Hollywood Sees a Pro-Business Ally in Bush

When President-elect George W. Bush is sworn into office Saturday, no business sector will lose so much influence in the Oval Office yet be poised to collect so many favors from the White House as the entertainment industry.

For eight years, Hollywood moguls and celebrities have cultivated an unequaled coziness with President Clinton, hosting his frequent fund-raisers at their Malibu mansions and lining up for sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom.

In contrast, Bush’s connections in Hollywood are so scarce that when he recently summoned dozens of leading business executives to Austin, Texas, to discuss the economy, not a single representative from the entertainment industry was invited.

But if Hollywood is losing a friend, it is gaining a president who appears likely to do what Clinton did not: side with the entertainment industry on almost every important issue, from easing caps on television station ownership to allowing the industry to police the sex and violence in its content.

“Mr. Bush has the potential to be much more friendly to the entertainment and media industry where it counts,” said Christopher Dixon, an analyst at UBS Warburg in New York, an investment banking firm. “It’s one thing to show up at movie premieres and fund-raisers; it’s another to accelerate the review process for mergers.”

Dixon and other analysts expect such changes mainly because of Bush’s broader pro-business sentiments, not because he is particularly inclined to grant the entertainment industry any breaks. Bush and his economic advisors have signaled that they will look to reduce regulations faced by an assortment of industries, from software to petroleum.

“The main thing Hollywood has going for it is that this administration is pro-business,” said Reed Hundt, a principal at McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm, and chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for four years during the Clinton administration.

“In fact, it would be better to be selling oil instead of celluloid,” Hundt said. “But everybody in business will find friendly ears in this administration.”

Bush does have a contingent of supporters in Hollywood, but it is a small, quiet group whose members tend to have long-standing loyalties to the Republican Party rather than personal connections to the president-elect.

Perhaps the most prominent is A. Jerrold Perenchio, the reclusive chairman of Univision Communications, one of the nation’s largest Spanish-language media companies. The billionaire contributed $507,500 to the Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee during the last election cycle.

Richard Parsons, co-chief operating officer of the newly formed AOL Time Warner, was considered for a Cabinet position in the Bush administration. Ultimately a lesser position was offered and he turned it down, associates said.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., is a staunch conservative. But associates of Murdoch said that, though he is ideologically aligned with Bush, he is more closely acquainted with Vice President Al Gore, partly because his son and Gore’s daughter attended Harvard University together.

Terry Semel, former co-chairman of Warner Bros., voted for Bush. He has visited him in Austin and held a reception for the candidate at his Bel-Air home in 1999. But Semel also gave generously to the Democratic Party and acknowledged that his relationship with Bush is not particularly close. Asked whether he could get the president-elect on the phone, Semel joked, “Surely before he was president.”

The industry’s lack of connections to Bush contrasts with two decades of close ties between the White House and Hollywood, dating to President Reagan. Even the elder George Bush was close to such Hollywood players as Jerry Weintraub, 62, a movie producer who has a vacation home near the Bush compound on the coast of Maine.

Many in entertainment noted their industry’s absence at the recent Bush economic summit, attended by 36 executives from industries ranging from micro-processors to farm equipment.

Scott McClellan, who will be deputy press secretary in the Bush White House, said the president-elect did not mean to snub Hollywood. He pointed out that Jack Welch, outgoing chairman of General Electric Co., parent company of NBC, attended. He said the event was merely a “starting point” for a dialogue Bush intends to have with industry leaders.

Asked whether their apparent isolation from Bush made the industry vulnerable, many Hollywood executives shrugged, saying close ties to presidents don’t always pay off.

“Look at what Clinton did to us,” said Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. “He ordered the Federal Trade Commission to see whether we were indulging in deceptive advertising.”

Valenti was referring to Clinton’s role in requesting a report on Hollywood’s marketing of violent films that became one of the most embarrassing episodes for the industry in years. The report accused Hollywood of targeting teens with its most violent fare. Studio executives were forced to defend their practices to a hostile Senate committee before banks of television cameras.

That was the latest in a series of decisions from the Clinton White House that many in entertainment considered betrayals, from failing to knock down overseas trade barriers for Hollywood movies to declining to protect the industry from the V-chip rating system.

Even as Clinton was packing up to leave office this week, the surgeon general he appointed, David Satcher, issued a report linking violent programming to aggressive behavior in children.

Despite this antagonism, Hollywood’s leading players continued to support Clinton and shelled out millions of dollars for Gore, largely because of their alignment with Democrats on such issues as abortion rights and education.

“We shared agreement with the president on issues much larger than the interests of the entertainment community,” said Andy Spahn, a senior executive at DreamWorks SKG, whose co-founders--Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen--were among Clinton’s most generous donors.

Overall, the film, television and music industries contributed $33 million during the 2000 election cycle, with $20.6 million, or 62%, going to Democrats, the Center for Responsive Politics reported.

Under Bush, the entertainment industry is poised for a host of regulatory rollbacks. For example, many expect the new administration to ease, if not eliminate, limits on the number of local television stations networks can own.

Michael Powell, presumed nominee to become chairman of the FCC--and the son of Colin L. Powell--is widely expected to ease caps on cross-ownership of separate media outlets in single markets.

That would be a boon to media titans such as Murdoch’s News Corp., which recently acquired a second television station in New York while owning the New York Post. News Corp. probably would have faced a more difficult time getting approval for such an arrangement under a Clinton or Gore administration. In the same category is Tribune Co., which gained ownership of The Times and KTLA in Los Angeles when it acquired Times Mirror Co. last year.

Scrutiny of deals also is expected to diminish under the Bush administration. The merger of America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc., examined by regulators for a full year before it was finally approved last week, probably would have been resolved in a fraction of the time, media analysts said.

The one question many in entertainment have about Bush is how active his administration will be in policing sex and violence in movies and on television.

Some in entertainment anticipate a thawing of the industry’s relationship with Bush. Norm Pattiz, founder of the Westwood One radio programming company and a top Clinton and Gore donor, said both sides need to be pragmatic.

“This hasn’t historically been Bush country,” Pattiz said. “But he hasn’t been president of the United States. I’m probably not going to throw a fund-raiser for him, but I’ll be as supportive as I can.”

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