Posts Tagged ‘CBS’

Inside the origins of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

December 7, 2011

Downtrodden Charlie Brown searches for the true meaning of Christmas in the revered holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (Photo: ABC).

CBS EXECS HATED SHOW, PREDICTED IT WOULD FLOP

By ADAM BUCKMAN

In a timely interview (timely as far as the holiday season is concerned), “Charlie Brown Christmas” producer Lee Mendelson reveals how this beloved special almost sank his (and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz’) hopes for more “Charlie Brown” specials. 

It went on to become the most popular and beloved of all of TV’s Christmas specials, but when CBS executives first laid eyes on “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 1965, they didn’t care for it.

“They just didn’t like the show when I brought it to them” for the first time, recalled one of the show’s producers, Lee Mendelson, 78, in a recent phone interview from California.  Mendelson was executive producer of the special, along with “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz, who died in 2000, and the late Bill Melendez.

“They just didn’t, for whatever reason, like the show,” he said.   “The first thing they said was, ‘Well, it’s going to go on next week.  There’s nothing we can do about it,’ but I remember them saying it will probably be the first and last Charlie Brown show.  . . .  They thought it was too slow, they didn’t like the jazz music so much on a Christmas show – in other words, these were all creative things that they didn’t like.”

In fact, Mendelson and Melendez thought they’d “missed the boat” too.  It was their first network special with Schulz and his Peanuts characters and it was shaping up to be their last.  “When we finished the show, Bill and I were very discouraged,” Mendelson said.  “In fact, Bill thought we had really missed the boat [and] I remember one of the animators stood up in the back and said, ‘You guys are crazy.  This is gonna run for a hundred years!’  We thought he was crazy.”

Mendelson also shed light on a popular misconception about “A Charlie Brown Christmas” – namely, that the CBS execs objected to the special’s Christian content.  “They had no problem with the [show’s] religious aspects,” Mendelson said.

In the show’s famous “biblical verse” scene – unique in the annals of holiday TV specials – an anguished Charlie Brown vents his frustration over the commercialism that has overtaken the holiday.  “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” he asks.

Linus then strides to center stage and asks that the lights be dimmed.  He then recites the Bible passage – from the gospel according to Luke, verses 8-14.  “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night,” he says.  “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them . . .  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  . . . ”

If anyone had reservations about the Bible verses, it was Mendelson and Melendez, but not Schulz because it was Schulz’s idea.  Recalled Mendelson, “I remember when we were drawing up the show, Schulz said, ‘We’re going to have [Linus] read from the Bible.’  And Bill and I looked at each other and Bill said, ‘You know, I don’t think animated characters have probably ever read from the Bible.  And I remember Schulz’s response.  He said, ‘Bill, if we don’t do it, who will?’ ”

Despite everyone’s reservations about the special, it was a smash – watched by about half the country (on Dec. 9, 1965).  Among other things, the jazz music – by the Vince Guaraldi Trio – that the CBS execs disliked became world famous.  And it was far from the last Peanuts special produced by the triumvirate of Schulz, Mendelson and Melendez.  They made dozens of others in a collaboration that lasted about 30 years.

This year, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is airing on network TV for its 47th consecutive holiday season.

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Posted in A Charlie Brown Christmas, Adam Buckman, CBS, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

Remembering Rooney: My favorite Andy story

November 5, 2011

ROONEY'S LAST STAND: Andy Rooney's final appearance on "60 Minutes" on Oct. 2 (Photo: CBS)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

This is my favorite Andy Rooney story — the time he publicly lambasted Larry Tisch, the owner of CBS and a man who could have easily fired him, as a “slumlord” who ruined CBS.  It was vintage Andy.

Andy Rooney was crusty, cantankerous, curmudgeonly — all words you’re reading in the obituaries for him today.

But he was also courageous — in the manner of the best journalists — as my favorite story about him illustrates.

It’s a story from 1995, about the time Andy excoriated, without mercy, the then-owner of CBS, Laurence Tisch, in one of Andy’s syndicated newspaper columns.

Of course, Rooney was then employed by CBS, which was paying him millions for his commentaries on “60 Minutes.”  And yet, here came Andy anyway, biting the hand that fed him (and just tearing it off at the proverbial wrist) and literally daring Tisch to fire him.

The impetus for the column — which was carried in more than 150 newspapers — was the pending sale of CBS to Westinghouse.  So, to mark the occasion, Andy decided he would give the world his own summation of what CBS had become under Tisch’s nine-year reign.

Tisch was a wealthy New York investor who had assumed control of CBS in 1986.  He then set about cutting costs, laying off employees and selling off parts of the company such as the publishing and music divisions.  By 1995, he sought to cash in on his investment with a sale to Westinghouse.  The deal was in the works, but not completed, at the time Rooney wrote this column in August — which meant that Tisch was still firmly in charge of CBS and could have fired Rooney.

And few would have blamed him either because Rooney went after the boss with a vengeance, blasting him for everything that was wrong with CBS — from the low ratings of its prime-time shows to the worn carpeting Rooney observed in the company’s landmark headquarters building in New York, known as Black Rock.

The carpet portion of the column is my favorite passage: “[CBS staffers],” Rooney wrote, “began to notice the carpets in the hallways were dirty.  Spots where people had spilled coffee with milk and sugar were left uncleaned . . .  The deterioration in maintenance standards was all the more noticeable because for years . . .  it was one of the most handsome office buildings in the world.  Under Larry Tisch, Black Rock acquired many of the characteristics of a slum housing project.”

“He could fire me,” Rooney wrote of Tisch, “but I’m part of what he’s selling [to Westinghouse] and money means too much for him to do that.”

As it happened, Tisch personally made an estimated $2 billion on the Westinghouse deal (according to Wikipedia).  He died in 2003.

The column Rooney published that summer weekend was so personal that he even included Tisch’s wife, Billie, in his “critique” of the family’s stewardship of CBS.  And yet, Andy said at the time that he never heard from any Tisches after the column ran.

“I don’t think they care very much,” he told me when I rang him up at CBS.  And that was another thing I loved about Andy — you could get him on the phone just by calling the CBS switchboard and asking for him, and he would pick up his own phone.  That’s how “old-school” this guy was.

He was a real piece of work — the genuine article.  And though he was 92 and had lived a very full life, I’m still sorry to see him go.

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Posted in 60 Minutes, Adam Buckman, Andy Rooney, CBS, TV, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

End of an era as late-night TV grows on cable

April 12, 2010

By ADAM BUCKMAN

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

TBS’ decision, announced today, to mount two back-to-back late-night shows on weekday evenings means we’ve reached another one of those watershed moments in the evolution of cable TV’s long effort to even the playing field with the old broadcast networks.

Have you heard? Conan's going to cable.

Once upon a time it would have been unthinkable:  Two hours of original late-night talk and comedy on a basic cable channel — a two-hour block of programming that for years was something only a broadcast network could afford to do.

Not anymore.

By signing former NBC star Conan O’Brien and pairing him with George Lopez, TBS is signaling that the era of late-night dominance by the likes of NBC and CBS is over.  TBS is saying: We can do it too — we have the distribution, the money (via advertising and subscriber revenue), the audience numbers, the channel positions and the know-how to do what the old guard can do.

Imagine it: Here’s this cable network that traffics almost exclusively in reruns of old sitcoms, running hour upon hour of them — “The Office,” “Family Guy” and “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” some “Seinfeld” and heaven knows what else.

And yet, despite this cable channel’s paucity of original anything, its analysis of the TV landscape has revealed that the time is right to take on the biggest, most established TV networks in late-night TV, and not with half-hour satires such as “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report,” or with a single hour either.  No — TBS plans on taking on CBS and NBC with two hours of traditional television: Personality-hosted late-night shows with monologues and celebrity guests — the kinds of shows seen since the dawn of time only on the so-called “big” networks (and only on CBS since 1993).

Over the years, the cable networks grew and the broadcast networks shrank.  Now, in the wake of Conan O’Brien — a network TV stalwart — deciding to stake his future on cable, you might say they’re all pretty much the same.

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Posted in Adam Buckman, CBS, Conan O'Brien, George Lopez, Late-night TV, NBC, TBS, TV Howl | Leave a Comment »

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