Greenfield Gets CEOs to Ignore Bottom Line

Jeff Greenfield has spent years examining media and politics, distinguishing himself as one of television’s most astute voices during 14 years at ABC News and more recently as a senior analyst at CNN.

While still rooted in politics, including his role questioning candidates at this week’s presidential debates in advance of Tuesday’s California primary, Greenfield has also indulged in a little moonlighting, exploring what might be called the “CEO mind” in a new monthly PBS program, “CEO Exchange.”

The format offers Greenfield an opportunity to display his interviewing skills in a different arena, engaging two chief executive officers from major corporations in a wide-ranging dialogue before audiences of business-school students at various universities.

The plan calls for eight installments annually for a three-year span. The inaugural program features Netscape co-founder Jim Clark and Excite@Home Chairman and CEO Tom Jermoluk, with Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, Dow Chemical’s William Stravropoulos and Lands’ End’s David Dyer among those participating in future discussions.

Greenfield acknowledged he brought certain perceptions to the assignment, noting wryly that his outdated image of top executives was shaped by watching Hollywood films of the 1950s.

“I was locked into a kind of stereotype of CEOs,” he said. “The guys were always very authoritarian, surrounded by guys in gray suits saying, ‘Yes, J.B. Of course, J.B.’ ”

Instead, Greenfield has found the tapings both enlightening and in some ways surprising--especially when comparing the style of these business leaders to the political shakers and movers he regularly encounters through his day job.

“They’re very open. That’s what most surprised me,” Greenfield noted. “They are really forthcoming, and they seem to me to be less programmed than your typical politician.”

Greenfield added that America’s preoccupation with titans of industry is nothing new, dating back to such pioneers as John D. Rockefeller or J.P. Morgan. Like the current generation of Internet and new-media entrepreneurs, these men not only possessed enormous wealth (a source of fascination in its own right) but fundamentally changed the way the American economy functions.

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The same thought occurred to Frederick Schneider, vice president of program development at the PBS station in Chicago, WTTW, and the series’ executive producer. Schneider saw a need for more business-related programming on PBS in light of rapid and sweeping changes in the way people work and live.

“We’re all affected by these people and their companies,” he said, citing the Bravo series “Inside the Actors Studio” as an example of what he hoped to accomplish in drawing out CEOs about how they, in a sense, approach their craft.

Schneider then recruited Greenfield--who concedes he needed to educate himself about aspects of business as preparation for the show--because of his experience eliciting information from influential people.

“My feeling was we needed someone who was a really good interviewer more than anything else,” Schneider said.

Certainly, not all CEOs will warm to the format. In the first episode, in fact, Excite’s Jermoluk complains about increased aggressiveness on the part of the business press--including dedicated cable channels such as CNBC and CNNfn--delving into minutia of both executives’ lives and their business dealings.

Still, Greenfield stressed such details often become part of the mystique of these companies and that those appearing on “CEO Exchange” will be pressed to go beyond dry dissertations about corporate earnings--providing a deeper insight into the machinations of the business world.

“If they’re going to come on and only tell us that they make the world’s best products, well, no thanks,” he said. “We want to talk about some of the harder issues. . . . The ones that are uncomfortable won’t do the show. We don’t have subpoena power.”

With the California primary around the corner, Greenfield also offered an assessment of the election process thus far--which, he contends, underscores limits of the media’s influence.

Specifically, the press anticipated little resistance to presumptive Republican nominee George W. Bush, Greenfield suggested, and has followed rather than lead the public in the challenge mounted by John McCain, the senator from Arizona.

“The media are less powerful in shaping an election than we think we are,” he said. “There’s a world out there beyond the media. I know it sounds weird.”

Another change in the current primary process has involved the blanket coverage available on the three 24-hour cable channels, whose impact has grown since the last presidential race in 1996--the same year MSNBC and Fox News Channel came into existence.

Greenfield noted that network broadcasts such as ABC’s “Night-line” do a fine job of covering the political race but often wait to recap events hours after they have occurred, unlike the cable networks, which are more than willing to devote untold hours to poring over every nuance of the campaign.

“The broadcast networks have more or less ceded day-to-day coverage to us, the cable networks,” Greenfield maintained.

Asked if that amounts to an abdication of responsibility, he quipped, “I’m perfectly happy that the broadcasters turn it all over to us.”

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* “CEO Exchange” airs tonight at 9 on KCET.