Company Town : Stringer Ready for a New Interaction : No More Bad Days at Black Rock for CBS Exec

Howard Stringer stressed what he called the “tyranny of numbers” in explaining Thursday why leaving CBS after 30 years isn’t so bad after all.

The logic goes something like this. Put “King Lear” on the air, and writers will praise the splendid acting the next day. Two days later, they will write about how the program couldn’t even pull Chevy Chase numbers.

Still, there’s a lot more to explaining why the Wales native, who as president of CBS Broadcast Group has been the second-highest-ranking executive at CBS under Chairman Laurence Tisch, is leaving for uncharted waters to head an interactive video venture financed by three Baby Bells and advised by Creative Artists Agency.

For one thing, Stringer has been restless since even before the venture approached him a couple of months ago. Tisch has all but hung a for-sale sign outside of Black Rock. Stringer and others who helped CBS climb to the top from third place in the early 1990s have seen the network slip badly, despite Stringer’s coup in signing David Letterman as CBS’ first legitimate late night franchise.

Ratings are sagging, and morale is down. Although CBS stalwarts such as “60 Minutes” and “Murder, She Wrote” remain ratings winners, the network lacks the hot new programs people are talking about, such as NBC’s “E.R.” and “Friends,” as well as ABC’s hit comedies such as “Home Improvement” and “Grace Under Fire.”

Add to that the network’s recent loss of National Football League telecasts to Fox and, to at least some of its critics, the Tiffany network is acting more like a sidewalk fake Rolex salesman.

Although Stringer acknowledges that the past year hasn’t been a good one for him--a broken leg a year ago and kidney stones didn’t help--he downplays reports of his unhappiness. Still, it’s no surprise that Stringer came to the decision this past weekend on a beach in Bermuda with his wife and son, ending a drama that had played out for several weeks.

In a deal brokered by CAA Chairman Michael S. Ovitz, Stringer will join the venture backed by Pacific Telesis, Bell Atlantic and Nynex. The companies are three of the deepest pockets in the nation, and are counting on Stringer to help them set the standard in establishing interactive television that will send, via phone lines to homes, an array of television, movies, games, news and educational programs.

“He has a history of accomplishments that married well with our vision of the future,” said Phil Quigley, chief executive of Pacific Telesis.

There’s no doubt a potential for huge financial reward. Stringer deftly sidestepped inquiries about whether he has an equity stake in the project, citing a clause preventing him from disclosing details. Suffice it to say, he gets rich if the thing works.

The project has some detractors, who say that the track record of Baby Bells outside of the phone business is nothing to boast about. Skeptics say that in a few years the conventional wisdom may be that the companies should have stuck to the businesses they know best, rather than layer numerous other services on top of their basic phone networks.

Counters Quigley: “The core business of the past is not the core business of the future. We’re shedding our old skin, if you will, and rebuilding our network.”

For Stringer, 53, the decision to take the job may have had its origins two years ago when, after a conversation with other CBS executives, he found himself discouraged at the prospect of a conventional retirement and pension.

Stringer compares what he did Thursday to his arrival in the United States by boat 30 years ago this month. After leaving Oxford University, he worked as at truck driver to accumulate the $200 that was in his pocket that Feb. 11.

“I only had the phone number of a friend of a friend and landed in New York. But it was a great adventure. It was exhilarating. I want a chance to dream again, even though my dreams may be totally absurd,” he said.

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A Lovely Lawsuit: One of the stranger sights the past couple of weeks has been the ads prominently featuring the name of movie producer David Kirkpatrick in promoting Paramount Pictures’ current hit, “The Brady Bunch Movie.”

The reason? Kirkpatrick, a former senior executive and producer at the studio, has been involved in a no-holds-barred court fight with Paramount for nearly two years.

Now, it turns out that his lawsuit has been quietly settled, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court papers filed last week. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Among the claims he had made was that former Paramount Communications President Stanley Jaffe had him fired and ended his production deal out of revenge because Kirkpatrick criticized as bloated the budget for a Jaffe-produced movie called “School Ties.”

Kirkpatrick even claimed that he was humiliated when his office furniture was placed on a Paramount lawn when he was kicked off the studio lot. Paramount and Jaffe, who was later ousted in the wake of Paramount’s acquisition by Viacom, had denied Kirkpatrick’s allegations.

Kirkpatrick had claimed in court papers that he and investors bought the rights to “The Brady Bunch” after watching “The Real Live Brady Bunch” play. He also said in papers that the project was taken away from him by Paramount and handed to executive producer Alan Ladd Jr., who signed a production deal with Paramount shortly after he was ousted as head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. (The movie marks a sweet comeback for Ladd, debuting with a box office total of $14.5 million last weekend to make it the nation’s top-grossing film.)

One subtle hint that all wasn’t well between Paramount and Kirkpatrick was his status as a virtual producer non grata in the “Handbook of Production Information” printed about the film. In the biographical section, which lists extensive accomplishments for virtually everyone involved in the movie, there is conspicuously no biography for Kirkpatrick.

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Indies Exposure: Seeking to further boost the image of independent filmmaking, the American Film Market kicked off Thursday in Santa Monica with a report by Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting that says 63% of the 380 feature films released nationwide in 1993 were made by independents.

The total number of independent feature length films produced in California for release in 1993 was 66% of the national total, or 372 productions. The report also says 95% direct-to-video films were made by independents.

According to the Andersen report, the independent film sector generated more than one-third of all jobs in the industry.

In Los Angeles County alone, independent productions “directly employ about 131,000 people across all sectors of the motion-picture industry, with a total payroll of more than $2.1 billion.” In California, the independents employ about 139,000 people, with the total number of jobs approaching 300,000, the report says.

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Inside Hollywood

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