Making the Case for Court TV

Straight-faced as can be, the nation’s best-known lawyer announces that he has a skewering cross-examination planned for the folks from “Law & Order.”

For one thing, how come the poor defense attorneys always lose on that NBC crime drama? And it’s bad enough that the prosecutors are the heroes--how dare they leave those nasty D.A.s alone with the defendant on every case? What self-respecting defense attorney would let that happen?

One more thing: How come they replaced Michael Moriarty, who played the lead D.A.? “They ran him off!” complains Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. “I want Mike back!”

It’s two hours before his own show, “Johnnie Cochran Tonight,” goes on the air at Court TV, and Cochran is trying out his quips on a coterie of young producers and bookers clustered around metal desks littered with videotapes.

The main guest will be “Law & Order’s” creator, Dick Wolf, who is eager to promote a “crossover” episode in which his cast combines with the characters from “Homicide: Life on the Street” in a story line--purely fiction, of course--centering on an overeager prosecutor and hanky-panky in the White House.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing to mention ‘Homicide,’ ” one producer reminds Cochran, drawing a burst of laughter. For their cable network--launched eight years ago to broadcast live trials--has just bought the rights to air reruns of that NBC cop drama.

Still, one staffer wonders whether Cochran shouldn’t bash the whole genre of shows that fictionalize the law. “I used to love ‘L.A. Law’ until I started working here and realized how ridiculous it is,” the fellow says. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Cochran is patient. Apparently the staffer didn’t get his banter. He’s a fan of “Law & Order.” Besides, aren’t they in the same boat, everyone just trying to discover what it takes to survive in this cruel, competitive medium?

“Oh, it’s a little glamorized,” Cochran says. “It’s a little dramatic license, that’s all.”

“Dramatic license” is very much the formula these days in the head-spinning mix of lawyers and television. There’s got to be some drama if you want to entertain--and get more than your mother to watch. To do that, you may need to take some license--beyond the one on your wall.

We’re not talking only about the tradition of make-believe TV lawyers performing make-believe feats, whether it’s Perry Mason extracting confessions on the stand or Ally McBeal rolling up more fantasies than billable hours.

The real action today is in the real lawyers and how they’ve run amok all over the tube.

Many were first recruited as talking heads during Cochran’s breakout case, the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, then hung around to give their spin on JonBenet and Monica and Littleton, Colo. The best got their own shows, or began making the rounds from Larry King to the nightly magazines, or the daily law face-offs, CNN’s “Burden of Proof” and CNBC’s “Rivera Live.”

The judges reappeared, too.

“The People’s Court,” with ol’ Judge Wapner, had gone off the air before Simpson. Soon Judge Ed Koch was back on that bench, and there were Judge Joe Brown and Judge Mills Lane and the best-selling Judge Judy. Now her hubby is set to replace Koch, and who can blame Wapner for coming back with “Animal Court” or the Playboy Channel for pitching in last summer with “Sex Court,” featuring the mostly disrobed “Judge” Julie?

Beyond any reasonable doubt, however, the best place to gauge what’s happening with TV lawyers is here at Court TV. Started in 1991 by American Lawyer magazine publisher Steven Brill under the belief that “what was really exciting was watching the trial system, not reading about it,” the network long was a bastion of purity amid the vast wasteland.

It did not turn away from sexy trials, whether of the murdering Menendez brothers or Massachusetts vs. Woodward, the British nanny. But Brill also insisted on carrying the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal on Bosnia from the Hague, with a commentator in the studio, professor Burt Neuborne, who was bald, pudgy and, by his own description, “far from a matinee idol.”

The network earned rave reviews and a place in good-intentions heaven. Along with ratings that occasionally spiked during blockbuster trials--an astounding 4.2 during Simpson’s--but generally were down in . . . well, that other place. Try 0.1 for the prime-time hours, barely a blip in the Nielsens, about as low as you can go.

In the sink-or-swim ocean of cable, it was drowning under such niche networks as Comedy Central, Country Music Television and Animal Planet, “all animals all the time.”

So there have been changes at Court TV. Brill is out. Henry Schleiff is in. He’s a lawyer, yes, but also a veteran of the Montel Williams and Maury Povich shows. In recent months, he’s overseen some tweaking of the balance between the informational and entertainment functions.

Now there’s fiction at night, those “Homicide” reruns. There’s “judicially incorrect” comedy--oddball cases from your wacky courts. And if there’s a choice between a documentary on the 1921 trial of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, or a bloody “Sam Festival”--the Son of Sam one night, Sam Shepard the next--it’s nolo contendere.

“Sacco and Vanzetti is a very important trial to the country,” notes Schleiff, the CEO since October. “But it’s probably of greatest interest to Mrs. Vanzetti.”

If that sounds flip--Vanzetti was executed--so be it. Court TV is out in the open, fully confessing its willingness to add a dash of Hollywood pandering if that’s what it takes to endure as more than a failed footnote in legal, and television, history.

If you jokingly suggest that Schleiff try wrestling lawyers, he responds, no thanks, but also, “You’re not the first person to have suggested that. . . . It’s a very different Court TV. What’s new, we hope, is that it entertains.”

That’s his hope, also, for Court TV’s marquee personality.

Johnnie Cochran was a hero to millions, and a villain to millions, after his in-your-face defense of a celebrity who much of America believed had slashed his ex-wife’s throat. In court, Cochran put a ski cap on his head, spouted poetry about a glove and played what many saw as a “send a message” race card, even as he denied it.

He should’ve been a TV natural, in other words.

But once the lights went on, he became . . . nice. Like he means it when he wears a “Love the Lord” button on his $2,000 suits.

This is his third year on television, and it’s make-or-break time for the lawyer most everyone would want on their case but not enough, to date, watch on their screens.

The idea for the show sprang out of Court TV’s fifth anniversary celebration in 1996.

During a panel at the New York Bar Assn., Cochran sat next to Nancy Grace, a 35-year-old blond prosecutor from Atlanta who had done analysis for the network, including pooh-poohing the defense of Simpson. Grace was a good story herself, having turned to law after her fiance was murdered. She boasted of never losing a case. “I like Johnnie,” she said. “Of course, I don’t believe anything he says.”

“If you never lost a case,” he retorted, “you didn’t try enough.”

Their sparks made the evening. Right there, Cochran recalls, “Brill says, ‘Have you ever thought of doing TV?’ ”

He had--who hasn’t?--but he was put off by the pundits who picked at him. “I thought there were too many,” he says, and “It became clear they hadn’t tried too many cases.”

What’s more, Court TV is based in New York. He’d been in Los Angeles since his father, an insurance executive, moved the family from Louisiana. Cochran went to UCLA, made his mark as a prosecutor, then built a lucrative practice around criminal defense and personal injury suits charging police misconduct. He was idolized in the black community and respected by the white establishment. He could go to his mother’s grave to pray. He could drive his Rolls in L.A.

Still, he was primed to go national. How many lawyers are satirized on “Seinfeld” and have a school named for them in New Jersey? He had close relationships with “Dream Team” lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who practiced out of New York. He wanted to do more entertainment and sports work. Nearing 60, he figured to have one more big push. As they say--use it or lose it.

His deal with Court TV: three years and seven figures. He’d be by far its top-paid talent. He could keep up his practice, too. They’d let him do his part of the show from the West Coast when needed.

“Cochran & Grace” was promoted as the network’s “Crossfire,” a legal he said-she said, the prosecution versus the defense and, you couldn’t ignore, black versus white. Promos teased, “Has he finally met his match?”

The hourlong show went on the air Jan. 13, 1997. Soon after, Cochran called a friend and confided, “This is a disaster. What do I do?”

Grace was trying way too hard. He, in turn, was stiff and uncomfortable--holding back.

“I think it was just chemistry,” Cochran says now. “They thought there would be tremendous sparks every night, one person who thinks everyone is innocent, and one guilty. But I wasn’t like that. To have credibility, you have to be yourself. I just couldn’t say things I didn’t believe.”

Translation: He wouldn’t play the talking-head game that was taking over TV, where you say everything with a definitive urgency. YOU’D BETTER LISTEN.

Cochran was like that, to infinity, before a jury. There he was pure intensity and indignation, every gesture--even his nonchalance--exuding, “How dare they do this to my client?” But did the public expect him to go on TV--as Johnnie Cochran, not someone’s lawyer--and contend that Colombian drug dealers probably killed an athlete’s ex-wife?

He recalls a man in the Chicago airport staring at him, as if expecting to see the devil and not “a simple guy from Shreveport.” He wasn’t blase about it--that’s why he sued a New York columnist for writing that he would “do just about anything to win, typically at the expense of the truth.”

He lost that. But the show, he decided, would be “a vehicle for people to see me in a different role.” Friends could attest--outside court, he was far more cool than heat, understatedly funny.

Grace was pulled off the show and reassigned to trial coverage. “I didn’t really enjoy arguing with him,” she said. “Birds are meant to fly, fish gotta swim, and I like trial work. End of story.”

It was a bad time for Court TV.

In February 1997, Brill left. He had grown frustrated having three corporate partners, Time Warner--which owned 55%--NBC-Cablevision and Tele-Communications Inc. Time Warner bought out his interest.

“I was hired by Steve Brill, and two months later he was gone,” recalls Cochran. For six months, he anchored alone on the show, renamed “Cochran & Co.” There was no advertising, which was probably good, for it bought him time to learn--and to surprise himself.

“I’m probably more moderate,” he concludes, “than I thought.” Except for Leslie Abramson--the flamboyant Menendez defense attorney--his favorite guests were the hard-line conservatives. “It’s like there’s some think tank,” Cochran said. “They all come prepared with the Federalist Papers. They know everything!”

He also liked “the lady who told me, ‘Johnnie, I never had any slaves. I’m not apologizing.’ ”

By the end of 1997, he was given a new co-host, Rikki Klieman, a respected Boston lawyer recruited to Court TV for Simpson coverage. But the network was adrift, looking for an identity post-Brill.

Last May, Time Warner took control and, in the fall, brought in Schleiff to be “the new sheriff.”

Though he edited the law review at the University of Pennsylvania, his professional pedigree was in show biz, with stints at HBO, Viacom and Studios USA, where he oversaw the Povich show.

“We have to be careful that we don’t throw out that which was working,” Schleiff said. “Live trial coverage . . . got us to the dance.”

But “this truly was a network that was vegetables for vegetarians. Too narrow,” he concluded. It was time for “mass appeal.”

*

The strategy was borrowed from another cable network, CNBC. It has one identity in the day, financial news, and another at night, heated talk, with Geraldo’s hour and “Hardball.”

Schleiff decided on a split personality for Court TV, too: “crime and punishment.” The daytime trials were the system’s punishment. Night would be for crime.

“In the voyeuristic time we’re in, people are interested in the element that has crossed over the line,” he says. One hour would be “Crime Stories,” including prison diaries, a “Clarice meets Hannibal Lecter in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ . . . up-close . . . some of society’s most salacious, most notorious convicts.” Why should other networks have a monopoly on Ted Bundy?

The rerun rights to “Homicide” took care of another hour.

A comedian was enlisted for “Snap Judgment.” In Hollywood-speak, “MTV visits the lower courts . . . night court, traffic court, animal court, small claims. . . . “

Cochran’s show?

Schleiff decided on a third incarnation: Johnnie alone again--no co-host. Shortened to half an hour, including commercials. “Johnnie Cochran Tonight.”

“He can take a position, and that works better in 22 minutes, not 47 minutes,” Schleiff reasons in Court TV’s offices in a high-rise near Grand Central Station. “The [hour] format was a disservice to any individual who’s not trying to be a shouting head or who, in the case of Larry King, has got the benefit of an incredible A-list of celebrities.”

Barely on the job, Schleiff called a meeting to see whether Cochran would go along with having his time halved--and with other changes.

“I was very honest. ‘I don’t know you, but this is how I see the show. If you can provide it, it’s great. If you can’t, we’re both big boys, let’s go our separate ways.’ ”

Schleiff also said, “I need you here in New York more often. This is where our people are. This is where we do our best shows.”

Cochran is hard to read--that’s why he’s the lawyer he is. But he insists he had no problem with any of it. Who wants their show to fade away at 0.1? Schleiff seemed an “astute guy who has come in with a plan,” he says. “So I think we have our best shot with him.”

“I think they still love me,” Cochran adds. “I’ve got a contract that says they still love me.”

*

Last December, they flew to the Western Show of cable operators in Anaheim. Court TV’s booth was so far at the fringe of the convention hall, “it felt like we were in the Witness Protection Program,” Schleiff jokes.

The trip underscored their challenge, and how Cochran still was a unique asset--if they could tap it.

The crowds were “standing four deep, for eight hours,” Schleiff said, “whites, blacks, Chinese, Japanese,” all wanting Cochran to autograph his book “Journey to Justice.”

Available in 4 million households when it burst on the scene with the William Kennedy Smith rape trial (and the blue dot over his accuser’s face), Court TV was now in 34 million. But that was only half cable’s reach, and short of other networks started the same time, such as the Sci-Fi Channel, and of newcomers, such as MSNBC, that compete for space on cable systems’ lineups.

Some operators had dropped Court TV. Cochran’s show was not seen in prime communities of his own turf, including Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

Schleiff set up a lunch with Bill Rosendahl, senior vice president at Century Communications, which carried only the daytime Court TV in its L.A. metro area. Schleiff pitched how “Homicide” et al. would pull prime-time ratings to 0.4.

The irony--as many in Los Angeles know--is that Rosendahl is a public service junkie, who for years has led round tables on issues such as transportation financing. “The judicial branch is too little understood,” he said later. “I told him, ‘I’m not into entertainment, no. I like your trials during the day.’ ”

The best Schleiff got was a promise: “We will watch how they develop the channel.”

*

Cochran’s show on “Law & Order” was one of his first under the new format. As Dick Wolf arrives at the Court TV studios, he’s greeted with a “Hey, long time no see. 4A, wasn’t it?”--a reference to his seat the other week, when they were side-by-side in the first-class cabin from L.A., there among the other bicoastal power brokers.

The casual chatter in the hallway is little different from how they carry on once they reach the set. Coming out of makeup, Cochran teases the veteran producer about how he promised, on the flight, “We got a role for you. I said, ‘I’m not playin’ one of those losers!’ ” On the air, he chides Wolf again about how defense attorneys play second fiddle on “Law & Order.”

They also discuss the revolving cast and the program’s debt to the old “Dragnet” series. There is actual case law cited, too--during a “sneak preview” of an episode on a neo-Nazi group, when the fictional D.A.s quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes on when hate speech must be tolerated.

“I love this show,” Cochran tells Wolf. “You’ve done a great job.”

Schleiff earlier said he hoped the retooled “Johnnie Cochran Tonight” would spotlight its host as “the advocate for the underdog.” But he also wanted to tap the celebrity ties of a man who counts Bill Cosby and Michael Jordan as friends. Here on the set, the acid courtroom questioner almost seems more comfortable in this role, as a gentle show-biz interlocutor, like Rosie O’Donnell.

Cochran also relishes the I-scratch-your-back “synergies” popular today. He goes on “Roseanne” to do a skit, squaring off with Leslie Abramson before “Judge Roseanne.” Then Roseanne comes on his show and tells how she tried to get Monica Lewinsky. “She advised the president of the United States on foreign affairs. That blew my mind. . . . Here’s that button that ends the world. Where was her finger?”

Cochran recently did a show on “Guiding Light,” coordinated with his own appearance on the CBS soap, playing himself, assisting a woman accused of murder. The plot involves human cloning and a comatose police officer. “Oh, my God, they have Johnnie Cochran!” a prosecutor exclaims. “I live in L.A. and I can still hardly believe this,” quips Cochran. He also plugs Court TV.

In this realm, where all’s a diverting goof, Cochran can toss out comments that in other settings would raise eyebrows coming from O.J. Simpson’s lawyer. Promoting “Guiding Light,” he sized up how fans might react to the allegations against the soap’s star actress. “They can understand she probably did these things, but they don’t want anything bad to happen to her,” he says. “Sounds like somebody else we know, right?”

*

In February, Schleiff threw a party for his star at Elaine’s. Cochran plays the packed hangout, greeting Ossie Davis, weatherman Al Roker, Lionel Hampton, Michael Baden--the medical examiner who aided Simpson’s defense--and Nancy Grace, who now anchors the show before his, “Pros & Cons.” She gets a kiss on the cheek.

Schleiff gathers the crowd to announce, “Key numbers are up!”

He’ll admit later that “the numbers in absolute terms aren’t that significant,” but there is a blip, “160% year-to-year . . . in the 18-49 key demo range.” Several of the night shows, including “Homicide,” had already scored 0.2.

Cochran’s show was still at 0.1, watched in only 39,000 homes--but Schleiff tells the group “the most successful practicing attorney in the country” is bringing in a crucial “female crossover audience, which shares with him one quality--passion.”

Cochran takes the microphone. “I’ve been prepped up, skilled, educated,” he says. “Watch us! Watch us! Watch us!”

He also says, “I’m not ready to quit my day job yet.”

In that respect, the evening is a big one. The next day, news hits that African immigrant Amadou Diallo had been killed by white New York police officers. Mistaking him for a rape suspect, they fired 41 times.

Another guest at Cochran’s party, Al Sharpton, quickly was on the case, leading demonstrations. And Cochran quickly had the case, signing up the Diallo family to sue the city.

That meant he has some of the most explosive cases in the country: With his old Dream Team partners, he represents Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a $150-million suit alleging that New York police sodomized him with a broomstick; he represents two men accusing New Jersey troopers of firing on their van after a turnpike stop based on “racial profiling”; in California this past week, he filed suit on behalf of the family of Tyisha Miller, the 19-year-old shot by police in Riverside while sitting in her car; and in Buffalo, N.Y., he’s assisting a $300-million suit over the death of a black woman hit by a truck while crossing the street from a bus stop to a shopping mall--allegedly after the bus route was diverted from a mall parking lot because it came from minority neighborhoods.

At 61, that is Cochran’s day job. Earlier this year, he merged his Los Angeles office with a firm in Dothan, Ala., seeking more firepower to take on cases--air crashes, product liability and medical malpractice too--around the country.

He wakes early to make the 6 a.m. opening of the gym in the luxury high-rise where he’s bought a unit. After an hour there, he does legal work, takes an 11 a.m. conference call to go over the day’s show. More legal work, then off to the studios for pre-production meetings. Showtime is 7 p.m., and the half-hour is rerun twice each evening. When he arrives home, he checks back in with L.A.--since 9:30 at night in New York is only 6:30 there. On weekends, he often flies back, or off to give a speech.

So far, he’s taken a low profile in the civil cases. But there’s no question who will work the juries if the cases are not settled.

Each raises high-emotion issues--the Louima suit targets New York’s police union for fostering a code of silence--and Cochran gets worked up discussing them, in a way you don’t often see on his show. He’s careful not to promote his outside work there. “Louima was a good test,” he says. “I might have mentioned the name, but I don’t want to proselytize.”

He can’t fathom how some TV lawyers give up their practices to be performers full time. But he’s also not sure how he will manage when one of these monster cases comes to trial.

“I get the business,” he says matter-of-factly. “The only question is which cases can we take? Can I do the job for the client? I can’t compromise what I do for the clients. If it ever reaches that, something’s got to go.”

*

Steven Brill says he doesn’t watch Court TV much anymore. “I’m busy,” he notes, putting out Brill’s Content, his new magazine on the media. In March, it ran an article chiding Court TV for airing “an exclusive one-hour special” about the movie “A Civil Action” that actually had been financed by Disney, whose Touchstone Pictures produced the film.

“They’ve made a basic decision that they’re not a news network--they’re an entertainment network,” Brill says. “It’s a different breed of cat.”

Neuborne, the NYU law professor who was a commentator in the early days--and during the Bosnian proceedings--also says he’s too busy, as lead counsel in the Holocaust survivors suit. After he did a “60 Minutes” segment on it, “a number of agents called to say, ‘Hey, we can place you anywhere.’ I said, ‘Hey, are you kidding? Place me in my library.’ ”

He’s hesitant though to second-guess Schleiff’s plan for Court TV. He’s seen how the network’s good idea was copied by others--and taken show biz--so that now you can flip channels and find instant legal analysis everywhere, “lawyers getting on and shouting at each other, putting on a pyrotechnic display.”

It may be, he says, that there will have to be a new “C-SPAN for the courts,” showing legal proceedings and little else--on public TV.

“It may turn out that’s intrinsically not suited for commercial TV,” Neuborne says. “If there’s no mass audience, it’s perfectly appropriate for a commercial network to seek a mass audience.”

Not that certain trials can’t do it. Last month, a segment of the “Jenny Jones” trial--in which the talk show was accused of causing a guest to kill another--won Court TV an .85, meaning 286,000 households were watching. An April marathon on serial killers averaged an .53. And the network announced that Cochran’s 7 p.m. slot had hit 0.2 last month, including 0.5 for one show, on the Greaseman, the radio jock fired for racist remarks.

But if it takes screaming to get an audience, Cochran is never going to do that. Nor will he fake the intensity that comes naturally in court. “Johnnie Cochran Tonight,” it seems, is his sanity break.

If it doesn’t work out, one friend predicts, the ever-optimistic Cochran will simply “declare victory and move on.”

He’s not at that stage. In Court TV offices, he began musing about the Buffalo case against the mall that welcomed buses carrying white tourists but diverted the No. 6 route. “They said, ‘We had this problem with rowdy youths,’ that’s how they put it! We said, ‘Let’s look at who’s getting off that bus: old people, the disabled. . . . “

The case is scheduled for trial in November, and Cochran is pondering whether he could handle it and his show. He decides: Why not? “We’d be out of court by 4:30, 5 p.m. I’ll do the show up there.”

“That was the whole idea. The show would be me,” he says. “I got fascinating cases.”