Penny for Your Thoughts

The workday feels strange to Bill Diamond, too good to be true. A year ago, when he was still the executive producer of CBS’ “Murphy Brown,” things were hectic and intense and made much more sense to him--the nights when he wouldn’t limp home from work before 2 a.m., the weekends spent editing episodes and tinkering with stories and worrying over ratings shares.

These days, Diamond, 36, can take his kids to school and then meet a reporter for a leisurely midmorning cup of coffee. He can be home in the evening for dinner with his family. Meanwhile, his job pays better than ever--the kind of money that, in another context, would involve terms like “free agent” and “salary cap.”

There’s just this one caveat: Sometime in the next year or two, he is expected to dream up a hit sitcom.

Welcome to what in the TV industry is called comedy development. For writer-producers of situation comedies, development is where you go after putting in several years on a successful show, rising through the ranks of series work until a studio or network decides you’re ready to be given an office, an assistant and lots of money to invent the next “Seinfeld” or “Home Improvement.”

Whether paying a person millions of dollars up front is the best way to inspire creativity is a matter of continuing debate in the industry. Critics point to the number of formulaic sitcoms on the schedule each year as proof that the more studios spend on development deals, the fewer risks they and their writers are willing to take--and the more viewers will turn away from prime-time network TV. But that argument, others say, doesn’t account for promising new entries on the fall 1997 schedule, such as ABC’s “Dharma & Greg” and CBS’ “George & Leo.”

One thing, however, is certain: The constant craving for sitcom success among studios and networks has not only sped up the process by which writers graduate from series to development work, but it has also made the payoff larger when they get there. With six networks now vying for sitcom supremacy, and new studio players like DreamWorks SKG in the mix, the feeding frenzy for show creator talent is on, and people like Diamond are suddenly players in an industry not famous for its kindness to the writer.

“It’s getting harder and harder to hit with one of these shows,” says Sandy Grushow, president of 20th Century Fox Television, a company that during the last several years has spent more than $100 million to sign a handful of writer-producers to development deals, including Danny Jacobson, creator of “Mad About You,” and Chuck Lorre, who created “Dharma & Greg” with producer Dottie Dartland after creating CBS’ “Cybill” and ABC’s “Grace Under Fire.”

Ten million dollars for one writer? Such expenditures don’t seem as outlandish when you consider that a 30-second commercial on NBC’s “Seinfeld,” for instance, takes in more than $500,000.

“We’re in a situation where a single franchise show can not only generate over a billion dollars in revenue, but it can also help to build and brand global distribution outlets,” Grushow says. “So the issue is not whether a company can afford to invest in content, but how can we afford not to?”

Diamond’s reward for eight years in the business was a three-year development deal at Warner Bros. It is the culmination of a career that began in 1989, when he joined the writing staff of the ABC sitcom “Anything but Love,” starring Richard Lewis and Jamie Lee Curtis, and most recently included two seasons as executive producer of “Murphy Brown.”

He has only been in development for several months now and acknowledges that he is having trouble getting his sea legs. For all the high-pressure intensity that running “Murphy Brown” entailed, there was a certain comfort level in such harried work, he concedes. Now Diamond has gone to a period of solitude, which involves an entirely different kind of pressure. On the one hand, he’s leading the writer’s life again, in which unstructured time--the writer’s most perverse friend--is the norm. But with his salary guaranteed by the studio regardless of his success, the hunger to create a commercial hit will have to drive him. Indeed, Diamond is the opposite of a starving artist.

“It’s a very strange transition,” he says of going from producing a series to being in development. “You go from having this shared experience to having this very solitary experience. A well-run show is more of a democracy than anything, where the best idea gets onto the page. Now I come to this experience where I’ll occasionally want to hear what someone thinks. And yet there’s no one else in the room.”

A confessed workaholic, Diamond reports to his office on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank five days a week--trying to clock in, more or less, like a regular Joe. It is November, and the season of the pitch has begun, meaning Diamond is beginning to test his ideas with studio and network executives. This is the early stage of a journey that will or won’t end with a show on the 1998 fall schedule. Such uncertainty, Diamond says, makes the job all the more daunting. What he knows is this: He has to develop an idea, mold that idea into a show, get the green light, cast that show, write a pilot episode and shoot it by May, which is when networks will order new shows for the 1998-99 lineup.

“There’s no set date for any of this stuff to happen,” Diamond says. “All anyone knows is that by May, when the networks sit down to make their decisions, there needs to be a pilot shot.”

In the meantime, Diamond has been taking meetings with some big-name actors and developing his own concepts. One of the biggest initial decisions any writer in development has to make is whether to hook up with a star, which can increase his chances of getting a show on the air, or fly solo with his own idea. A glance at the new sitcoms this fall shows a handful of star-driven vehicles, from Kirstie Alley’s “Veronica’s Closet” on NBC to “The Gregory Hines Show” and Bronson Pinchot’s “Meego” on CBS.

“The way this should work is that the writer has a great idea, and then you go out and find someone who would work well on the show,” he says. “But the way TV seems to work is that actors are signed to deals, and then they shop around for writers who can work for them. It’s a little backwards.”

The questions that run through Diamond’s head all deal in hypotheticals: Where do I want to set my show? Do I give in to changes the studio or network or actor might want to make down the line? Is this a show I want to work on long term and can be proud of once it goes on the air?

“Once something you’ve written goes out there, and you’re humiliated, no amount of money is going to wash that away,” Diamond jokes. “The odds say most of us have one big idea rattling around in our heads. But am I going to be able to grab it?”

Like any market economy, development has its distinct classes--from high-powered show creators like Jacobson and Lorre, signed to stratospheric, multiyear deals, to the writer paid a one-time-only $50,000 fee to write a pilot for a network. And then there’s the development “middle class,” an ever-growing Hollywood subset, say industry observers--writer-producers plucked from successful series, sometimes after only two or three seasons, and paid from $1 million to $3 million a year to develop new shows.

While drama development has its share of players, the climate for development deals is far less fertile there than in sitcoms, observers say. Dramas are more expensive to produce, there are fewer time slots available, and syndication packages are harder to come by.

As studios have increased their investments in comedy development, they’ve also changed their attitude about what they expect in return. This means that, while ostensibly on salary to sit in an office and invent new product, many writers will be asked to “provide services.” Often this entails acting as a consultant on an existing show owned by their network or studio, coming in one or two days a week to punch up dialogue or work on story structure.

For some, consulting work is a refreshing break from the task of being alone in a room with a laptop and the limits of the imagination.

“It keeps you sharp,” says Steve Levitan, who worked on “Frasier” while he was in development at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, where he created “Just Shoot Me,” starring Laura San Giacomo, now in its first full season on NBC. Although he says he was hesitant about consulting work at first, Levitan, who recently signed a four-year development deal at Fox, now welcomes the extra work:

“It keeps your brain thinking. I found ultimately there was something interesting about the dynamic that I had to leave my pilot alone and get my brain focused on something else.”

“If you ask most writers, it’s better to keep working on a show, keep those muscles toned,” adds Gary Levine, executive vice president of creative affairs at Warner Bros. Television, which produces the NBC hits “Friends” and “ER.” “To go sit in a room and think can be a very isolating, counterproductive thing.”

But then, some writers have a few war stories to tell from the front lines of development. In rattling off all that they’ve done at Disney, Mike Reiss and Al Jean, creators of the new ABC entry “Teen Angel,” describe the usual stuff of development--the ideas, followed by the pitches, followed by the studio and network notes, followed by the pilot episodes that did and didn’t get written.

“These executives are very busy, and we were irritating them, I think, coming at them every three months with, like, 10 ideas,” Reiss says.

In the midst of all this, the two consulted on the Disney-produced show “Homeboys in Outer Space” and were lent to Fox to work on their old show, “The Simpsons.”

But then, Reiss and Jean also found themselves doing the equivalent of odd jobs around the Disney house. They wrote jokes for a roast that their boss, then-company President Mike Ovitz, was attending in Aspen, Colo., as well as funny tag lines for the Jumbotron at Disney-owned Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey games.

“You know, you work hard in development,” Jean deadpans, “unless you want it to be the last money you earn in show business.”

Rob Long has seen development from all sides: as a writer who came off a hit show (“Cheers”) and found himself well paid but in creative limbo; as a writer who created two series in development that were failures out of the gate (“Pig Sty” and “Good Company”); and now, as a writer with an apparent success, CBS’ “George & Leo,” starring Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch.

These days, Long, who works with partner Dan Staley, has nothing but good things to say about development. That’s not surprising. His employer, Paramount, not only renewed his development contract after his first two shows were canceled, but it also allowed him and Staley to create a show for Newhart before the studio even knew if they could coax the veteran comedian to return to television one more time.

“Growing up watching ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ was something that led us to want to write TV in the first place,” Long says.

But Long painted an entirely different picture of the development life in his book “Conversations With My Agent,” published earlier this year. The book, a mordant look at the perils of the development life, is a fictionalized memoir that offers an inside view of the often-haphazard way shows get made and the toll the process takes on the writer’s psyche.

“A development deal is one of those entertainment industry creations that, when described, sounds suspiciously like goofing off,” Long writes in the book. “Essentially, the studio agrees to pay a writer a minimum sum over two years, hopeful that the writer, once the novelty of being paid good money--sometimes great money--to do absolutely nothing but sit and think wears off and he’s thoroughly disgusted with a workday that begins at 11 in the morning and ends roughly after lunch, will just decide, ‘What the hell, I may as well create a hit television show.’ ”

Asked to explain his written comments, Long says now: “I guess [writing the book] was cheaper than therapy.”

Allan Burns hears the development figures being thrown at young writer-producers these days and shakes his head. It’s hardly surprising: Burns comes from an era that predates the development deal. With partner James L. Brooks, Burns spent seven years working on the seminal ‘70s sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Burns went on to produce “Rhoda” and “Lou Grant.” When “Lou Grant” was canceled in 1982, “I didn’t have anywhere to go,” Burns says. Later, he created “The Duck Factory,” remembered these days only because it starred a then-unknown Jim Carrey.

Burns is quick to praise writers for commanding large paychecks these days, but he says studios and networks have polluted the medium by handing out too many seven-figure salaries.

“I think it’s like paying a relief pitcher $7 million,” he says. “I can remember when the Dodgers paid [reliever] Don Stanhouse all this money--and he couldn’t pitch the next year.” Stanhouse, a high-priced free agent signed in 1980, pitched one disastrous season in L.A., compiling a 2-2 record and a 5.04 ERA--the baseball equivalent of firing blanks in development.

“There’s a certain amount of hunger that’s necessary to create good work,” Burns says. “I think it inhibits creativity to get that kind of money. And that’s being said by someone who’s not getting any, by the way.”

Studio heads have a response to Burns’ argument. People hungry for commercial success, they say, achieve no matter how much money is thrown at them.

“Part of this business is economic, and it would be irresponsible for me to say, sure, we’re going to deficit hundreds of millions of dollars,” says David A. Neuman, president of Walt Disney Network Television. “But you want to sign up people who have burning work ethic and a burning passion to achieve commercial success. [CBS President] Les Moonves said it best: ‘Manage your writers.’ That’s not a condescending statement; it’s respectful. You have to have a plan, you have to be there when things go bad, and you have to create a supportive atmosphere for the writer.”

For now, no one sees an immediate end to the climate of lucrative development deals. At least not until someone comes up with a foolproof way to invent a hit show.

“Along the way in development, you have to make about 10,000 decisions, beginning with characters and premise and who you’re going to cast, and if you mess up one of those major decisions, you’re screwed,” writer-producer Levitan says.

Of course, if you happen to get all of those decisions right, you’re automatically labeled a genius.

“It’s truly amazing when a show comes together,” Levitan adds. “I mean, think about it. ‘Cheers’ was almost going to star Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy.”