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Official Press Release: Kitman Will Find a New Home for TV Network
OF ALL THE RADICAL proposals in the campaign platform set forth when launching my race for president of a network the most visionary plank was my promise, if elected, to go to L.A. But only to close it down. Throw the old rascals out, as they say, before bringing in the new rascals.
This is especially timely today as chief executives at the four major networks - I'm running for president at all four at the same time, in order to keep my options open - are sorting through the pilots for the fall season.
Why are they bothering, asks C. M. Taylor of Flushing, a member of my transition team. "Who needs a new season - wasn't the last one bad enough?" It does seem an exercise in futility. Somehow viewers aren't as excited anymore about such questions as: Will there be another "Everything Is Relative"? Or "Conrad Bloom"? Or "Costello"? Or even "Two Guys, a Girl, and an Anchovy, Sausage and Garlic Pizza to Go"? Or will there be another piece of gold in the dross, like "It's Like . . . You Know." For every good show, every season there are 19 bad ones like "Suddenly Jesse." This ratio will never do in my pending administration.
As impressive as is the consistent record of failure, how this happens seems more than a coincidence, a rough patch or bad luck. There is, as they say in the Garment Center, a pattern here.
I used to think the problem with TV was industrial espionage. How was it possible that four competing networks working in total secrecy could come up with 29 clones of "Friends" at the same time? Were they all using the same Xerox machines at the Kinko's on Wilshire Boulevard? For a time I thought it was all the Evian water they were drinking. And before that it was the hot sun continuously beating down on the heads of producers, many of whom were bald. Their capillaries were fried.
Or maybe it was the killer bees I blamed one year. Or the knowledge that they were living on a killer fault under the center of downtown L.A.
But I finally concluded that it was L.A. itself that was the villain. L.A. causes TV, as we know it.
The historian McIver once said the place influenced history; it determined the way things were. Whales, for example, are found in the ocean. It's a big place for a big fish. You don't find whales in a lake in Rhode Island.
I am an environmentalist when it comes to TV. Where you are determines the way you think. For example, West Coast (Pacific Ocean) programing is usually below the head; East Coast (Atlantic Ocean) is above the head.
The problem with TV in L.A. is the same people are conceiving, writing and buying the programs. That's why they like them so much, unlike the rest of us outsiders. They have the same programing philosophy. Better to fail with something old ("Maggie Winters") than something new ("Murder One").
When one of my hero executives, Howard Stringer, took over at CBS in the late 1980s, he flew out to L.A. to lay down the law to the creative community. He wanted different. "Give me something new, something I haven't seen before," he explained, in effect. Fired up, they came back with the same old stuff.
Intuitively they knew that whatever was said, the network would ultimately buy junk.
The environment affects creativity. New ideas need a lot of people where things can rub off on you. What sparks ideas is making contact in your daily existence, like taking a walk and shaking hands with somebody you meet. In places like L.A., nobody walks. You can get a ticket for walking in certain parts of L.A.
Without their pools and tennis courts, L.A. for the creative community is Iwo Jima. They are totally self-contained. They only talk to each other. It's the perfect vacuum, or rather imperfect vacuum, as those who have to look at the work can attest. "I get more ideas on the subway than a swimming pool," Nat Hiken (creator of "Sgt. Bilko") used to say.
It doesn't help to just bring the writers to New York to work on shows. They spend 20 minutes in a hotel researching, see the trash flying around in the streets from the 44th floor of the hotel, and want to go back immediately to Crystal City.
In my pending administration, I will be downsizing all the executives who buy the same old stuff. I will give them as severance pay McDonald's franchises where duplication is prized. I will close down the sausage factories. My people will be required to do something different. If they bring in another "Seinfeld," I will laugh at them.
A new broom alone will not clean up the mess in L.A. There is no way to reform TV-fulfilling the other planks in my new deal for TV - without getting it the hell out of that unhealthy environment.
What will happen to the City of Angels, the material capital of western civilization, if I'm elected? TV's place will be filled by insurance companies.
After all, as Kitman campaign worker Doris Foster of North Babylon has observed, "It's really Far Rockaway with an attitude." And where would I move my TV network to? Creatively, as far away from L.A. as possible. My first choice would be Greenland. But another island would be a compromise.
There is already a studio city being planned in Calverton, using the Grumman hangar facility plant Number 7. There a group of visionaries may build the world's largest soundstage with nearly 300,000 square feet for a major film and television center by the year 2020, which should be just in time for my first administration. Many L.A. creative people have anticipated the Kitman Plan by pre-emptive moves to the Hamptons.
There are still a few positions open in the Kitman for Network President transition team. Please specify the position you're applying for, such as vice president for comedy, vice president for drama, vice president for news. Vice president is the entry level position in the Kitman administration, the lowest rung on the ladder. Send all applications and requests for free Kitman campaign literature to Kitman for President Campaign Headquarters c/o Newsday, 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville, N.Y. 11747-4250. |
