Word: networker
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Chiles is a quintessential case of Texas Gothic. He began his broadcast free-enterprise crusade after hearing about Network. Though he never saw the movie, he recognized a kindred spirit in Newscaster Howard Beale and adapted his crazed cry of "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!" The money behind Chiles' mouth ($1 million annually) comes from the Western Co. of North America, an oil well service and offshore drilling firm that he helped found in 1939 and still runs. Chiles, who worked as an oilfield roustabout before earning...
...Moscow Olympic boycott could not have come at a more inopportune time for NBC. The network has been deep in the ratings cellar for the past five years, and pretax profits have slid from $152.6 million in 1977 to $106 million last year. Silverman, "the man with the golden gut," has been able to raise NBC'S ratings only marginally during his two-year tenure. When he was programming chief at ABC, he promoted his prime-time shows heavily during the 1976 Olympics, and the network grabbed the ratings lead in January 1977. ABC's profits before taxes...
...means it should recoup $63 million. Uninsured losses include $30 million spent on training of personnel, travel to Moscow and promotion; $1 million paid to a West German middleman, Lothar Bock, for helping NBC win the broadcast rights; and $4 million worth of insurance premiums. Ad profits for the network and its five owned and operated stations will be $20 million to $30 million less than they would have been with the Olympics. NBC expects to recover the $4 million worth of recording gear, video machinery and cameras that it already sent to Moscow...
...plug the gaping hole in its summer schedule, NBC is jerry-building a schedule of reruns, specials and movies. "I would have to think it would be nothing extraordinary," says a network spokesman. "I don't think there will be much original programming." Griffiths traced a silver lining at the annual meeting: "We are very hopeful that we will sell this time at a very good price because the other networks are sold out and it is a convention year, and there is advertising money to be spent that had been earmarked for the Olympics...
...double-dealing, broken promises, and the machinations of mysterious intermediaries. NBC finally won out by striking a bargain with the shadowy Bock, who initially was CBS's agent in the negotiations. He had been paid a cool $1.7 million and had the Games virtually locked up for the network. But CBS pulled out at the last minute, saying it was appalled by the Soviets' deviousness during the bargaining. Bock then offered the Olympics to NBC, in return for $1 million up front and production contracts totaling $8 million more...