Creativity in the Face of Cutbacks

For media companies, word has come down from Madison Avenue and Wall Street as if delivered from Mt. Sinai: That cascade of dot-com money has dried up. Stocks have gone south. To meet fiscal-year projections, do more with less.

In certain fields, “belt-tightening,” “downsizing” and other euphemisms for firing people and shedding assets all point in the same inexorable direction.

Television, however, has its own rules. There are so many hours in a day stations must fill somehow, and putting on a test pattern doesn’t do anybody much good. Sure, executives can cut back on staff, reduce expensive perks, tighten the spigot that rained money on writers fortunate enough to have driven past the set of “Friends” or “Seinfeld.” Yet someone ultimately has to be there to order, produce and schedule programs, and 22 hours a week of bosomy women singing “La Boheme” won’t keep vast numbers of demographically desirable viewers glued to their sets.

How, then, do broadcasters go about the task of reining in costs, and what will it mean for the finished product? Moreover, is it actually possible that attempts to streamline the creative process could be beneficial in certain respects and lead to better programming--or at minimum no increase in the current mediocrity quotient?

Clearly, the abacuses of overworked bean-counters were getting a workout even before the tragedy of Sept. 11, and economic fallout from those events has only exacerbated television’s financial woes. As a result, the Hollywood trade papers have been filled with doom-and-gloom pronouncements from network and studio executives serving up tough talk for tough times.

There will be less money for writers, they say, and fewer cushy deals for doing zilch. Less will be spent on production, both in terms of shaving expenses off series and ordering cheaper programs, including those of the unscripted variety, despite their ratings malaise this season.

The scripted programs that are produced, meanwhile, will be made to go further, spread across multiple channels in an instant-rerun formula for which networks have coined the Orwellian term “repurposing.” In a nutshell, that means shows such as “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Charmed” turn up on cable channels mere days after their initial telecasts on NBC and the WB network, respectively, to help offset production costs.

Fewer companies will also be around to feed the distribution pipeline, as independent suppliers keep going out of business or paring back operations. A handful of major studios thus provide the vast majority of the prime-time programs we see, with Sony, in perhaps the most dramatic recent maneuver, confirming plans to significantly scale back its television production.

Still, as one agent recently pointed out, most of the belt-tightening measures proposed and implemented thus far have focused on curtailing those who actually make the programs, with little discussion among executives about initiatives that would streamline the production and development process on their end of the equation.

Granted, network and studio honchos have engaged in downsizing when it comes to their staffs, but few have endorsed reductions that would fundamentally change the way they themselves do business or taken steps that would bring more note-scribbling executives closer to obsolescence.

Writers and producers, after all, have long complained about network interference, about the input they receive from multiple layers of TV executives suggesting that a program go in this direction or that--spurred by extensive audience testing and focus-group research usually conducted at considerable expense.

Given the high salaries of top executives and the equally high failure rate for new series, one could ask why these intermediate measures are necessary. Wouldn’t it cost less if executives read scripts, decided whether they liked them, then trusted their judgment enough to jump straight to making episodes, eliminating all the testing and production of pilots, or series prototypes, which generally have zero value if unsold?

Now take that a step further. Send the producers off to make a show without the network insisting that they hire one of two proven actors to star in it--a practice known as a show being “cast contingent,” that invariably drives up the price those actors’ representatives can demand.

Remember, the executives liked the script. They theoretically trusted the producers’ instincts. So why not let them produce without constant parental supervision?

Let them hire no-name actors, relying on TV’s proven ability to create stars better than it recycles them. The worst that could happen is that the shows will fail, which they do 80% of the time anyway. On the upside, maybe networks will get a truer realization of the vision that struck them in the first place. And maybe they won’t end up with another set of expensive video kindling starring Jason Alexander or Bette Midler or Nathan Lane.

In addition, although the number of independent suppliers has dwindled, major conglomerates have clung to the notion of maintaining different production units under their corporate shingle, with a half-dozen companies--CBS Productions, CBS News, Viacom Productions, Spelling Entertainment, Big Ticket Television, Paramount Television--operating at Viacom alone.

In a sense, it’s a theory popularized by the record industry--the idea that having more separate and distinct “labels,” or sources of supply (provided the network owns all of them), increases the opportunity to find hits. Yet such an approach also reflects a top-down philosophy predicated on executives identifying and shaping talent’s creative impulses, as opposed to trusting the people who write, produce and direct programs to stumble upon popular concepts on their own.

This isn’t to say the principle of allowing executives to guide writers is entirely without merit. It’s been fairly well-established, after all, that every creator of a successful television series has a truly awful (or at least utterly noncommercial) show inside them just dying to get out--a monster usually released thanks to the clout a producer invariably acquires by virtue of that earlier hit. Occasionally, and perhaps more often than that, a network or studio type can steer them away from the abyss and toward the big green light.

Nevertheless, there are layers to television development a layperson would doubtless be hard-pressed to fathom--a concept memorably illustrated in the short-lived 1989 CBS series “The Famous Teddy Z.” A mailroom employee at a major talent agency, the title character finds himself suddenly promoted to agent after a Brando-esque star decides he wants Teddy to represent him. When the youth’s disapproving father, who runs a bakery, asks his son what he actually makes during the course of a day, an equally perplexed Teddy replies, “Telephone calls.”

With so much emphasis on cutting costs, one has to wonder what will happen to those who fit this job description--to the thirtysomething presidents, senior vice presidents and wannabe senior vice presidents who hope to make entertainment a career.

Industry consolidation has already led over the last several years to the elimination of countless mid-level management jobs in television production, as companies such as New World, Orion, MTM and Reeves Entertainment ceased to exist. For a time, many of those downsized happily took refuge at Internet start-ups, pocketing lucrative stock options that helped ease the pain of no longer being in show biz.

Unfortunately, the Internet has largely vanished as a market for original entertainment. With further consolidation inevitable, it’s increasingly evident that the next wave of downsized media executives may find themselves with nowhere to go. Indeed, younger folks who pooh-poohed the entertainment industry’s ageism and dismissed 50-year-old elders unable to find work could face a similar predicament long before they escape the coveted 18-to-49 age demographic.

Good riddance, some creative types might say. The network and studio suits are merely overdressed chefs who do little but help spoil the broth. As Ellen DeGeneres quipped to big laughs during her opening monologue at the Emmys, “I think it’s important for us to be here because [terrorists] can’t take away our creativity, our striving for excellence, our joy. Only network executives can do that.”

Yes, that’s right, CBS must be responsible for the mediocre performance of DeGeneres’ sitcom. It certainly wouldn’t do to hold DeGeneres, as executive producer and star, accountable for the inability of something called “The Ellen Show” to galvanize an audience. Must be those meddling executives.

Unpleasant as it is to see people losing their jobs, the sad reality is many already have and more undoubtedly will.

So in that context, could the mandate to do more with less eventually yield a different approach to the corporately homogenized entertainment presently on display--a throwback to days when top network brass made decisions without input from a dozen junior executives and reams of focus-group research?

Based on the rhetoric of the past few months, although anything’s possible, producers and writers had best be careful what they wish for. For although there is much to be said for diminishing bureaucracy, series creators should remember that emptier corporate hallways not only leave fewer people to trifle with their artistic vision, but fewer people to blame.