Chapter 9
The company that Roone Arledge took over in 1965 had a stable base of viewers thanks to its mix of highbrow British programs, relevant news fare, sports and holdovers from DuMont’s founding and the Mutual programming that it inherited from the General Tire takeover, and thanks to that and the fact that importing British programs and sharing the burden of producing the documentaries with the Ford Foundation/NET meant that it was spending less on program costs than the rest of the Big 4, it was profitable. Moreso, in fact than its twin runt, ABC. This in spite of the fact that ever since the ABC/UPT merger, ABC had, thanks to UPT’s resources and some savvy programming decisions, had been not too much far behind CBS and NBC and ahead of DuMont in the ratings race. In fact, DuMont’s sports programming was largely the only programs it put forth that ever regularly placed in the Top 20 of the Neilsen ratings for individual programs.
This state of affairs was largely deemed acceptable to Allen DuMont and the corporate oversight at RKO General. As long as the network was profitable and not falling too far behind in ability to gain advertisers, RKO General management was satisfied, and DuMont, for his part, believed that the network was providing an invaluable public service by providing higher-quality programming then the competing networks.
There were, however, cracks beneath the surface. A group called Fidelity Television formed in Los Angeles to attempt to challenge the FCC for the license of DuMont’s West Coast flagship station, KDTV. They were able to seize on insider reports that General Tire was conditioning vendor contracts on vendors’ willingness to buy advertising time on DuMont, thereby ensuring that DuMont would have a steady advertiser base. This was a serious charge, as these practices were considered anti-competitive. Consequently, when Arledge took over, he conducted an internal investigation to figure out who was responsible for promoting these kinds of practices to the corporate parent, and fired those found to be responsible. He then began work on devising a new programming strategy that would make DuMont a desirable destination for advertisers by actually being competitive in the ratings contest.
His first actions towards that end were to slough off the most highbrow of the British programs, like
Fawlty Towers and
Masterpiece Theater, and resell them to the new Public Broadcasting Service. He then began to clear a suite of new programs that would appeal to a broader audience, especially the 18-34 demographic that advertisers coveted most for their buying power. His first actions towards that end were to order pilots for a duo of updated game shows that DuMont had tested in the late ‘40s,
The Answer Man and
Detect and Collect. Then, between 1965 and 1970, he greenlit a suite of comedies, dramas and action/thriller series that would appeal to younger audiences by virtue of their relevance, social consciousness, or willingness to push the envelope of what was considered acceptable at the time. Among these shows were comedies
Archie, based on the eponymous high school comic series,
Barnaby, about an outcast boy and his cigar-smoking fairy godfather, and
Emmy Lou, a coming-of-age dramedy about the worldview conflicts between a 13-year old girl and her parents. Dramas included police procedural
Calhoun, about the sheriff’s department of fictitious Calhoun County, Minnesota, and
Defense Attorney, an update of a ‘50s radio drama about a lawyer who takes cases of criminal defendants who face little hope of acquittal and stiff sentences. This title was taken in an explicitly socially-conscious direction exploring racial and socioeconomic disparities in the criminal justice system, anticipating
Just Mercy by a half-century.
Arledge initially agreed to pilot Gene Roddenberry’s
Assignment: Earth, a sci-fi series set closer to the present day than his currently-running Star Trek, but instead chose to clear
City Beneath the Sea, which was oddly enough ordered initially by NBC to replace
Trek should they have chosen to in 1968. This series explored a time in the future where underwater cities had been established and humans coexist with a newly-discovered race of humanoid amphibians. This was yet another vehicle to allegorize race relations as people were becoming more conscious of those issues.
Finally, DuMont aired thriller
House of Wax, a show about hunting a serial killer whose pilot was deemed “too intense for television” by CBS. While it still needed to be toned down to make it onto the small screen, the final product was still able to push the boundaries for that time period.
This new strategy started out slowly, but by 1968 it was paying serious dividends for the network. As current events focused attention on social issues, DuMont used the Ford-partnered documagazines as lead-ins to their new socially conscious programming. This strategy drew audiences in and made sure that they had something to stay around for, and thus for the first time DuMont was truly able to be competitive with the titans CBS and NBC for ratings dominance. More importantly, DuMont was establishing dominance with the younger, advertiser-favored demographic.
This caused a major upshot in the way that the established competitors filled out their schedules. While things were already shifting towards the end of the ‘60s, DuMont’s success accelerated the process and led to what came to be known as the “Rural Purge.” At this time, CBS in particular, but the other networks also, had a large amount of programming inventory that was of a heartland-themed nature, such as
Mayberry R.F.D., The Beverly Hillbillies, and
Green Acres, as well as the variety shows that had formed a mainstay of American television since its inception. Many of these shows were still massive ratings draws, but their audiences skewed older and therefore were not as valuable to advertisers. As a result of this, after the 1969-70 season[1], many of these shows were cancelled. The aforementioned shows, as well as the
Red Skelton Show, Lassie, and
Gomer Pyle, were cancelled by CBS. Standing in the breach to ensure that these shows would not go away forever, however, was ABC, which by the late 1960s was facing financial issues and had been through two unsuccessful buyout attempts, one by telecommunications firm ITT and the other by renaissance man Howard Hughes. Feeling that the network needed a shot in the arm that would be cost effective, network president Olliver Treyz[2], newly hired back after his disastrous stint at upstart Overmyer, decided to pick up most of the shows cancelled by CBS. This did indeed provide a shot in the arm (the network would pick up the ratings title for 1970-71, the first that didn’t go to CBS or NBC-but also ABC’s last for the next 30+ years) the move came with a suite of mid-to-long term consequences for the struggling network.
[1]OTL the Purge occurred after the 1970-71 season, with only
Skelton being cancelled in 1970. Here, the purged shows all get cancelled at the same time in 1970.
[2]OTL, Michael Eisner was heading up ABC programming at this time. ITTL, he is hired by Arledge to be an assistant in 1966, and ABC, being a bit of a hot mess and desperate by this time, gets who they can, who proves to be their old director.
