A Friendly Hand Helps Guide CNBC’s Lively Talk : Television: Cable exec Andy Friendly picks high-profile but offbeat hosts. ‘I don’t look at it as talking heads, but as talking brains,’ he says.

“If they don’t tell me I’m crazy when I hire somebody, I feel I’ve failed,” says Andy Friendly, the executive who has turned the evening and late-night conversation format of cable network CNBC into some of the liveliest talk on television.

During the day, CNBC, owned by NBC, focuses on business. But later in the day, on the strength of some offbeat, high-profile hosts, often without much experience at such a television job, CNBC puts on a new face--all with a ridiculously low $11.7-million annual prime-time budget.

The lineup now includes criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence, whose series began this month; former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, another newcomer; Geraldo Rivera, quite different from his tacky syndicated show with a well-done series targeting the O.J. Simpson case; Tim Russert of “Meet the Press”; conservative Cal Thomas; sex-talk specialist Bob Berkowitz; veteran talk-meister and humorist Dick Cavett; actor Charles Grodin and Mary Matalin, deputy campaign manager for former President George Bush.

In the recent past, the roster also included the tandem of Phil Donahue and Russian expert Vladimir Pozner, who both left after their show fell in the ratings and they were asked to take a pay cut. And Tom Snyder, long absent from the TV big time, made a comeback on CNBC that led to his being wooed away by CBS to follow David Letterman’s show.

“We love to take big risks,” says Friendly, 43, CNBC’s vice president of prime-time programs and program development. “People said Mary had no experience, Rivera was a sleazy tabloid guy and Snyder was washed up. But when your budget’s that small, you have to take chances to attract interest. We have no money to promote anything; we have to create our own high adventure.”

According to Friendly, who was born in the Bronx and was graduated from USC’s film school, CNBC was averaging about 20,000 TV households a night and was available in about 12 million homes when he joined it five years ago. Now, he says, “our prime-time average is 264,000 households and we’re in 54 million homes. We’re the fastest-growing network of any kind around.”

The president of both CNBC and another NBC cable channel, America’s Talking--and a host as well--is Roger Ailes, longtime TV and political consultant who advised a number of top Republicans, from Richard Nixon to Bush. Friendly says CNBC also owes a great deal to NBC President Bob Wright, “our biggest backer,” and to Jack Welch, chairman of General Electric, which owns NBC. CNBC, adds Friendly, is “Jack Welch’s favorite toy. He makes his input known.”

The relationship with Donahue and Pozner, who helped bring attention to CNBC, apparently was not as solid. Donahue declined comment for this article. Pozner was in Russia.

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After such series as the Donahue-Pozner entry and Snyder’s hour helped bring CNBC attention, Rivera signed on. His show “didn’t do much of anything at first,” says Friendly. “But then there was that slow-speed chase in the Bronco [in the Simpson case]. I called and said, ‘This will be for us what the Iran hostage story was for the “Nightline” series. Let’s do it every night.’ We took the high road--professors, prosecutors, journalists--and for the past year, [Rivera’s] program has taken off. The other night, it was in about a million households.”

There have been other stories mixed in with Simpson on CNBC’s “Rivera Live.” But the series clearly shows a different side of Rivera than the one seen in his widely syndicated daytime series. Says Friendly: “The reason Geraldo came here and decided to do it was not for money, because we don’t pay even one-twentieth of the syndicated show. He was looking for a place to redeem his journalistic credentials and reputation.”

Perhaps the chief surprise of CNBC’s evening success is not that it nicely complements the earlier business coverage--where such financial experts as Dan Dorfman also have impact--but that it provides a lively alternative to the major networks, which believe that “talking-head” television is deadly in prime time.

“For mainstream, commercial, big-time TV, talking heads are not going to work [in prime time],” Friendly acknowledges. “It’s a different business. But for niche TV, cable, there’s nothing more fascinating for a viewer than being a fly on the wall when Charles Grodin is talking to Jerry Seinfeld, or Tim Russert is talking to David Brinkley.

“One-on-one TV is magic. I don’t look at it as talking heads, but as talking brains. For a small but enlightened television audience, this is a service that works. I really believe we found a niche that nobody was doing. That’s what cable’s about--finding a niche that doesn’t exist and exploiting it. We saw a hole you could drive a truck through.”

Friendly’s talk troops agree, giving him credit for his light-handed approach from CNBC’s headquarters in Fort Lee, N.J. Spence, for instance, is delighted that he can do his show from his hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyo.: “The people in charge of the major networks are so frightened, they won’t change anything. The reason they’re frightened is that it’s such a huge thing that they’re in charge of.”

Russert, who focuses on such areas as current events, the media and spin doctors, says: “We thought this was just a niche, and it’s a lot wider than we thought. Viewers are not content with just watching a packaged local news or network show--they like more time to watch somebody offer their opinions and interact [by phone] with them.”

For Grodin, who replaced Snyder on CNBC, appearing on a network is “a performance piece” while CNBC “is a conversation piece.” Snyder, despite his CBS exposure, says, “I miss CNBC. Andy doesn’t second-guess. If a booking falls apart, it falls apart. What I miss was the instantaneous way you can do things. You can do it at CBS, but there are more layers to go through.”

As for Myers, CNBC is “an alternative to sitcoms and dramas. If you watch ‘Baywatch,’ it might taste good but there’s no nutritional value.”

There’s talk that CNN might start a financial network to compete with CNBC. If that happens, goes the thinking, CNBC might go to business news around the clock, with its conversation shows moving over to America’s Talking when it builds its audience penetration. Friendly says it’s all speculation, “and even if it happens, it won’t be for at least a few more years.”

Meanwhile, he says, he’ll continue his practice of “not getting in the way of the talent. We create a comfortable environment for them, then pretty much get out of their way.”