New Tests for NBC’s Survivor

Bob Wright enjoys a sweeping, panoramic view from an office more than 50 floors above the pavement in the General Electric building, but one could argue it’s time, rather than space, that provides his perspective.

Wright, 57, is fast approaching his 15th anniversary as president of NBC, having begun as the network’s president in September 1986. In a business in which executives have been referred to as “Christmas help” due to their often brief tenures, he is by far the longest-lasting network chief ever--having lived through several rounds of cost-cutting, ratings ascents and descents, the loss of NFL football after 33 years, scandal when “Dateline NBC” admitted rigging a crash in a story on GM trucks, Johnny Carson’s retirement and a writers’ strike in 1988.

A onetime prosecutor who served as president of General Electric Financial Services immediately prior to joining NBC, Wright was viewed warily as a corporate “suit” when installed after GE spent $6.28 billion to acquire NBC parent RCA--a perception heightened by his emphasis on cost-cutting and the fact that he replaced Grant Tinker. In fact, Tinker’s casual style during a six-year run as NBC chairman still invokes wistful reverence from those who worked for him (with the notable exception of Howard Stern).

At the time, all three networks had changed hands in short order, and the sense was ABC’s new management, Capital Cities executives Thomas Murphy and Dan Burke, were committed to broadcasting, which couldn’t be said of GE or tightfisted CBS owner Laurence Tisch. As a station manager observed a decade ago, “The big difference is that the ABC guys are old-line professional broadcasters. The fellows at NBC and CBS are not.”

Yet both Wright and GE have persevered through a period of tremendous turmoil in the entertainment industry, and arguably few were more influential than Wright in reshaping the TV business--a process sure to continue on a breakneck pace, with a new flurry of deal-making likely in response to further deregulation by the Bush administration.

Wright’s vision of what lies ahead is notable, then, to the extent in which it’s informed by the past. Shortly after his arrival, he steered NBC into cable television--including the introduction of CNBC, the hugely profitable financial news network that has become a near-addiction for many, who sat glued to the channel last week watching their stock portfolios shrivel.

“I painted a pretty dark picture of what would happen if we didn’t move into [cable],” Wright recalled. “It was probably darker than it needed to be, but I was trying to get people’s attention.”

Wright also led a vigorous fight to eliminate federal rules that effectively barred networks from owning--and being owned by--major studios by blocking them from producing and owning TV shows, in a 1989 speech calling those limitations “a Berlin Wall” around the networks. When that wall came tumbling down in the early 1990s, the TV industry underwent its own rapid revolution, with Disney acquiring ABC and CBS changing hands twice--sold first to Westinghouse, then Viacom.

Other wrenching changes are no doubt on the way, even as GE grapples with its own future. Wright was appointed vice chairman of GE last summer while retaining his previous responsibilities, as the company braces for the eventual retirement of Chairman Jack Welch, a towering corporate figure.

Moreover, NBC again finds itself on a downward ratings arc and has sought to stem that slide by naming former “Today” producer Jeff Zucker president of NBC Entertainment--a move signaling to many New York’s assertion of greater control over the West Coast operation.

Wright makes no bones about the fact he is disappointed NBC lagged behind the curve in developing alternative programs such as ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and CBS’ “Survivor,” though he also sees the success of those shows as grounds for optimism.

“Just when I was starting to get down about our own and everybody else’s ability to put on hit programs, and the [inability] to break through to the audience, along comes ‘Millionaire,’ and the fact that it and ‘Survivor’ have such a humble background is actually quite exciting,” he said.

“The fact it happened is a very good thing, and we have to figure out how to get on that bandwagon. I don’t mean copy that show, but recognize [that it’s] telling us something--that there’s a willingness [to watch], and our distribution modality has got a lot of life in it if we can get off our butts and put things on the air that people are really excited about.”

Still, NBC faces a delicate balancing act, as one advertiser pointed out during a presentation Monday, hoping to dip into the murky waters of unscripted entertainment without undermining the network’s core image of “Must-See TV” quality.

“That is a little bit of what I think we have been missing on the entertainment side,” Wright suggested, alluding to the immediacy of the “infotainment” Zucker oversaw at “Today.” “We don’t want to lose our scripted sensibilities, but we need to get that sensibility in there.”

In regard to Zucker, he added, “This is his time. He has those different worlds in his gun sights.” (This represents a departure for network executives, who frequently worry so much about wearing targets it’s difficult to focus on aiming at them.)

As during the 1980s, when he brought broadcasters a bleak message to adapt or perish, Wright maintains that various constituencies must accept that the TV world has changed. This includes the networks’ affiliated TV stations, who recently petitioned federal regulators to protect them from abusive practices and control over local broadcasters perpetrated by the networks. Wright called the action “foolish” and “a blatant attempt to lobby” a new Federal Communications Commission that clearly favors deregulation.

Indeed, Wright contends that most restrictions governing television are arbitrary and now antiquated, including limits on how many TV stations a single entity can possess and a rule preventing foreign companies from owning broadcasters.

He also anticipates an increase in what are known as duopoly situations, where a company owns two TV stations in the same city--sharing programming and, in the case of NBC and the Pax TV network, repeating network series and newscasts on the secondary channel.

While broadcasters fear such arrangements threaten to dilute their unique franchise--and critics rightfully fret over consolidation of too much media power in too few hands--Wright dismissed the latter notion and said of the former, “In this world, two is better than one. You’re better off with two outlets. You have twice as much opportunity for people to see you.

“You can’t look at it and say, ‘Who’s going to watch the newscast again?’ You have to say, ‘I have a chance to put my newscast on at a different time. People are going to watch it.’ . . . Years from now, it will look so commonplace.”

The trend Wright cites--stretching programming over more outlets--also has implications for the industry’s labor unions in terms of residual payments, a key sticking point in current negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and networks and studios.

Wright acknowledged that the mega-merged companies sitting across the bargaining table from writers today are better equipped to weather work stoppages than they were 13 years ago. About the only solace he allowed the guild was his agreement that the fact Fox pays a discounted residual rate--dating back to its days as a start-up network--is “ridiculous.”

NBC recently implemented layoffs, and Wright remains cautious about a slowing economy and its impact on the advertising market. Asked about the more optimistic appraisal emanating from top CBS brass in New York, he quipped, “They tend to be very rosy people. I think it’s the other side of 6th Avenue. Obviously, the whole economy is different over there.”

He also remains comfortable with the decision to cut loose the NFL, saying Disney Chairman Michael Eisner--who between ABC and ESPN is paying over $1 billion annually in rights fees to the league--”wears a big cross on his back” to carry that commitment around. NBC, of course, has taken its own risks in terms of sports, most notably committing $3.55 billion in 1995 to obtain the broadcast rights to five consecutive Olympic Games, beginning last year and running biannually through 2008.

As he looks back, Wright can laugh about both deals he made and those he didn’t. During the first 60 days of his tenure at NBC, he recalls being presented the opportunity to buy 51% of the Discovery Channel, a controlling position in CNN and a package of networks that included MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Showtime--the last for a then-heady $400 million--all assets currently valued well into the billions.

Of that time, Wright mused, “They all could have been done, but under the circumstances, and the fact I had been here such a short time, I couldn’t do them.”

Looking ahead, a major hurdle will be ascertaining the future of distributing entertainment content via the Internet, which has cooled after initial enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. “Nothing that has that kind of usage is worth zero,” Wright noted, but the process has been delayed as companies pull back and contemplate strategy--good news for traditional media outlets, he said, providing them time to “get a second breath” as they anticipate the next wave of change and innovation.

As for precisely what form that wave will take, and when it will hit, nobody really knows. Bob Wright may have an expansive view from up here, but with all the clouds on the horizon, not even he can see that far.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.