Television Surrenders to the Charms of Stormin’ Norman

The TV networks are zeroing in on their new fall shows, but the biggest star around is otherwise occupied.

He is, of course, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, hero of the Persian Gulf War as commander of Operation Desert Storm.

Not that he isn’t on TV. He’s all over the place, spreading ratings gold dust on whichever show he’s interviewed, from “20/20” to “Today.”

His “20/20/” interview with Barbara Walters on March 15 attracted a huge 35% of the audience and propelled the entire network, ABC, into first place for last week. “20/20” scheduled a second interview segment with Schwarzkopf for Friday night.

On NBC’s “Today,” meanwhile, Schwarzkopf’s March 11 interview with Katie Couric gave the morning series its highest-rated half-hour of the week.

As a result of this and other impressive television outings, you have to wonder--especially in this era of less costly reality shows--whether some astute network executive isn’t toying secretly with the notion of trying to land Schwarzkopf for his own, future weekly series.

At the moment, of course, the general is still a general and has somewhat more important things to consider.

And what the public loves about him on TV is his single-minded devotion to his military mission and his troops.

If at some point, however, he retires--which he reportedly was planning to do before the Gulf War came along--his TV impact indicates that he might register the same large audience appeal that another unlikely home screen icon, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, commanded with his prime-time talks in the 1950s.

For those who don’t recall, Sheen was a gifted storyteller who charmed viewers with his anecdotes and little morality tales on his weekly half-hour program, “Life Is Worth Living.” He was scheduled by the old Dumont network against TV’s biggest star, Milton Berle, and gave him all he could handle.

In one of TV’s most famous lines, Berle cracked that the bishop had better writers.

So popular was Sheen that, at a time when the competition included Lucille Ball, Sid Caesar and Edward R. Murrow, he won a 1952 Emmy as most outstanding personality.

While no direct comparison with Schwarzkopf is intended, it is fascinating to note, in “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows,” that Sheen sometimes punctuated “his points with drawings scrawled on a blackboard.”

The fact that such a simple presentation can fascinate viewers--as did Schwarzkopf’s classic one-hour TV briefing with charts on Gulf War strategy--shows that a remarkable personality needs few production frills.

Not long ago, a producer faxed us a wholly invented list of TV “briefing” series being pitched around town, noting that networks are always looking to exploit what has caught the public’s attention--in this case, the many war briefings that were conducted.

Far and away the most extraordinary briefing was Schwarzkopf’s one-hour, Feb. 27 summation of the war--sophisticated, tough, dignified, likeable, witty and intensely human. An event that ranks with the most unforgettable in TV history, it sent Schwarzkopf’s fame soaring.

Only hours after the entire briefing was shown by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and C-SPAN, it was rebroadcast after midnight by ABC, with an added introduction by Peter Jennings, and pulled a major share of the audience--28% of big-city viewers and 25% of the entire national tune-in.

The most memorable line, of course, was Schwarzkopf’s assessment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a military strategist: “He is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he’s a great military man.”

ABC News, with MPI Home Video as its distributor, now has begun a big push with a videocassette of the general’s briefing. It is called “Schwarzkopf: How the War Was Won,” and ABC spokeswoman Teri Everett says MPI last week began shipping 100,000 cassettes that had been ordered by book and record shops and other sales outlets.

Everett says that the briefing video retains the Jennings introduction and also has follow-up comments by ABC military analyst Anthony Cordesman and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor.

About 250,000 to 500,000 cassettes of the briefing are expected to be sold, says Everett.

Schwarzkopf, meanwhile, will be seen on TV again Wednesday in a one-hour PBS interview, “Talking With David Frost,” which will be broadcast by KCET Channel 28 at 8 p.m.

And “20/20” spokeswoman Maurie Perl says there has been such “overwhelming response” to last week’s 28-minute interview with Schwarzkopf that she has been sending out about 10 cassettes of the segment daily to public figures ranging from members of Congress to Tom Murphy, chairman of Capital Cities/ABC.

Walters conducted last week’s interview in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Friday night’s scheduled follow-up segment was taped as part of the same conversation with the general.

The demand for Schwarzkopf seems unending. Corporations are reported drooling over his potential as a top executive. Chrysler Chairman Lee A. Iacocca says in a Fortune magazine interview, “He’s a brilliant strategist and a hard worker, and he’s going to leave the Army. He knows objectives and he must know people, and he sure would have discipline, wouldn’t he? What else does an executive need?”

With so many corporations certain that Schwarzkopf could manage a quick grasp of a variety of jobs, you wonder if he could transfer his briefing skills to a TV format that might deal with any number of timely subjects. Given his popularity and the considerable public affection for him, one can envision him as a continuing TV sensation when he leaves the military.

Questions remain, of course. Would he even be interested in such a future? Maybe not. Would he be as magnetic on television in a conservative business suit as he is in his colorful military garb? Yes, indeed--he seems like a cross between John Goodman and that grand, gruff old actor, the late William Bendix.

One thing is a cinch. If the general ever takes the TV route and does what he has done so exceptionally on the home screen, the title of his show is right there waiting and virtually preordained: “Briefing.”