Tracing the Makings of a ‘Tycoon’ : TV review: NBC’s documentary goes back to the beginnings for Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who at 39 is the richest man in America.

Early on in the NBC documentary “Tycoon,” Tom Brokaw asks Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to respond to the suggestion that “some people believe you have an infinite appetite for power . . . that you want to dominate your business and you want to eat up your competitors.”

Replies the richest man in America: “Doesn’t ring any bells with me.”

Gates, who has been lionized and lambasted in countless profiles in the business pages and computer trades, is a hard guy to pin down.

Technophiles who have followed Microsoft’s meteoric rise in recent years will find little news in the show airing tonight. But for the millions of Americans who recently became computer owners, the program is a valuable introduction to the company that will inevitably be a part of their lives, and the man who runs it.

Through interviews with fans, critics and competitors, Brokaw portrays the 39-year-old Gates as a computer whiz who also embodies the ambitious drive of the prototypical American entrepreneur. Admired even by his competitors, Gates is nonetheless hated and feared as the Microsoft juggernaut seems increasingly impossible to stop.

“Tycoon” traces the founding of the company by Gates and his former Seattle schoolmate Paul Allen in 1983 to its current position of dominance, contrasting the company’s gee-whiz technology, such as interactive encyclopedias, and scenes from its campus in Redmond, Wash.--where employees play volleyball to relieve stress--with the prospect that its control of the software market is stifling innovation.

Is what is good for Microsoft good for the country? The answer remains unanswered in “Tycoon,” but it is becoming increasingly relevant. Microsoft is now worth more than General Motors, the corporate giant of a different age, about which the question was originally asked.

“I don’t want a future where all my choices are determined by one company,” says Gary Rebak, the lawyer for a coalition of firms that have filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the Justice Department.

Whether to accept Gates’ response--that all the power lies in the hands of the consumer who can choose whether to buy his software--is up to the viewer.

For those still planted firmly in the analogue world, Brokaw offers a quick primer on the software industry, interactive television and the on-line world that Gates is eyeing as his next conquest.

Microsoft’s DOS operating system--which functions as the brains of a computer--runs 80% of the world’s PCs today. More recently, the company has come to dominate in the area of “applications” software, such as word processors and spreadsheets.

But of primary concern to competitors is Microsoft’s plans to use its position in the software industry as a springboard into the fledgling on-line market. Facing a challenge from the Justice Department, the company recently nixed plans to purchase Intuit Inc., makers of the popular Quicken personal finance software. The move had been key to its plans to expand into cyberspace commerce.

In compiling the documentary, Brokaw followed Gates over the course of several months, conducting interviews at the Comdex computer show in Las Vegas, at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond and via jerky video-conferencing software that indicates just how far the information superhighway technology has to go.

There is a tour of the $50-million home Gates is building near Seattle, and glimpses of his trademark rocking motion as he rehearses a speech. Live footage is interspersed with computer animation, such as the picture of a PC morphing into Gates’ head.

But perhaps the most interesting behind-the-scenes moment is provided by one of Gates’ deputies, Steven Ballmer. At a company meeting, Ballmer is seen at a podium addressing Microsoft employees in televangelist style:

“Bill Gates gets up here and he says we finished a great year, $4.6 billion. $4.6 billion! Now I want to hear some enthusiasm for $4.6 billion! Come on. Come on.”

And on the subject of competition: “These guys can be taken. But the only way we’re going to take them is by studying them. Know what they know. Do what they do. Watch them, watch them, watch them. Clone them. Look for every angle. Stay on their shoulders. Take every one of their good ideas and make it one of our good ideas.”

And that, the indication would seem to be, is the Microsoft way.

* “Tycoon” airs at 10 tonight on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).