status with CBS and seems to have lost some of the ratings momentum with which it began the TV season. Some financial analysts predicted that Stoddard’s leaving was the first step in an overall ABC executive “housecleaning” because of the entertainment division’s mixed performance.

The timing was also deemed curious by the TV production industry, since the networks are currently engaged in the delicate process of selecting and scheduling shows for the fall season.

Meanwhile, some producers who had been brought into the ABC fold by Stoddard expressed dismay about the secrecy surrounding Stoddard’s leaving and concern about the future of their projects under a new programming chief.

Even Steven Bochco, whom Stoddard in 1987 had signed to an exclusive six-year, seven-series deal in hopes of having him duplicate the success of “Hill Street Blues” and “L.A. Law,” had not known in advance about Stoddard’s resignation. The producer-writer had been working closely with Stoddard on the pilot for a proposed show for the fall season.

“I’m stunned and I’m sad. I had a really good relationship with him,” said Bochco, who received a phone call from Stoddard two hours after the official announcement was made. “I’d always heard he wasn’t 100% happy in that job. But it’s his life, and he doesn’t owe me anything compared to the overwhelming responsibility he has to himself to feel good about the person he looks at in the mirror.

“Physical stature notwithstanding, his are going to be very big shoes to fill.”

Though Ted Harbert, 33-year-old Wunderkind and senior vice president for programming, had been considered Stoddard’s handpicked successor, sources inside and outside the network said that the replacement probably will come from the business affairs side of the network.

The top contender for the job, several sources told The Times, is Bob Iger, who has been executive vice president of the ABC Television Network Group since August and who made a name for himself as the chief negotiator for most of the network’s major sports acquisitions in the mid-1980s. ABC/Capital Cities management was so high on Iger that he was selected for the television group position “without even being interviewed,” one source said.

Though Iger, who is based in New York, is not well-known in the Hollywood creative community, ABC sources maintained that he has had considerable programming experience in sports over the years and in daytime entertainment over the last six months.

Stoddard would not comment on the possibility of Iger being selected. But he seemed to indicate that he would not have a large say in choosing his successor.

“That’s their call, and they’re going to go with the guy they believe in,” he said.

Stuart Bloomberg, vice president of comedy development, also was said to be in the running because, as one ABC executive said, “you just have to look at our track record for comedy of late.” But sources said Bloomberg instead will be promoted to take charge of series programming while Harbert will move sideways to run current programming and scheduling.

While Stoddard has ordered all the prime-time pilots for the fall season--many of them are already in production--he said he is leaving the actual selection of new shows to his successor.

“I felt that the new guy, whoever he is, should have his chance to make his mark on the schedule,” Stoddard said. “If I’m invited, then I’ll be involved. But I’m really going off to another area. I’ve even got to find out where the men’s room is.”

Broadcast analyst Ed Atorino, vice president of stock research at Salomon Brothers, agreed that Stoddard’s announcement was timed to “allow whoever is going to replace him to get in place, talk to Hollywood and look at what’s in the pipeline and on the drawing board and take responsibility for what’s going on next fall. If Stoddard had stayed on till June, he would have had to put together the fall strategy and then walk away.”

Stoddard acknowledged that the challenges his successor will face have never been greater for ABC. And he said they’re the main reason he decided to quit.

“The network side of the job has been increasingly more difficult and more frustrating, given the changes in network environment and network economy,” Stoddard said. “Frankly, it’s like swimming faster and faster in a pond that’s getting smaller and smaller.

“Since the networks have less audience than they used to, it’s more difficult for new shows to get off the ground. And now that the economics of the networks have changed, the fact that NBC is making a lot of money and the two others aren’t making much at all is an added pressure.”

John S. Reidy, a broadcast analyst at Drexel Burnham Lambert, estimated Tuesday that the ABC-TV network will earn about $100 million this year, compared to nearly $300 million for NBC and $50 million for CBS.

Despite the handicaps, however, Stoddard managed during his three-year tenure to accomplish the objectives he set out when he took over as entertainment chief.

Once derided as the “Almost Broadcasting Company” because of its demoralizing inability to score in the Nielsen ratings or to create quality programming, ABC became a solid No. 2 in the network pecking order under Stoddard’s lead. In last November’s ratings sweeps, for instance, the Niesen numbers showed ABC as the only one of the Big Three to gain viewers over the same ratings period the year before.

CBS caught up in the February sweeps with its hit miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” and the two networks are now running dead even in the season-to-date ratings, well behind NBC. ABC has a decided edge, however, because it has more successful series than CBS.

More important than the raw numbers, however, Stoddard has strengthen ABC’s prime-time schedule to the point where the network is winning many of its time periods on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights. And he did so with a mixture of comedy--most noticeably “Roseanne,” the nation’s top-rated TV show for the past two weeks--and quality, such as “thirtysomething” and “The Wonder Years,” which captured the Emmy Awards last year as best drama series and best comedy series, respectively.

Even Stoddard, a master of understatement, began to exult that “I think we’ve made a little headway. I think people are talking a little more positively about ABC than they were a year ago and two years ago. So I feel relatively happy about our movement.”

Specifically, Stoddard guided his selected series so they would rely more on characterization and realistic storylines than on stereotypes and gimmicks. He widened the circle of producers contributing creatively to ABC and reduced Aaron Spelling’s lopsided influence at the network. And he pursued his own shyly seductive style of leadership, which “stressed listening over lecturing and nurturing over nagging,” in the words of veteran prime-time producer Tom Miller of “Perfect Strangers” and “Full House.”

Stoddard himself boasted Tuesday that “There is a very good structure to the schedule now, which makes me very satisfied and confident about leaving. It’s what I wanted to do. And I’m very confident that the network is going to have a strong year next year, since there’s a foundation of programs from which to build, and the replacements don’t have to be wholesale.”

Irwin Gottlieb, senior vice president and director of national broadcast and programming for the New York advertising firm of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, said, “ABC has moved into No. 2 not because they did anything spectacular but because the network has had a consistent strategy since Brandon Stoddard took over.”

Analyst Reidy agreed that Stoddard has “done a pretty good job. The notion that Stoddard leaves the network in good shape is a fair one. He inherited a problem, and now ABC has become a solid, decent competitor with NBC. There are a number of new shows that work.”

Stoddard also had his detractors. Many in the Hollywood production community were critical of his decision to push producer-writer Glenn Gordon Caron off his creation “Moonlighting”--with the result that ratings have dipped drastically this season--and to allow Roseanne Barr virtual carte blanche on her show “Roseanne.”

Meanwhile, some producers complained that Stoddard never would pick up a phone to pat them on the back if their overnight ratings were sensational. Others claimed Stoddard would leave even hit shows hanging without telling them if they were being picked up for a new season.

But, more than anything else, some thought Stoddard’s personality simply wasn’t cut out for the job. Known for being cerebral in a business that’s not, Stoddard was more stuffy than showy, especially when compared to his chief rival at NBC, Brandon Tartikoff.

For instance, the “other Brandon,” as Stoddard quickly became known, always made a point of never going to lunch with creative people or studio heads or producers, let alone joining the see-and-be-seen crowd at Spago or Morton’s, out of fear he would be “compromised.”

Now that he’s bid goodbye as programming chief, however, some of that may change. Tuesday was laughing and lighthearted--in his words, “almost giddy now that the daily rating reporting card won’t be following me every week.”

He might even start to have fun. As Stoddard told one friend Tuesday when describing the advantages of his new job: “Well, I can finally start having lunch with all the guys again.”

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