Too busy to respect TV’s elders

If a society is judged in part by how well it pays homage to its elders, then the television industry has consistently been sorely lacking -- a point underscored again this week when the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences inducted six members into its hall of fame.

Many venerable titans of the medium -- including Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Bob Newhart, Angela Lansbury, Grant Tinker, and producers Norman Lear and David L. Wolper -- attended Wednesday’s induction ceremony in Beverly Hills. It was held in honor of “The Carol Burnett Show’s” Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, “All in the Family’s” Jean Stapleton and producer Bud Yorkin, the late director John Frankenheimer, and costume designer Bob Mackie.

The current crop of industry leaders, however, was virtually nowhere to be found. Not a single programming chief from the broadcast networks was there. Even Hollywood’s trade papers, Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, failed to cover the event.

Granted, these executives are harried. It’s not only a sweeps month, but also networks are busily ordering series concepts for next season. And there’s a black-tie gala, premiere or charity affair, somewhere, just about any night of the week.

Still, the events for which people turn out do say something about priorities, and in this case, their absence only serves to lend credence to ageism charges that have become common among the generation born before the Eisenhower administration.

All those who skipped Wednesday’s ceremony, by the way, missed some eloquent and memorable moments, among them Korman’s riotously funny acceptance speech, in which he publicly expressed his love for Alec Baldwin (a presenter earlier in the evening) and questioned the award-show convention of thanking your family.

“My family’s sitting in front of me, and I love them dearly, but I don’t know what the hell you did to help me,” Korman said.

Lear, who spoke on behalf of Stapleton, observed after watching clips of the inductees that through their body of work, “every one of them have added years to my life. I believe that with all my heart.”

Certainly, the people being honored have made significant contributions to television. Despite their renown and the surplus of available channels, however, the 15th annual hall of fame ceremony will not be televised, the deal having fizzled because the telecast drew weak ratings in years past.

Although indicting the TV business for this might seem like making a mountain out of a molehill, consider the context. A class-action lawsuit about age discrimination against writers -- listing networks, studios and talent agencies as defendants -- is wending its way through the courts.

Only a few weeks ago, meanwhile, Gary H. Miller, a 54-year-old writer-producer who has worked on such series as “Boy Meets World” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” filed his own suit against 20th Century Fox and the WB network for cutting him loose when they shook up the writing staff on “Reba.” They cited a desire, he alleges, to retain some of the sitcom’s “greener writers.”

The studio has called the suit “absolutely baseless.” The merits of the case notwithstanding, what’s most notable is that Miller would be willing to file it at all, given the impact that action will likely have on career prospects.

The message is that at 54, with agents advising him to delete earlier credits from his resume to mask his age, Miller isn’t sure he has a career anymore to sacrifice.

“Believe me, it’s a frightening thing to do.... It’s scary to take on those entities,” he said, alluding to industry giants Fox and AOL Time Warner. Still, he added, “I’ve gotten calls from people I haven’t heard from in a while saying, ‘Go get ‘em.’ ”

To some, the treatment of TV’s emeritus members reflects a short-term mentality, one that leaves little time for tributes to those who came before. From that perspective, few of the famous names at the academy’s hall of fame ceremony have delivered a hot pilot recently, leaving them deficient in the “What have you done for me lately?” department.

“There is no respect for tradition,” veteran manager Bernie Brillstein said in an interview; he’d also touched on that point in a commentary published earlier this week in Daily Variety. “There is no respect for the people who got them there.”

The entertainment industry has always consisted of three types of people: those who want to do it, those who currently do it and those who used to do it. Inevitably, the first and third categories will always far outnumber the second.

That second group, however, has perhaps forgotten that these careers can be fleeting. And although it’s understandable that today’s heavyweights would be preoccupied with concerns that might prolong or shorten their tenures, it’s worth reminding them that they started out in the first category, and no matter how successful they are, they’re going to wind up in the third.