(This is the latest chapter of a book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” For previous chapters, in chronological order, scroll under “News and Quick Comments.”)
The TV landscape had become littered with fallen fourth networks.
There were failures by big media companies – Paramount (often), Mutual, Metromedia, more — and by a TV manufacturer and a warehouse mogul. Then, surprisingly, Fox made it work. It would eventually give us “The Simpsons”(shown here), “American Idol,” “The X-Files,” “24” and more.
It made mistakes; people usually do, especially in television. But it also had three key things – persistence, originality and an open checkbook.
Especially that checkbook.
Flush with money from tabloids in Australia and England, Rupert Murdoch went on a buying spree. He bought the Twentieth Century-Fox studio for $580 million, then spent four times as much to buy the Metromedia TV stations.
That gave him prominent stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Washington, D.C. He would soon buy a Boston one; the rest would be a ragtag collection of affiliates.
That was the first burst. It let the Fox network begin in 1986 – seemingly facing a lifetime of being semi-noticed. Then — eight years later – another spree began.
Fox spent $1.6 billion for four years of pro football. It invested in several more station groups, with many of their stations switching networks.
Now Fox had our attention – football does that – and had the stations. But a network needs good programs. At first, that got wobbly.
Just as Overmyer had done two decades earlier, Fox would start with a latenight show … and would botch it.
Joan Rivers had become Johnny Carson’s permanent guest host. Then she said she saw an NBC memo listing people who might take over if Carson retired. It had David Letterman, David Brenner, David Steinberg (“all the Davids,” she said) and seven others – but no women and no Rivers.
She fumed … and later began secret negotiations with Fox. The deal, she wrote in “Still Talking” (Random House, 1991), seemed to have everything; she got $5 million a year for three years, plus a promise that everything would match “Carson standards.”
Carson fumed that he hadn’t been warned; he never talked to her again. There was rage and controversy – just what a new network needs
The show’s first hour had had rock ‘n’ roll energy (guests were Cher, David Lee Roth, Elton John AND Pee-wee Herman), big ratings and a festive studio audience.
Too festive. It seemed like every statement was followed by either laughter or applause. This was no way to conduct a conversation or a talk show.
Even before the show started, Rivers wrote, there was constant sniping over everything from studio size to limousine service: “Looking back, I think we all should have taken a week off. In show-business, fights always seem to become overemotional.”
These did, with Fox executives on one side and Rivers and her husband (Edgar Rosenberg) on the other. “The show suffered a terminal version of ‘The Bickersons,” Rivers wrote.
The arguments also involved booking and Rivers’ acerbic humor. Both sides, she wrote, “were behaving like children. (I) had been hired because I could push the limits of TV and was now being told, ‘Don’t make waves.’”
Ratings tumbled, but Rivers argued that was relative: The show did well in the cities, where Fox owned strong stations. In other places, it had modest ratings, often on UHF stations that didn’t get many viewers.
This was eight years before the second spending spree. As for viewers beyond the cities, she said: “They’d watch us if they could find us.”
After seven months, Fox canceled the show and gave Rivers $2 million to go away. It began building “The Wilton North Report,” a complex show that would have hosts, plus a serious interviewer, a comedy interviewer, comedians and more.
In the mean time, it kept “The Late Show” going with a reported 27 guest hosts, some well-known and some not. At one point, an obscure guest looked at an obscure host and asked the question viewers were pondering: “Who are you?” The show had fallen far from its Cher/Elton/Joan days.
To stop the merry-go-round, Fox let young comedian Arsenio Hall host the final 13 weeks before “Wilton North.” This was the opposite of network meddling. In “Arsenio” (HarperCollins, 1993), Aileen Joyce offers Hall’s recollection:
“Whatever I felt like doing, I did. I figured I’d probably never be back anyway, so why not? I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
“When they left me alone, I realized what I was doing was producing myself. They did what had never been done: They gave this Black kid from Cleveland a chance to do a show.”
And it worked. Hall seemed to have a hip sense of fashion, of humor and of guests. “It was spontaneous, loose fun that turned into a party,” he said later.
Fox reportedly offered to have him host “Wilton North”; he refused and created his own syndicated talk show. It lasted five fairly strong years; “Wilton North” lasted 11 episodes.
Staring at that debacle, one might conclude that these people shouldn’t be running a network. That was only partly true.
On April 5, 1987 (six weeks before Rivers’ departure), Fox laucnhed its primetime schedule, with only two nights a week. It added a third night in ‘89, but then trimmed back to two nights plus a movie.
In those days, Fox sometimes made a key mistake – making shows that were a lot like ones on the big-three networks.
“Mr. President” had George C. Scott, but it was stiff and forgettable. Other comedies — “Duet,” “Open House” (with Ellen DeGeneres in support), “Good Grief,” “Daddy Dearest,” Wild Oats” — were pleasant, but not something that would get you trying a new network.
It was a mistake that Fox quickly avoided. With three networks into same-old, it went in fresh directions.
A prime example came on its first night of prime time. “Married … With Children” was filled with abrasive humor; a co-creator fondly called it “the anti-’Cosby Show.’”
At first, “Married” had the advantage of being on a night (Sundays) when the big networks had no comedies. Then NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff put “My Two Dads” against it, declaring that he might have “put a stake in the heart” of the new network.
Not so. “My Two Dads” lasted three seasons; “Married … With Children” lasted 11, establishing the fact that a fourth network can thrive if its shows feel different.
Fox followed up with genres that were often overlooked by the Big Three:
— Youth-oriented shows. The “21 Jump Street” drama – young cops undercover in high school – arrived a week after “Married … With Children.” Following soon were “Booker,” “The New Adventures of Barry Baxter,” “Second Chance” and, in 1990, the big one: At one point, “Beverly Hills, 90210” was reportedly being watched by 71 percent of all teens. In college, sororities that generally avoided TV gathered to watch the show.
— Science fiction and fantasy. That included “Werewolf,” “Alien Nation” and (in 1993) the superbly crafted “X-Files.”
— Non-fiction. “The Reporters” (1987) was quite awful, but “America’s Most Wanted” (1988) and “Cops” (1989) had an earnest energy. Others included “Beyond Tomorrow,” “Sightings” and David Lynch’s “American Chronicles.” And “Totally Hidden Videos” prospered briefly, before reports came that one segment had been partly faked.
— Sketch comedy. Once the heart of TV, that had been banished to late night. Then Fox boomed in with “The Tracey Ullman Show,” “Haywire,” “In Living Color” and “Edge,” a short-lived show stuffed with clever bits.
(In one, Jennifer Aniston was an aspiring supermodel who called herself Em, “because that’s the letter after Elle.” She added: “I looked it up.”)
— Others, including a variety show (“Townsend Television”) and a whimsical cowboy show (“The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.).
And winding through all of this was another key trend: Even when “The Cosby Show” was No. 1, TV was mostly white. Fox – all-white in prime time for its first four years – saw an opening.
It had “True Colors,” “Martin.” “Living Single” (Queen Latifah’s TV debut) and “Roc,” with the immense talent of Charles Dutton, a two-time Tony-winner. And it had “Townsend Television” and “In Living Color,” one of the shows that made Fox stand out.
“In Living Color” started with a meeting at Fox. At the time, Keenen Ivory Wayans told Nelson George in the show’s companion book (Warner, 1991): “I really didn’t have a desire to do TV. I wanted to do movies.”
But the movie people didn’t show up and Wayans began telling the TV people about just-for-fun videos he made with friends, long ago.
He had grown up in New York as the second of 10 kids. “I was always a weird kid, but I just couldn’t figure out what was strange about me. Watching Richard Pryor, I got a sense that it was my humor.”
For Fox, he crafted a show filled with sharp humor. “It’s institution bashing,” he said. “It’s taking all the sacred cows and making fun of them.”
He included whites (Jim Carrey did quite well afterward) and Latinas. (Jennifer Lopez was one of the Fly Girls” dancers, choreographed by Rosie Perez.) But mostly, this was the home of break-out Black stars — David Alan Grier, Tommy Davidson and four Wayans siblings – Keenen, Damon, Kim and Shawn.
Shortly before “In Living Color,” Fox revived another abandoned genre.
For more than two decades, there were no animated series in prime time. Then came a fresh notion: Take the odd family that had been in one-minute mini-cartoons on “The Tracey Ullman Show”; give them their own series.
Fox hesitated; it would only order a Christmas special, then consider expanding it. The producers – James Brooks (co-creator of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant” and “Taxi”) and cartoonist Matt Groening – insisted on a series.
“The Simpsons” debuted on Dec. 17, 1989, with (shown here) that Christmas episode. (Homer worked as a Santa, to get money to remove Bart’s tattoos; he also inherited a haggard dog named Santa’s Little Helper.) The series has continued ever since, the longest-running scripted show in the history of prime time TV.
That brought a turning point: For the first time, a Fox show slipped into the annual top-30 of the Nielsen ratings.
“The Simpsons” was No. 28 in 1989-90, No. 30 in ‘92-93. It showed up one more time, at No. 30 in ‘97-98.
Others joined in. “The X-Files” peaked at No. 19 in ‘97-98, “Ally McBeal” at No. 23 in ‘98-99, “Malcolm in the Middle” at No. 28 in 1999-2000, “Temptation Island” at No. 17 in 2000-2001, “House” at No. 9 in 2005-6.
By then, Fox had the show that would reach the top.
“Pop Idol” was a British show, with young singers auditioning. As it was being prepared, producers sent three Simons – Cowell, Fuller and Jones — to pitch an American version.
The first network heard the pitch, then gave a flat no. The second only listened to half of it and said no. The Simons retreated to England … then found a surprise.
Elisabeth Murdoch, then 32, lived in England, where she’d seen “Pop Idol.” She recommended it to her father, Rupert Murdoch.
As Cowell put it in “I Don’t Mean to Be Rude, But …” (Broadway, 2003): “For all the time we spent trying to convince those gray-eyed, balding, bags-under-their-eyes execs at other companies, it was Elisabeth Murdoch who helped us secure the deal.”
The notion also clicked with the Fox executives – especially Mike Darnell, the reality-show chief.
Darnell was “one of network television’s most idiosyncratic and polarizing figures,” Bill Carter wrote in “Desperate Networks” (Doubleday, 2006).
Small (generously listed at 5-foot-2) and given to a rock ‘n roll look, complete with long hair and jeans, he was a former child actor with a love for music and a piano in his office.
Eventually, he would give Fox some of its most bizarre shows, including “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” and “Who’s Your Daddy?” But for now, what appealed to him was showing the worst “Idol” contestants, plus Cowell’s scathing assessments. Those quickly grabbed Americans’ attention.
Fox wanted “American Idol” to duplicate the British version in every way. It tried to also have four judges – but couldn’t find the right one to join Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson. It also insisted on two hosts.
Brian Dunkleman “didn’t even seem as if he wanted to do the show,” Cowell wrote. “Ryan (Seacrest) was the absolute opposite … He was good-looking and enthusiastic, maybe too enthusiastic. I used to say that if he had a tail, he would have wagged it.”
The show debuted in June of 2002, getting huge ratings and propelling a music star (Kelly Clarkson). It was back in January for its regular spot – this time without Dunkelman and with only a brief pass at a fourth judge.
“American Idol” would only have find more star at Clarkson’s level (Carrie Underwood, it’s fourth winner). But it has imbedded itself into pop culture.
In that second season, the two “Idol” nights were No. 5 and 6 in the ratings. The next couple seasons, those nights were at No. 2 and 3 (trailing only “CSI”). Then – starting with the 2005-6 season, “Idol” was No. 1 and 2.
Other Fox shows also were hits, some from Darnell – “Joe Millionaire,” “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” – and some scripted shows. There was the compelling “24” and “House” (produced by NBC, airing on Fox) and more.
But mostly there was “American Idol.” It did 15 seasons on Fox, disappeared for a year, then returned on ABC.
By then, it had fulfilled its mission: This was, for years, TV’s most-watched show. Fox was now much more than a rag-tag fourth network.