More Suits Than Jokes?

Comedy writers have various explanations about what’s ailing their business, but alongside the usual litany is a relatively new trend: the migration of former network and studio executives into hands-on producing roles, in effect adding another layer of adult supervision to what has long been heralded as a writer-driven medium.

In recent years, a growing number of young former network and studio executives have left their jobs to form production companies, sometimes underwritten by the same corporate bosses who cut their checks at the network or studio. For the former executives, the benefits are twofold--more creative clout and the possibility of sharing in the back-end profits awaiting the executive producers of hit shows.

And so far, these former executives, attached to writer-creators looking for any edge that will get their concept picked up by a network, have shown an uncanny ability to place their shows in prime-time lineups.

This season, former ABC executive Suzanne Bukinik is an executive producer on the new ABC sitcom “According to Jim,” starring Jim Belushi. Bukinik is under a deal with Touchstone Television, whose parent, the Walt Disney Co., owns ABC. Mindy Schultheis and Michael Hanel, former executives at 20th Century Fox, are executive producers on three shows--”Reba,” for the WB; “Titus,” for Fox; and “Danny,” for CBS, under their Acme Productions banner, which has a deal with 20th Century Fox Television. Their forebears include Bob Greenblatt and David Janollari, who left their executive jobs in 1997 to form a production company backed by Fox. Currently, Greenblatt-Janollari has two series running: HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” “The Hughleys” on UPN and three more on the way.

It’s a career track blazed by the likes of Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, who left network jobs 20 years ago to form Carsey-Werner and went on to produce such hits as “The Cosby Show” and “Roseanne.”

To viewers, the shuffling might seem of interest only to those who lunch at the Grill. To some disgruntled sitcom writers, however, it’s the latest chapter in a saga they might dub “Why TV Stinks.”

In recent TV seasons, they have seen networks order fewer sitcoms, while staged, unscripted series eat up time slots and dramas catch much of the buzz. With development deals drying up, more established writers are taking up seats in writers’ rooms, making it harder for new voices to break in.

And now some veteran writers are expressing dismay at what they see as another power shift behind the scenes, saying that some non-writing executive producers are actually in the writers’ room, pitching jokes and breaking stories.

“You can always make the case that writers are a bunch of cranky dopes and they may not be suited for the careful handling and administrative chores of [running] a network TV show,” said Tim Doyle, a writer-producer working on “Andy Richter Controls the Universe,” a midseason show for Fox. “But I just think that if you look at the history of television, the best shows have been writer-driven.... The new trend is a situation where the writer is answerable to a boss who’s telling them what to write.”

“Now you’ve got to look up at this ex-network executive and say, ‘Can I take this word out?”’ said a longtime comedy writer whose pilot didn’t get picked up by its network this year. “This new monster, which is the non-writing executive producer, that’s just another person you have to answer to. I think it’s diluting the product.”

Nina Wass, who is partnered in a deal at Touchstone with former CBS comedy executive Gene Stein, said her presence in the writers’ room last season on the ABC sitcom “Geena” was “a natural evolution” from the years she spent behind the scenes at Witt-Thomas-Harris, the production company responsible for such shows as “The Golden Girls.”

“I think it can be incredibly helpful if the partners are in it together and complement each other,” said Wass, who on “Geena” was working with a relatively inexperienced head writer, Terri Minsky. “Every situation is a little bit different. It really is about the comfort level of the writer.”

Still, with so much at stake financially, networks and studios have seemingly become less apt to leave the keys to a show with a writer. With shows amassing millions in deficits before audiences even see them, risk taking typically gives way to calculated guesses involving stars--whether it’s Belushi as a dad at ABC, Daniel Stern as a dad in CBS’ “Danny,” chef Emeril Lagasse as a chef in NBC’s “Emeril” or former “Seinfeld” co-star Jason Alexander as a motivational speaker at ABC in “Bob Patterson.”

None of these shows is being run as a simple collaboration between star and writers. Addressing reporters last month at the TV critics tour in Pasadena, “Bob Patterson” co-star Robert Klein noted that at the table reading for the pilot, “there were 65 people [in attendance] from four different things: Touchstone Television, ABC, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Jason’s company....”

It’s all a far cry from the days when writer-producer Sam Denoff was working under Carl Reiner on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” The non-writing executive producer was Sheldon Leonard, who had been an actor, a writer and director before turning to producing; in 1963, Leonard, partnered with Danny Thomas, juggled four prime-time sitcoms as executive producer: “Dick Van Dyke,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Bill Dana Show” and “The Danny Thomas Show.”

Recalling the script battles between Reiner and Leonard, Denoff said, “The end result, always, was Sheldon would finally look at his watch and say, ‘Go ahead, Carl. I don’t get it, but go ahead.”’

Today’s version of Leonard is more likely to come from a network or studio office. Someone like Bukinik, who spent seven years as an executive overseeing prime-time comedies at ABC before setting up shop at Touchstone, where in her first year out as an executive producer she placed “According to Jim” on the schedule.

“I look to two ex-ABC executives as inspiration, which are Tom [Werner] and Marcy [Carsey]. They do nothing, as far as I’ve ever seen, but nurture writers. I think their work speaks for itself as far as how effective they’ve been,” Bukinik said.

Greenblatt of Greenblatt-Janollari said, “We’re very, very careful to say, ‘We do everything but write.’ The last thing we’re going to do is sit in a room and be the judge of what’s funny and what’s not funny.” Schultheis and Hanel, meanwhile, declined comment.

Ted Harbert, the former head of entertainment at ABC and now president of NBC Studios, defends the migration of former network executives into show-runner-type roles, particularly as networks have reached out to less experienced writer-creators from different disciplines (such as theater and film) in the search for fresh ideas.

“The basic idea of the job is a sound one and can be necessary, depending on who the writer is,” said Harbert. “But like any position, it can be abused.”

To be sure writers are capable of creating their own backstage dysfunction and inferior product. And non-writing executive producers come in less meaningful forms, including talent managers who get the title, and sometimes profit participation, simply for representing a client who stars in a hit show.

But while writers wonder whether the costs of a non-writing executive producer would be better spent on more writers, others say they’re running much more than a head-start program for burned-out executives.

“Television is also a business where we ask writers to become managers of physical productions and incredible staffs of small companies,” said Stephen McPherson, president of Touchstone Television, “and that’s not necessarily the best situation.”