The Invisible Manager, by Ken Auletta

The New Yorker, July 27, 1998, page 26

(about Mel Karmazin, president and C.O.O. of CBS; "Moonves" is Les Moonves, is president and C.E.O. of CBS Television)

Excerpt about "Brooklyn South" found on page 28, column 2+:

Karmazin has not been involved in programming decisions, although he is often blunt in his opinions. Over the past few seasons, Moonves made some high-priced gambles - on shows with Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, and Danny Aiello - and they failed. In over-all viewership, in 1997 CBS came in second to NBC for the secnod year in a row, but the network was fourth in attracting the most desirable age group (eighteen to forty-nine).

Karmazin stayed away as Moonves and other executives planned the 1998-1999 season, and some of the strategic differences between the stations and the network emerged. Jonathan Klein, the executive in charge of the fourteen CBS-owned stations - all in major markets - was given a larger voice in planning the new schedule, and he pushed for urban shows. "I wanted no more Winnebagos on CBS," he says.

A big debate this year was over whether to grant a second season to Steven Bochco's "Brooklyn South," a police show from the creator of such hits as "NYPD Blue" and "Hill Street Blues." Two years ago, CBS lured Bochco away from ABC with a contract that made them partners, giving CBS exclusive rights to three of Bochco's creations. But the Monday-night drama reached just over twelve per cent of all possible viewers when it premiered, in September of 1997, and steadily fell to less than half that number by the following April. Bochco lobbied hard to keep the show on the air, promising that he would personally help shape most of the second-season episodes.

Despite these assurances, the show was cancelled. Moonves says, "The show did get better," and adds, "It was a very difficult decision," but he feels that he was left no choice when the audience kept shrinking. Bochco said that he had to call Moonves for two days straight before he finally got the bad news. He contrasted Moonves with NBC's Fred Silverman, who kept "Hill Street Blues" on the air in 1981 after a dismal first season because "he believed in the show." "What I see is a desire to get big ratings fast and, if they don't get them, move on," Bochco told me. "That seems not to acknowledge the possibility of shows improving in the hands of writers and producers they believe in. If Les had said to me three, four months ago, 'I don't like the show,' I might have had my feelings hurt, but I'd understand. What I was hearing was 'The show is getting better.'"

Bochco seemed to take the rejection personally. "I said to Les, 'I'm not a supplier. I'm not a guy who comes in with a sample case and says, 'Buy this show. Buy this show."' I'm a tiny little company in partnership with a network. I'm not saying what I do is better, but it's more personal. We sort of handcraft this stuff. When I go in to my partner, I'm not talking as a salesman but as a guy who writes it and produces it and casts it."

Though Bochco's contract officially requires the development of two more programs, he says, "I've expressed to Les some very serious misgivings about our professional relationship...I'm not sure he can do anything that would alter my feeling about the seriousness of our problem." Moonves disputes Bochco's account and says, "I look forward to doing two more seasons with him"