Sagansky Promises ‘Showmanship’ Will Revive Lagging CBS : Television: After two-plus weeks of negotiation, the No. 3 network picks Tri-Star Pictures chief to pull the network out of third place. ‘I wanted it,’ he says.

After two weeks of well-publicized wheeling and dealing between CBS and Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Tri-Star Pictures president Jeff Sagansky’s appointment to president of CBS Entertainment was finally made official Monday.

The key to reviving the once-proud network is “showmanship,” said Sagansky, a former NBC network executive. “We’ve got to grab the viewer, cut through the media clutter,” he said.

But even Sagansky called the announcement of his appointment “anti-climactic.” There were reports last week that CBS and Columbia had reached an agreement.

Still, the official announcement gave him and CBS Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer the chance to lay to rest rumors that the job had been turned down by many entertainment executives around town--including Sagansky. Both said the delay resulted from complex negotiations to get Sagansky out of his contract with Columbia, rather than any reluctance on Sagansky’s part to take the job.

“Yeah--I wanted it,” Sagansky said of the post on Monday. “I just love the network business, and broadcasting in general. I started at CBS, and I’ve always had a fondness for this company. I feel like I’ve been training for this job my whole career.”

Neither the network nor Columbia would comment on the specifics of the deal.

The abrupt Nov. 30 resignation of Earle H. (Kim) LeMasters after two years left the ailing No. 3 network scrambling for a new entertainment chief. CBS also entered into talks with Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, producers of the top-rated NBC series “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World” and ABC’s “Roseanne,” but those discussions collapsed Dec. 8.

Sagansky, 37, will take over responsibility for CBS’ prime-time programming on Jan. 1; he will serve in a consultant capacity until that date; no one has been appointed to serve as president in the interim.

CBS Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer said in a telephone interview Monday that, despite rumors that numerous Hollywood entertainment executives were offered the job, the network asked only Sagansky. Stringer added that CBS needed the two weeks to negotiate with Columbia--not to hunt for job candidates. Carsey and Werner, he said, approached the network themselves.

CBS has languished in third place since the 1987-88 season, failing to come up with a major hit show since Angela Lansbury’s “Murder, She Wrote” in 1984.

“From the beginning, we wanted Jeff,” Stringer said. “Carsey and Werner came into our lives via a phone call; we spent some time discussing it with them, and then came back to Jeff. No one was offered the job, no one turned it down, those (rumors) were all phantom names from somebody’s imagination.

“Carsey and Werner are the best producers in Hollywood, and Jeff was the best young executive in Hollywood,” Stringer said. “It was an embarrassment of riches as far as CBS was concerned.”

Sagansky added that the weeks of rumors never fazed him, although he joked that Monday’s announcement of his appointment was “anticlimactic.” “I knew what was going on,” he said.

Ironically, Sagansky was also rumored to have been a candidate for the job when B. Donald (Bud) Grant was forced out in 1987. “L.A. Law” producer Steven Bochco turned down an offer, so it was known that LeMasters was not the network’s first choice. “I’ve had discussions with them (CBS) off and on, but I never really got serious,” Sagansky acknowledged. “I was at Tri-Star then, and I didn’t feel it was the right time.”

Industry sources have speculated that LeMasters resigned because of job insecurity and too much interference from Stringer and CBS President Laurence A. Tisch; they also said Tisch, a well-known budget-slasher, was a sticking point for Sagansky. “I think that’s ridiculous,” Sagansky said.

“I think he (Tisch) has as much commitment to spending what needs to be spent to re-establish the tradition of CBS as the rest of us do,” Sagansky said. “I know they’re going to give me time, and that they feel the same commitment to turning things around that I do. That was the No. 1 thing that was important to me in taking the job.”

Sagansky, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been president of Tri-Star Pictures since March, 1989, promoted from president of production, a position he had held since 1985. Before joining Tri-Star, Sagansky served as senior vice president of series programming at NBC. From 1979-83, he was vice president, development, for the David Gerber Co. Prior to that, he held various program development positions at NBC, and worked as a financial analyst for CBS.

Sagansky said his work at NBC prepared him for a similar challenge at CBS. “NBC, when I arrived, was the same--it was in third, thinking what an impossible job it was going to be to move up. It took a lot of hard work, probably a little luck, and some daring in terms of the shows we put on. CBS can work much the same way; there is nothing inherent in CBS that makes it No. 3.”

Although there is no public knowledge of what trade-offs Columbia got from CBS in exchange for letting Sagansky out of his contract, it believed among industry insiders that Columbia played tough with CBS. Some have said that the negotiations may have included promises of series deals for Columbia-produced shows.

Although no replacement has yet been named for Sagansky at Tri-Star, a company spokesman acknowledged that Columbia executive David Matalon, president of Tri-Star Pictures until this past March, will be “taking a more active role for the interim period.” He is not expected to be a permanent appointment, however.

Some within the film industry believe that television is Sagansky’s more natural habitat. Although Tri-Star has had a few recent hits in “Look Who’s Talking” and “Steel Magnolias,” Tri-Star’s record in the previous five years has been relatively undistinguished. “(Before) last summer, conventional wisdom was that Sagansky was in so much trouble that he had to get out. Now the conventional wisdom is that he’s so hot that CBS had to have him,” said one source close to Tri-Star.

Industry watchers say Sagansky’s departure will cause barely a ripple at Tri-Star. For one thing, Matalon has remained an integral part of the decision-making process even after he was appointed senior vice president of Columbia Pictures Entertainment last March. For another, Columbia Pictures president Dawn Steel is such a hands-on manager that Sagansky’s position had been diminished in any case. Steel’s resignation is believed to be imminent with Jon Peters and Peter Guber’s recent appointment to head the studio.

Sagansky himself believes he has strong feeling for television. “I know that I’ve got this network business in my gut, I have a passion for it,” Sagansky said. “It’s much more of a producer’s medium.”