Part IIby David Shaw
In show business--as in politics, sports, love, and virtually every other human activity--there is a tendency to look on any new disaster as both terminal and unprecedented. Thus, when Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election, political pundits across the land bemoaned the impending demise of the Republican party--conveniently forgetting that the Republicans had suffered ignominious defeats to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s and had still managed to elect another President in 1952 (just as they would elect one in 1968).
Similarly, when several shows produced by MTM were canceled last season, people in Hollywood began talking openly about "the decline and fall of MTM." The original Mary Tyler Moore Show had been so successful for so long that the abrupt cancellation of Phyllis, The Tony Randall Show, and We've Got Each Other seemed to presage a sudden and precipitous decline in MTM fortunes.
But MTM had actually experienced failure almost from the moment it expanded beyond its first two shows--MTM and Bob Newhart--and has still managed to come back and produce successes like Rhoda and Lou Grant. In 1974-75, three new MTM series, The Texas Wheelers, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, and The Bob Crane Show were cancelled so quickly, it brought to mind the old 1960s joke about ABC: "Know how to end the war in Vietnam? Put it on ABC; it'll be over in 13 weeks." MTM didn't fare any better the next year; Three For the Road and The Lorenzo and Henrietta Music Show were dropped in less time than it takes to say "Mary Tyler Moore". Doc, another MTM entry that season, fared only slightly better; it lasted more than a year.
The consensus in Hollywood is that the more recent, better-known MTM cancellations, like their predecessors, just weren't very well conceived shows. In the original MTM Show, Phyllis wasn't created to be a sympathetic character. She was a nag, a phony---a comic foil to sweet, sincere Mary Richards. But in her own show, without Mary, Phyllis was too unsympathetic. So the writers changed her, little by little--made her more vulnerable, more sympathetic. "The character got lost, muddy; you couldn't care about her," says one television producer.
Tony Randall had a similar problem; "He had a good job, money, nice kids--no real problems," says one writer. "What kind of TV show is that? Who cares about a guy like that?" The MTM people acknowledge this shortcoming, but they insist it was fally compounded by network scheduling: "Tony was an upper-middle-class white judge, and they put it on after a black show like The Jeffersons," says Hugh Wilson, co-producer of the Randall show. "That's borderline insanity." Other MTM producers offer the same complaint about their shows. Poor scheduling, they say, killed them. "It's folly to put sophisticated comedy on in the family hour, when children decide what's watched," says one disgruntled MTM executive.
But even the MTM people grudgingly admit scheduling admit scheduling won't usually kill a really good show. M*A*S*H and All in the Family continue to thrive, despite scheduling changes--just as they continue to thrive despite the advent of the Happy Days school of television comedy. Part of their enduring success is attributable, of course, to the loyal audience they've developed over the years. But, just as important, they continue to be good shows. They work. Some of the new MTM shows just haven't worked.
"If people wanted to see Tony Randall bad enough, they'd watch it, no matter when it was on," admits Grant Tinker, president of MTM. "We just made some mistakes. We probably should've stayed in the courtroom more and not gone home with him so much. That deflated the show, sloed it down." But the office-home balance has been part of the MTM comedy formula from the beginning, and no one was willing--or able--to depart from it.
Jay Tarses, who helped create MTM's We've Got Each Other last season, says the problem with that show was even more basic. "I thought it was a good show," Tarses says, "but it was about two plain, homely people, and you just didn't care about them. If I were a network executive, I wouldn't have bought the show in the first place. I'm not even sure I would have watched it myself if I wasn't involved with it. I have better things to do with my time."
Judging from the ratings, that's exactly how most viewers felt--which made CBS unhappy. And impatient. Successful comedy series-- whether the sophisticated comedy of M*A*S*H and All in the Family, or the low comedy of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley--have well-defined characters the audience can identify with and care about. When the new MTM shows didn't develop such characters, the network began to apply pressure. "They wanted us to get Tony Randall involved with a 10-year-old girl and a couple of sweathogs," Tarses says. "We did what we thought was workable: we had Tony teach a night-school class to get him out of the house and the courtroom and involved with young people. We shouldn't have done it. We shouldn't have compromised. You lose whatever integrity you have when you start doing that, and it didn't help the show anyway."
The people working on Lou Grant were also subjected to network pressure last season. CBS--and the public--had initially expected the show to be a comedy. After all, Lou--Ed Asner--had been a comic figure in the original Mary Tyler Moore Show. But this was a drama, and it took people time to adjust to that. Moreover, the show ran up against the World Series, "The Godfather", and several other strong competitors early in the season. Ratings often were very low. "Things got very panicky at MTM," says one writer on the show.
"CBS wanted us to make Lou more of a traditional hero," says executive producer Gene Reynolds. "We had him as an uncertain kind of guy, not sure of himself, making mistakes sometimes. They wanted him to be decisive, able to solve all problems...and a real lady-killer, too." Asner says CBS also wanted him on camera more--"and they wanted us to jazz up the openings, start the story faster."
A few of these changes were incorporated in Lou Grant scripts, but most network ideas were resisted, and when the show's ratings picked up considerably, the pressure eased off. In summer reruns, the show frequently finished in the Top 10, and one week even reached No. 1. Other MTM shows weren't so fortunate. The Betty White Show, for example, started off with unimpressive ratings and was canceled right away. "Everyone at the network forgets it took us half a season to get our act together on Mary back in 1970," says one MTM producer. "The ratings were low for awhile. Some shows just take time to find themselves and their audience. They're uneven at first, weak, but they develop. Mary did. Lou Grant did. Betty would have, too."
MTM is taking no such chances with its newest offering this fall--WKRP in Cincinatti, a half-hour comedy about a rock radio station. MTM executives seem to be looking to WKRP to salvage their comedic reputation in much the same way the ravaged Republicans looked to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 (and Richard Nixon in 1968) to salvage their political reputation. Toward that end, WKRP is going after a broader, somewhat different audience. The rock milieu provides instant identification for young viewers, of course. It helps, too, that the male lead is a handsome young man--and that there's a black character, a jive-talking disc jockey named Venus Flytrap. But the most egregious accommodation is the casting of a stunningly sexy blonde, clad in tight sweater and skirt, who manages, in the course of the pilot show, to thrust her very noticeable breasts under the noses of two different characters at particularly appropriate points in the dialogue.
Although the comedy is still rather sophisticated, compromises have clearly been made; no one ever acted--or even looked--like that in the old MTM newsroom at WJM, Minneapolis. Tinker, insists WKRP will have "character development in the MTM vein," but he readily acknowledges the show is "our attempt to have it both ways--to do our kind of comedy but still get an audience in this new comedy cycle." Not everyone at MTM is as sanguine about this hybrid approach as Tinker seems to be.
"We didn't have to do that kind of thing before," says one former MTM producer. "We had a big hit with Mary and no one butted in. The network just kept saying, 'Can you give us another show like Mary?' Now they're saying-- to everyone--'Can you give us another Laverne and Shirley or Love Boat or Charlie's Angels?'"
Tinker says MTM won't do that kind of show. "I'd find some other kind of business to go into first," he says. But MTM has been operating at a steadily increasing budget deficit for five years, Tinker admits, and those annual deficits have often reached seven figures. Although syndication of the original MTM and Bob Newhart shows will ultimately reverse this trend, the compromises MTM has made on WKRP clearly show a strong corporate concern with the bottom line, and in television--as elsewhere--compormise is often the first step toward capitulation. MTM may not be producing a Happy Days, but the company does have its fall-season bets hedged in every other way imaginable. The company has two half-hour comedies (Rhoda and WKRP), an hour drama (Lou Grant), an hour variety show (Mary), a one-part movie ("First You Cry") , a two-part movie ("The Critical List") and--if PBS buys it--a 15 part dramatic miniseries (Going Home Again).
About all that's missing is a kiddy cartoon show. Now, if only MTM could develop a program called Scooby's Angels. Or Fat Albert Capsizes the Love Boat. Or... THE END.
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