In the wake of Pulp Fiction, the Weinstein brothers were favorite sons at Disney, and Eisner frequently prodded them to expand their reach. As Miramax racked up profits and the Disney studios floundered, Harvey Weinstein was sometimes embarrassed when Eisner taunted Joe Roth in his presence, asking why Roth couldn’t run the Disney studios as successfully as the Weinsteins ran Miramax. After Katzenberg left, the Weinsteins had to report to Roth (he took charge after Bill Mechanic left), and it hardly helped their relationship. Still, the Weinsteins were generally allowed to do whatever they wanted, including Bob Weinstein’s Dimension films, aimed at younger audiences.
Eisner had often encouraged Harvey Weinstein to create a Miramax cable channel, a venue for Miramax’s growing film library and for original programming that would compete with the increasingly successful Home Box Office. In the summer of 1997, Weinstein brought Disney a deal in which Miramax would acquire a half interest with Cablevision in two existing channels, Bravo and the Independent Film Channel (IFC), and would create a third Miramax channel. The cost of the deal for Disney was $312.5 million.
But Peter Murphy, head of strategic planning, balked.
“This is pure gold!” Weinstein protested.
“We’re not ready,” Murphy replied. Pressed by Weinstein, he acknowledged that he liked the deal, but “the powers that be”—meaning Eisner—had said no.
Weinstein pressed the case with Eisner, but made no headway. “We’re not moving in that direction,” Eisner said, meaning cable. Weinstein reluctantly abandoned the idea; the channels were later sold to NBC for $1.4 billion.
Whatever the merits of the deal, Disney was still struggling with the Cap Cities acquisition. The ABC network’s first full year under Disney ownership was little short of a disaster. Tarses had arrived to begin her new job in June. Eisner had a meeting with Harbert to persuade him to stay, but he couldn’t really explain what his duties as chairman were, so Harbert exercised his option to leave. Putting aside the management turmoil—the messy hiring of Tarses, Ovitz’s firing, and the departure of Harbert—the network that had fallen to third place was barely ahead of the Fox network, which ran only seven hours of prime-time programming a week. The fading “Roseanne” was in its last year; co-star John Goodman had quit the previous spring. Neither Eisner nor Iger had liked the dark drama “Nothing Sacred,” about a Catholic priest, but deferred to Tarses. It quickly floundered against the NBC comedies on Thursday night. “Spin City,” a DreamWorks production starring Michael J. Fox, broke into the top ten, but of course it rankled that it was a Katzenberg production.
Apart from the alarming decline in the ratings, the idea that Disney could quickly reprogram ABC into a haven for family-oriented comedies was in shambles. Although she paid lip service to ABC as “the family network,” Tarses showed barely disguised contempt for the lower-brow, working-class comedies that had been the backbone of the ABC lineup, preferring edgier, younger, urban comedies like “Over the Top” with Tim Curry and “Hiller and Diller” with Kevin Nealon, both of which soon failed.
The network seethed with resentments, jealousies, and turf battles. Just as Ovitz had been a marked man from the beginning, Tarses came to the job already enveloped in controversy from the Ohlmeyer matter. With Ovitz gone, only Iger could protect her, but he was in New York, and she was alone in Hollywood. Eisner had distanced himself. Harbert had naturally resented her. Development head Stuart Bloomberg, a close friend of Iger’s, saw her as blocking his own initiatives. The knives were drawn, and the complaints flowed freely: Tarses didn’t return phone calls; she was petty and vindictive; she was fragile and emotional, sometimes crying in front of colleagues. When her boyfriend, Robert Morton, was fired from the Letterman show (but still being paid to develop shows for Letterman’s production company), ABC gave him a $2 million per year production/development deal, which triggered howls of nepotism. Harbert said he had no choice, given that Ovitz had already approved the arrangement. ABC programming executives seethed when Morton started showing up at network meetings, pontificating on branding and other corporate strategies. It didn’t help that Tarses had to carry the burden of being the first woman president of a network at the same time as she was perceived as lacking any real authority. Rumors that she would be fired or demoted circulated almost constantly.
Partly as a way to lay these rumors to rest, Tarses agreed that a New York Times Magazine reporter, Lynn Hirschberg, could follow her around during the 1997 development season, culminating in that year’s “up front” presentations to advertisers. She failed to mention this to Iger. The ABC presentation that year was at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. As the curtain rose, Tarses was seated at center stage, her back to the audience, wearing her trademark Armani pantsuit, watching a big-screen episode of “NYPD Blue.” As the spotlight focused on her, she swiveled her chair around, stood up, and moved to a podium. “What…you were expecting someone else?” she said. There were awkward laughs at the reference to the rumors of her demise. Then she introduced ABC’s new branding campaign: “TV is good,” which left advertisers scratching their heads. When had TV been “bad”?
Eisner and Iger congratulated Tarses at the party afterward at a Rockefeller Center restaurant, but Eisner was unimpressed with her, later badgering Iger with derogatory comments and complaints. Then Tarses gave the go-ahead for “Arsenio,” as a mid-season replacement, without consulting Eisner. Eisner had hated the pilot, in which Arsenio Hall plays a sports broadcaster. Iger ordered her to cancel the show. She resisted, ignoring Iger’s calls for three days. When he flew to Los Angeles, she stood him up at an eight o’clock breakfast meeting, later claiming she had overslept. Then, in late June, Iger told her that he was promoting Stu Bloomberg to chairman of ABC, and she would have to report to Bloomberg.
Just two weeks later, on July 7, Tarses’s photo was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine: “Jamie Tarses’ Fall, as Scheduled” by Lynn Hirschberg. To just about everyone in Hollywood, it was a devastating story for Tarses, the worst of it being Tarses’s own words:
“Someone said this job was supposed to be fun. Maybe at some point that’s going to start.”
“It’s no wonder that I feel a little paranoid and beat up.”
“I never had a mentor, and sometimes, like today, I think that would be really helpful. Men have an easier time having mentors. I always felt I had to do it on my own.”
“Sometimes I wish they would just fire me. It would be so much easier.”
And so on. At ABC, there was a collective intake of breath. Any one of the quoted comments would have been enough to get her fired.
At one point in the story, Tarses calls Iger in New York, as Hirschberg listens in: “Hey Bob,” she says. “How are you? Really? What’s wrong? What lawsuit? Can’t tell me? That’s OK.” She then discusses whether to make an offer for another season of “Roseanne.” The problem was that Iger had no idea a reporter was listening, and was stunned to see the conversation in print. He wanted to fire Tarses immediately, but Eisner stopped him. “Wait,” he urged. “Be patient. Do it on your schedule, not hers.”
Just two weeks later, at an annual television writers’ conference in Pasadena, Bloomberg and Tarses appeared together onstage, with Tarses announcing, “I am staying at ABC. I am deeply committed to it and I am very, very excited.” Bloomberg added, unconvincingly, “We are having a really good time.”
And so Tarses stayed. Despite the soap-operatic management turmoil, Eisner liked to say that all the network needed was one breakthrough hit. London-born Michael Davies, who was developing “alternative” series for Disney’s Buena Vista television unit, thought he had one, a curious hybrid of game show and adventure, about a group of contestants, or “castaways,” on a desert island.
Davies was so low in the Disney hierarchy that he was pretty much left on his own. Even so, he felt he wasn’t making a very good impression. In contrast to the hardworking ethos of the place, he was erratic. He stayed out late, going to bars a
nd restaurants. He dressed in mismatched jackets and pants, with his tie askew. He traveled to London frequently to visit his friends in British television, though he did make deals with many of them, buying U.S. rights to shows like Charlie Parsons’s “The Big Breakfast,” a live two-hour talk show. Davies had been a fan of Parsons ever since “Network 7,” another show produced by Parsons. “Network 7” used a variety of formats, one of them a variation of the castaways idea, in which four people—a soap opera star, a TV drama star, an ex-convict, and a stockbroker—were stranded on an island. The resulting special mixed elements of Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe, and “Gilligan’s Island.” It was just the kind of thing that appealed to Davies.
One day Parsons mentioned that he wanted to revive his island idea with a show called “Survive,” this time with an elimination element. Davies leaped at the idea, and the two developed a pitch explaining the logistics and rules. At ABC, they met with Bloomberg, who passed. So did CBS and NBC. But Lauren Corrao at Fox loved it. “I want this,” she said. She recruited a producer named Mark Burnett for the show and assigned Fox business affairs to wrap up a contract.
Then, in September 1995, Disney’s acquisition of ABC was announced. Under pressure from Disney, ABC took a look at everything Buena Vista had in development, and Davies was told to move “Survive” to ABC. Corrao was furious. Bloomberg gave Davies $130,000 to develop the idea, though he warned that it would be a “tough sell.” Davies and Parsons built their own plastic model of a tropical island setting, complete with a tribal council setting. It was admittedly cheap-looking, but workable, they thought. They expanded their treatment and did a sample video. Parsons and his partner, Waheed Alli, flew from London to Los Angeles for a meeting with Jamie Tarses. They explained the concept: the teams, or “tribes”; the physical contests; the elimination angle—one person would be voted off the island after each episode until there was just one winner. The possibilities for intrigue, politics, and betrayal were tremendous, which, when they thought about it, wasn’t all that different from life at ABC. They showed her the island model and then the video, which concluded with the slogan “Action. Bravery. Commitment.” followed by the ABC logo.
“How do you pilot it?” Tarses asked. “Naturally, you can’t really pilot it,” Davies explained. “This is something no one’s ever done before, but you can’t really do just one episode and then cancel it because of the way it’s set up. You just have to film the whole series.” Davies realized it was an unorthodox approach. In prime-time television, the networks depended on pilots to evaluate a show’s chances of success and, more important, to preview for potential advertisers. Plus, the show would be expensive, at least by the standards of the cheap alternative programming Davies was supposed to be developing. The total cost to ABC would be $13 million for the first season.
Tarses looked skeptical. Still, she complimented their effort and didn’t reject it out of hand. She didn’t seem to balk at the price. Davies thought she had asked good questions and that she liked the idea. Parsons wasn’t optimistic. “This is going to be a hard sell,” he said, and Davies agreed.
In fact, Tarses later claimed that she loved “Survivor.” Could she green-light it on her own? It was only her second week on the job. In her version of events, she explained the concept to Iger and said that it would be hard, if not impossible, to create a pilot. Iger said he’d have to think about it. The next day, he said no. “I’m obsessed with game shows,” Tarses later said. “ ‘Survivor’ was the neatest thing I’d ever heard. It was going to cost $13 million. I went to Iger. I needed his support. He said no. I begged him. He vetoed it. He would not give me the money I wanted to do this. They wouldn’t let me,” she said. (Iger flatly denies this, saying Tarses never mentioned “Survivor” to him and he knew nothing about the show.)
Tarses never formally rejected “Survivor.” When ABC’s development deal with Parsons expired, ABC didn’t renew it. Davies was disappointed but not surprised. Parsons sold the idea to Swedish television, and “Expedition: Robinson” aired the following year. While it attracted large audiences, its success was marred by the suicide of one of the participants. Eventually Parsons sold rights to a U.S. version to Mark Burnett, the same producer Fox had wanted to bring to the show.
At the urging of Bloomberg and Tarses, Iger had brought Davies to ABC from Buena Vista in late 1997 to be in charge of “alternative” programming. Under Iger’s leadership, ABC had scored a big success with “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” which wasn’t a traditional scripted show, and had launched “That’s Incredible!” which featured real people performing stunts that ranged from the amazing to the ridiculous. Iger encouraged Davies to come up with some new, preferably cheap, “base hits” that could be plugged into the ABC schedule. This was a variation on Eisner’s “singles and doubles” strategy for the movie business.
Tarses was eager for Davies to develop “alternative” comedies, so he bought the rights to “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” a British improvisational show, and developed “The Man Show,” with comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who’d worked with Davies on “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” “The Man Show” was something of a cross between a variety show and Animal House, and the brazenly lowbrow show featured plenty of young, bikini-clad women jumping on trampolines and chimpanzees trained to perform scatological stunts. Eisner walked out of a screening. Iger just looked at Davies and shook his head. “Gutsy,” he said, “but you must be out of your mind.” “The Man Show” was sold to Comedy Central, where it ran for six seasons. But after the failures of other Davies-backed shows like “Puppies Present,” hosted by a dog, Davies was marginalized within Disney as someone who belonged in cable. He seemed an embarrassment to Tarses, whose primary interests were traditional comedies and drama.
Later that year, in September 1998, a tape of a new British television show arrived at Davies’s home, sent by one of his friends in London. As he watched it, he was excited. Eisner had repeatedly expressed an interest in reviving the venerable game show “$64,000 Question,” and Davies had been trying to find a way to remake the show ever since. The new show solved the problems he’d encountered with “$64,000 Question.” It was also a “ladder” show, in which winnings rose the longer the player kept delivering correct answers, and with each question, the winnings were at risk. But there was a critical difference: Contestants could quit and take their winnings after they saw the next question and the multiple-choice answers, removing a large element of uncertainty from the bet. And it had another wrinkle, a so-called reality element. A contestant could place a phone call to someone for help in answering a question. In the taped episode Davies watched, a young woman called her father, and they ended up in tears. Davies himself was so moved by the moment he had to brush away his own tears.
He summoned his new assistant at ABC, Andrea Wong. She loved it, too. The pair rushed from their office and bumped into Tarses and Bloomberg. “My God, you have to see this,” Davies exclaimed, practically dragging them to the nearest television. But when it was over, Davies’s spirits sank. Both said they “liked” it, but it was obvious that neither “loved” it. “This might work on cable,” Tarses said. When Davies said he wanted it for prime time, they both looked at him like he was crazy. “This is so good, someone else is going to do it,” he warned.
Davies wanted to get on the next plane to London to lock up the rights. Bloomberg said no. Davies called Paul Smith, the show’s creator and producer at Celador in London. “I want it for ABC,” Davies said, though he had no authorization.
“Everyone wants it,” Smith replied. He was thinking of an auction. Davies knew he had to stop that. ABC would never get into a bidding war. He called his friend Ben Silverman, the most aggressive agent he knew in London. Silverman was at William Morris, the agency that had represented Smith when he produced “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes” twenty years earlier. “I want this,” Davies said. “If you get me this show, I will get you a package and you’ve got a deal here.”
Davies could hardly believe he was making promises he had no idea whether he could keep. And after fruitless pleas to Tarses and Bloomberg, he had to call Silverman back; ABC wouldn’t give him the money for a prime-time commitment, only a pilot.
Shortly after, Eisner and Iger convened a meeting of top ABC, Touchstone, and Buena Vista executives to discuss development projects and the upcoming season. Davies wasn’t specifically ordered not to speak, but Tarses made it clear he was not to bring up any of his offbeat “alternative” ideas, which would only distract from the important scripted dramas and sitcoms. After Bloomberg and Tarses made their presentations, Eisner went around the table, randomly asking people what they were working on. Suddenly his gaze landed on Davies. “What do you have?” he asked.
Davies took a deep breath. He felt he only had one shot, so he’d have to choose between “Survivor” and the British game show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Tarses was glaring at him. He knew he was about to commit corporate suicide. “Actually, I brought a tape,” he said. “You know how you’re always asking about the ‘$64,000 Question?’ This is a game show, and it’s doing huge numbers in Britain. This is the show we’ve been talking about for six years.” He got up and handed a tape of the show to Eisner. Tarses said nothing.
The next day, he got an email from Eisner, who had watched the tape. “I can’t believe I like it, but I really like it.”
Iger, too, watched the tape, and called Davies. “I want this on the air.”
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