Word: silvermans
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Maybe he's right. But Fred Silverman, knowing that the best and longest-running television shows (M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore) have been the ones with sharply defined characters who catch at viewers' minds and offer them something to identify with, has been pressing for shows that are less job oriented and that give viewers an idea of how the Angels live off-duty...
...Fred Silverman knew there was something wrong with the whale in his office. "His voice is too high," he finally said to an assistant last week. "Get me a whale with a deeper voice." Then Silverman began auditioning worms...
...many network programming chiefs pass time listening to tapes of worms and whales to find voices for a Saturday-morning cartoon show. But then, Fred Silverman, 40, is not just any network programming chief. He is, just now, the kingdom and the power, the man who put ABC in Nielsen heaven and gave Charlie's Angels their wings...
...drive to keep ABC on top, Silverman leaves no worm unturned. He sifts through as many as 1,500 series proposals a season, reads every script and every rewrite of every script, approves every ten-second promotional spot and quarter-page newspaper ad for ABC programs...
What makes Freddie run? For one thing, he seems to have TV tubes implanted in his chest. "He is a child of broadcasting," says former CBS Executive Ethel Winant. Silverman's father was in television (he repaired them), and Fred was reared in Forest Hills, N.Y., on Howdy Doody and Clark Kent. He studied communications at Syracuse University and earned a master's degree at Ohio State. His thesis: a 400-page analysis of ABC programs from 1953 to 1959. After two years of scheduling movies for Chicago's WGN-TV, he showered network executives...