Company Town : The Top 10 Things a Fired Entertainment Executive Can Do

Imagine this: a Top 10 list on the “Late Show With David Letterman” on why the Time Warner Inc. board should replace Gerald Levin. Or how about the top 10 ways to fire a music executive.

The possibilities might have been endless had Michael Fuchs been picked up as a writer on the CBS late show when he offered his services several weeks ago.

It would also have been a radical career turn for the executive who built Home Box Office into an Emmy-clad pay cable service and the most efficient unit of Time Warner before being thrown out of the company in November by his boss, Chairman Gerald Levin. Fuchs had been a squeaky wheel once too often, critical of Levin and his plan to buy Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

Fuchs could not be reached for comment Thursday. But Hollywood sources said he made the pitch and was taken seriously, but withdrew his application when he was asked for more material.

However, Richard Plepler, an HBO spokesman and a close friend of Fuchs, called the proposal “a joke.”

Plepler said Fuchs made an off-handed comment to Robert Morton, the executive producer of the Letterman show, when Morton called Fuchs to offer his condolences six or seven weeks ago. “Michael is not a joke writer,” Plepler said. “Do you think an executive who ran a major company for 15 years would [do that?]. . . . Come on!”

Morton did not return several phone calls.

Several HBO executives were incredulous.

“Michael used to pretend to write for Garry Shandling,” said one of them, referring to the award-winning comedy star of “The Larry Sanders Show.” “He identified with comedy and could write funny speeches for himself. But this couldn’t be in his thinking.”

In fact, Fuchs has a long-standing interest in comedy, bringing comedy to HBO, airing the first Robin Williams special, sponsoring the first, four-hour comedy special “Comic Relief” with Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Williams, and developing such shows as “Larry Sanders” and “Dennis Miller Live” (although he once turned down a young David Letterman for a comedians show).

He was unable to make a success of a comedy cable channel he tried to launch in 1989, which he saw as HBO’s “manifest destiny.” He has since blamed himself for the failure of the channel, which merged in 1990 with MTV’s struggling comedy channel to form a 50-50 joint venture known as “Comedy Central.”

Maybe he still has something to prove.