TV’s Future Needs to Remember Its Past : Programming: Grant Tinker, the man who turned NBC around a decade ago, says, ‘There’s always going to be a market for the kind of television we’ve always known.’

The way Grant Tinker sees it, TV technology may be leaping ahead in new and exotic forms, but a key to the success of the developing and futuristic alternatives could well be good, original, mainstream series in the network tradition.

“They are coming to realize they have to have something to deliver,” the former NBC chairman said in an interview. “That was sort of forgotten for a couple of years while people (companies) ran around and desperately tried to marry each other and merge and acquire so that nobody was going to be left out.”

The kind of future programming that captures his imagination, even in the high-tech world, is “quality programming, the kinds of things that succeeded for us at NBC--the ‘Cheers’ and the ‘Hill Street Blues’ and the ‘St. Elsewheres.’ I’m not talking about the niche programming--fly fishing and bridge playing--that are going to be in the narrow channels of the universe that’s to come.

“I’m thinking, and have thought for some time, that the one thing that people have not looked ahead to anticipate delivering is the kind of programming we’ve all grown up with.”

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Tinker touches on this area of contemplation in his new book, “Tinker in Television: From General Sarnoff to General Electric,” written with his longtime friend and former head of corporate communications for NBC, Bud Rukeyser.

In a conversation at a Westside restaurant, Tinker said that the kind of programming he is thinking of would “be delivered variously. There are people competing right now--cable and fiber optics and direct broadcast satellites and over-the-air and on-line. The networks are sort of healthier at the moment than they were a year or so ago, but they’re not going to stay healthy forever.

“And I’ve been wondering: Who is going to collect the resources to make a ‘Hill Street Blues’ or ‘NYPD Blue’ or ‘ER’ or ‘Cheers’? I’m talking about new stuff,” says Tinker.

Does he think that viewers who have received such traditional, large-scale, commercial new series for free on the traditional networks will now buy them?

“They’ll have to,” he says. “What else are they going to look at? They’ll look at sports and they’ll look at news and they’ll look at movies--but that only goes so far. There’s always going to be a market for the kind of television we’ve always known.”

Tinker stops short of flat-out predicting what is to come, making clear--like other TV executives, even those on the extreme cutting edge of the medium’s future--that he is no absolute seer.

But several of his notable accomplishments in TV make his thoughts on programming and the structure of the business--now and possibly in the future--intriguing. He guided the jewel of TV’s production companies, MTM Enterprises (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Lou Grant,” “The Bob Newhart Show”), and led the rebuilding of the all-but-dead NBC from 1981-86.

These significant television efforts are “two things I’m very proud of,” he says.

He could have remained chairman of NBC when its parent company, RCA, was bought by General Electric, but he wanted out. He tried producing some new series, including a number of shows for CBS, but they didn’t fly, although he believes that two of the dramas--”WIOU” and “TV 101”--might have caught on if given more time.

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He decided several years ago to get out of “the business that I loved--the independent production business, where you could truly be, as MTM was, independent, living on your own income, not using (studio) money or reimbursal--because it was dead, for economic reasons.”

Did he ever think of reteaming on projects with his former program chief at NBC, Brandon Tartikoff, after their years together as a remarkably successful and popular TV duo?

“No,” says Tinker. “Actually, I sold Brandon a show that’s become the world’s most popular--’Baywatch’--which he chose to cancel.”

For the last few years, Tinker was involved in writing his book, a breezy, personal account of his years in broadcasting.

Talking to Tinker, it quickly becomes clear that although he decided to pull out of “the business that I loved,” he still retains his typically quiet passion for TV, especially the networks.

He jokes that, at 68, “I’m Christmas past,” but in fact he is not infrequently approached by network executives and producers to sit down and discuss the business as a kind of elder statesman of TV. And he likes it.

“I maintain good relationships with people like (CBS Entertainment President) Peter Tortorici and all the guys--Warren Littlefield (president of NBC Entertainment) and Ted Harbert (president of ABC Entertainment). They’re all very good at what they do. And I’m past going over to sell them shows. Nor am I interested in producing shows. But I love to sit with guys like that.

“I try not to be one of those as-you-get-older-people who say, ‘We used to do it better in the old days.’ The truth is, they’re in a more difficult business today. The audience is fragmented. From a network standpoint, it’s two-thirds of what it was for most of my working life.”

What kind of problems do the network chiefs have?

“Well,” says Tinker, “they’re different. Peter at the moment has a problem more like the one I inherited in 1981. At ABC, they’re doing very well. And NBC, as we’ve seen this fall, has had a resurgence.

“CBS clearly has two jobs to do: One is to get more audience and a better (younger) demographic audience, and that’s not easy. But it’s do-able. I know it’s do-able because we did it in the ‘80s at NBC. So Peter should take some comfort from that. NBC is running very competitively with ABC in that demographic area (of 18-to-49-year-old viewers), which is bottom-line connected.”

At his former network, NBC, Tinker thinks the need is “to consolidate some of the success they’ve been having.”

“I thought it was blatantly, overly promotional for them to spend (two) mornings of the ‘Today’ show on the ‘ER’ set. There’s an awful lot of that creeping into TV, as we know. If you’ve already got the hit show of the season, you don’t have to send Bryant (Gumbel) and Katie (Couric) out here for two days on that set. It may have been a commercially good thing to do, but I didn’t think it was a classy thing to to.”

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ABC, he adds, now is “the biggest and best of all the networks. They clearly run their store very well. Their owned stations are head-and-shoulders above the other guys. So there’s huge income there. And with things like getting into ESPN (ABC has a piece of several cable channels) and what-not, they’ve diversified and acquired very well. I mean, they’ve got a huge business, not just a network.”

The position of ABC grew even stronger this week when it allied itself with the new “Dream Team” production company of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

As for Tinker, he likes “the obvious shows” such as “Seinfeld,” “NYPD Blue,” “Law & Order,” “60 Minutes” and HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show”--an example of the new series being developed on TV’s alternative channels. He also likes “both the medical shows”--NBC’s “ER” and CBS’ “Chicago Hope”--”which, as I’ve said, were badly scheduled against each other.” CBS has since moved “Chicago Hope.”

Tinker is disturbed by such tabloid series as “Hard Copy,” by the proliferation of reality programs, by “much of the subject matter” on daytime talk shows and by local news--”the preoccupation with the negative: the violent, the bloody, the sexy.”

He tosses out a thought. He wonders what would happen “if one network decided to suddenly have a policy--’We’re going to do news the way it used to be done, not wall-to-wall carnage’--and stuck to that resolve, and kept doing it. I would like to see whether those stations in those markets wouldn’t begin to succeed. And I think that they’re all afraid to try it.”