CBS Swings With Bat, Connects With Hits and Climbs to No. 1

Television: CBS lost a fortune with its 1988 baseball deal, but it gave the network added clout when it needed to upgrade its image.

At the time, it looked like one of the dumbest deals in TV history. And to many, it still is--on paper, in CBS’ ledgers.

But with the baseball playoffs under way this week, CBS may well be thinking that its mind-boggling 1988 contract to pay $1.1 billion for major league games for four years signaled the revival of the network that now has become No. 1.

For it was a contract signed in hope and desperation rather than with common sense. And CBS stupidly paid far more than it had to.

But for CBS, the deal was, above all, a statement--that it intended to stay in business.

With the network seemingly on the verge of collapse, reeling in the ratings, with hardly any hit shows, the once-great broadcast organization had to make a grand, dramatic gesture in order to restore confidence to its numbed employees, its advertisers, its stockholders, viewers and the creators of TV programs.

“Let’s hope it’s really the turning point and not our last gasp,” a top CBS executive wrote to us privately, and uncertainly, shortly after the deal was done in December, 1988.

At first, it looked like the last gasp. And to this day, CBS has lost huge sums on the major league deal. The baseball contract was a major reason why the network finished $85.8 million in the red last year.

But with CBS suddenly turning into TV’s top power, it is significant that the key moves that brought this about followed the commitment expressed by the billion-dollar baseball deal. That included the hiring of CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky, a principal driving force in restoring the network’s clout.

The current league championships--Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh and Oakland vs. Toronto--and the World Series that follows may not mean as much to CBS as “Murphy Brown” and “Northern Exposure,” but they are all intimately interrelated: Major sports events at the start of a new television season give a network a priceless platform from which to promote its fall shows.

The interrelationship last season was so effective that CBS finally seems to be pulling noticeably out of its financial abyss, its stock has risen and so has the network’s image--so much so that if it were to be sold now, it would attract a far higher price than several years ago.

Last season, it was a combination of entertainment and sports events--the great seven-game World Series between Minnesota and Atlanta, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics--that propelled CBS from last place to first in the ratings.

This season, CBS probably would win strictly with its entertainment shows, which now are TV’s most potent. And after its past overpayment and losses in the baseball deal--CBS reportedly shelled out about $350 million more than was offered by runner-up bidder NBC--it’s not likely the network would see the need to get in over its head again in any contract.

Next year will be CBS’ last in its baseball deal, in which it obtained rights to the World Series, the National and American League playoffs, the All-Star game and a group of regular-season contests. That means the high-riding network will enjoy at least one more year with a top sports event to help launch and promote its new lineup.

But when CBS grabbed baseball in the winter of 1988, it had just finished a fall launch in which it had no sports event of consequence to prop up its pathetic prime-time lineup--a schedule so weak that “Murder, She Wrote” was the network’s only weekly entertainment series to finish the season among the Top 25 shows. (CBS’ “60 Minutes” also ranked in the Top 25.)

By contrast, NBC, then the No. 1 network with such hits as “The Cosby Show” and “The Golden Girls,” had both the World Series and the Seoul Summer Olympics to help kick off its 1988 fall season. And ABC had both of baseball’s league championships to publicize its own lineup.

The loss of baseball by NBC, which had been broadcasting major league games since 1947, significantly came as the long-dominant network was about to begin a gradual decline--in programming and identity--that now finds it in third place.

It was like losing a piece of the historic NBC tapestry, akin to the retirement of Johnny Carson from “The Tonight Show.”

This was one case where you couldn’t fault NBC’s tightfisted owner, General Electric, for deciding that the price for baseball was too high. Still, being stripped of an NBC trademark like baseball was a blow to the network.

True, league championships such as the Atlanta-Pittsburgh and Oakland-Toronto matchups normally are not huge attractions. But the World Series is such a magical sports setting that it invariably does much better in drawing audi

Some TV executives think a World Series with Toronto wouldn’t measure up in the magic and glitz category.

But nothing could be worse than the incredibly bad luck that CBS ran into at first with its billion-dollar baseball deal. In 1990, its initial season, the All-Star game was delayed by rain and ended late at night; the American League playoff was a four-game sweep, and then Cincinnati swept Oakland in a four-game World Series that drew low ratings.

Nonetheless, the 1990-91 CBS season--with its combination of sports and rising entertainment series--gave an indication that the network was indeed back as a player. Suddenly, a couple of comedies called “Murphy Brown” and “Designing Women” were making a big move as a tandem. And “Murder, She Wrote” was still going strong.

By the end of the season, CBS was poised to make the big leap, with Sagansky even predicting his network would come in No. 1 in the ratings in 1991-92. The hits were falling into place, including a few more last fall titled “Northern Exposure” and “Evening Shade.” And “Murder, She Wrote” was still going strong.

Finally, as well, CBS got something tremendous for its baseball money--the dramatic seven-game series between Minnesota and Atlanta as the TV season began. The fifth, sixth and seventh games earned CBS more than $30 million in added advertising revenue. But just as important, the memorable Series seemed a sign that CBS’ luck had finally turned for the better, and soon there was no doubt of that as Sagansky’s prediction was fulfilled.

“Maybe they’re hungrier,” an NBC sports executive said in 1988 after CBS won baseball with its billion-dollar bid.

Exactly.

It was a dumb, daring move that cost CBS a fortune but raised its profile when the network was almost buried.

Baseball. It’s more than just a game.