‘Seinfeld,’ a Cinderella Story That Went From Fable to Legend

For Howard West, it couldn’t get any better than this.

Jack Welch, the legendary chairman of General Electric, was putting on a full-court press for him, partner George Shapiro and their client Jerry Seinfeld, hoping to woo the comic to return for a 10th season of his eponymous NBC series.

In the course of the late-1997 exchange, Welch stated matter-of-factly that if Seinfeld agreed to another year of the show, the combination of salary and stock options on the table could ultimately be “worth a couple of B’s,” as in billions.

“It just rolled off his tongue,” marveled West, who soon adopted the line as a sort of in-joke.

Welch didn’t get that extra season of “Seinfeld.” Indeed, the comic and his managers took a long walk through Central Park--sitting on the same bench where Seinfeld first told his father he was going to go into comedy. Despite what West calls a “magnificent” performance by Welch, Seinfeld stuck with his instinct--that it was time to leave the stage.

Yet even without that final season, “Seinfeld” is indeed worth “a couple of B’s”--not bad for a series that nearly didn’t make it beyond the prototype stage.

It is a level of success West and Shapiro could not have imagined “in five lifetimes,” as West put it, reminiscing on the “Seinfeld” phenomenon as the show prepares to begin its second cycle of reruns in syndication, which have brought the show’s total revenue to the $2-billion mark.

Sales went so well once it was announced “Seinfeld” was coming to an end that in several major cities the incumbent station was outbid--including Los Angeles, where the show moves beginning today from KTLA-TV to KCOP-TV, which has scheduled it at 7 p.m. weeknights opposite “Friends.” (KTLA is owned by Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times.)

Boyhood friends who bolted the William Morris Agency together to form their own management firm in 1974, Shapiro and West had a front-row seat on TV history as Seinfeld’s managers and producers of the series. Small wonder they keep a framed copy of NBC’s initial audience research regarding “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” which labeled the pilot “weak” and contains such observations as, “None of the supports were particularly liked. . . . George was negatively viewed as a ‘wimp’ who was only mildly amusing--viewers said he whined and did not like his relationship with Jerry.”

Shapiro called the fact “Seinfeld” made it to the level where the chairman of NBC’s parent company was pleading for another year (“That’s the highlight of his whole career,” he quipped of West) a Cinderella story. Added his partner, “We went from begging for a pickup the first three to four years to being begged to stay on. That’s a very warm feeling.”

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Sitting side by side in a conference room at Columbia TriStar Television, which is charged with selling reruns of the show, Shapiro and West play off each other with the ease and familiarity of a veteran vaudeville act. They are asked, for example, if West--the more practical-minded and business-oriented of the two--is the bad cop to Shapiro’s good cop.

“We don’t like that term,” West said.

“But it’s accurate,” Shapiro interjected.

The well-worn “Seinfeld” story takes on an epic quality as the two recount it--how the research was negative, how NBC brass were cool to the show, how the network’s executive in charge of specials, Rick Ludwin, sacrificed two one-hour specials to fund four episodes through his department--still perhaps the shortest order of a prime-time series on record.

“When that research came in, we believed we were dead,” West said. “We went to Fox, and they passed.”

“We never had people from the comedy department on the set giving us notes,” Shapiro chimed in.

NBC gave the four episodes a trial run in the spring of 1990 and brought the show back in January 1991. The premiere, however, was abruptly postponed because the Persian Gulf War broke out.

Ratings languished (including a stint opposite ABC’s “Home Improvement,” which defeated “Seinfeld” soundly head to head) until 1993, when Ted Danson decided it was time to close down “Cheers.” Desperate to find a replacement, NBC moved “Seinfeld” to Thursdays, setting the stage for its success.

“I hugged [Danson] at a party later,” Shapiro said. “He didn’t know why.”

Until then, the duo never even fantasized about the show becoming a major hit. Survival, they say, was their sole aspiration.

Before the fateful move to follow “Cheers,” West said, “I’d look at [the ratings] and I’d say, ‘George, “Jake and the Fatman” is kicking the [expletive] out of us. Look at that. How could that be?’ . . . We were nothing until [we got] the Thursday slot.”

“It was a show we were proud of that we never expected to have a big audience. New York Jews running around, it has to be a limited audience,” Shapiro said he thought.

As “Seinfeld” began to exhibit signs of life, the network took a heightened interest. There were suggestions, for example, to introduce more romance, including a relationship between the characters of Jerry and Elaine.

“To the creators’ credit, they stood firm,” West said, referring to co-creators Seinfeld and Larry David, “but [NBC] tried to push it at the beginning. Once we had arrived on Thursday, they would tentatively, tentatively give notes: ‘What do you think?’ and then run.”

“What’s wonderful about stand-up comics is they have another job,” suggested Shapiro. “That is so important, because there was a certain amount of independence they had. They weren’t playing scared. They had confidence.”

Brandon Tartikoff, the late NBC Entertainment president who was there when “Seinfeld” was developed but left before it blossomed into a sensation, titled his biography “The Last Great Ride,” and both Shapiro and West say that is equally true of “Seinfeld.” Never again, they suggest, will the cosmos align in such fashion, given how diffused the television audience has become.

“We were just like blessed from the beginning,” Shapiro said.

The pair’s relationship has its own storybook qualities. Grade-school friends at P.S. 80 in the Bronx, they spent summers together as lifeguards in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where acts such as Sid Caesar and Dick Shawn came to play.

West: “Every weekend, 600 girls left, and 600 girls came in.”

Shapiro: “It was a good job.”

It was there they became interested in show business. Shapiro recalls seeing agents who came down to scout young comedy talent. “I said, ‘You mean, this is your job? You come up, you have dinner, you see a show, you go swimming, and this is your job?’ They said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘I think I want to look into that,’ ” Shapiro said.

They started in the mail room at William Morris, earning $38 a week. Before they left, West trained a young assistant named Michael Ovitz, later counseling him when he chose to split off with several partners and form Creative Artists Agency.

West and Shapiro packaged TV shows and championed acts such as the Smothers Brothers and Andy Kaufman. Shapiro, in fact, was played by Danny DeVito in the recent Kaufman biography “Man on the Moon,” on which they served as executive producers. (West, charged with negotiating rights to Shapiro’s life for the movie, asked for $1.)

The pair continue to develop movies and TV shows as well as shepherd along the careers of various clients, Seinfeld among them. Given the value of their interest in “Seinfeld” alone, it’s hard not to wonder what keeps them motivated.

“Howard is working now like when we first started our business,” Shapiro said. “Me? I’m going to Italy, I’m going to Monterey. I’m balancing out my life a little bit. . . . He has the same kind of energy and work ethic as when we left William Morris.”

Steve Mosko, president of Columbia TriStar Television Distribution, places “Seinfeld” in the same category as “Cheers” and “MASH,” which also overcame modest initial ratings to become enduring TV classics. So even as co-stars Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus prepare to follow Michael Richards with prime-time comebacks on NBC and ABC, respectively, their old series remains a nightly presence, ranking No. 1 among all syndicated programs during February with men between the ages of 18 and 54.

“To me, that’s a real statement about the staying power and popularity of this show,” Mosko said.

As West and Shapiro are fond of saying, the kind of power worth a couple of B’s.