Research Catalog

Three blind mice : how the TV networks lost their way

Title: Three blind mice : how the TV networks lost their way / Ken Auletta.
Author: Auletta, Ken.
Publication: New York : Random House, ©1991.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	PN1992.3.U5 A96 1991	Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 642 pages; 25 cm

Summary

What happened to network television in the 1980s? How did CBS, NBC, and ABC lose a third of their audience and more than half of their annual profits? Ken Auletta, author of Greed and Glory on Wall Street, tells the gripping story of the decline of the networks in this epically scaled work of journalism. He chronicles the takeovers and executive coups that turned ABC and NBC into assets of two mega-corporations and CBS into the fiefdom of one man, Larry Tisch, whose obsession with the bottom line could be both bracing and appalling. Auletta takes us inside the CBS newsroom on the night that Dan Rather went off-camera for six deadly minutes; into the screening rooms where NBC programming wunderkind Brandon Tartikoff watched two of his brightest prospects for new series thud disastrously to earth; and into the boardrooms where the three networks were trying to decide whether television is a public trust or a cash cow. Rich in anecdote and gossip, scalpel-sharp in its perceptions, Three Blind Mice chronicles a revolution in American business and popular culture, one that is changing the world on both sides of the television screen.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [623]-626) and index.

Contents

A fateful dinner party, October 25, 1986 -- A "little shirttail company" takes over ABC, 1984-85 -- Tisch finds an excuse to invest in CBS, 1985 -- GE swallows NBC, 1985 to August 1986 -- ABC: the clash of cultures, 1985 to summer 1986 -- The creeping takeover of CBS, winter to summer 1986 -- ABC: more Sancho Panza than Machiavelli, September to December 1986 -- NBC: a new queen bee, September to December 1986 -- CBS: managing by the numbers, September to December 1986 -- ABC: marrying two companies, January to September 1987 -- NBC: managing through insecurity, winter 1987 -- CBS: Tisch cuts news -- and himself, March 1987 -- NBC News gathers facts on itself, March 1987 -- CBS: Tisch goes Hollywood, May 1987 -- NBC: Tartikoff in his sandbox, 1987 -- Two scorpions in a bottle: the network/affiliate "partnership" -- ABC: a happier place to work -- the second half of 1987 -- "Creative destruction": NBC in the second half of 1987 -- What's the frequency, Larry?: CBS in the second half of 1987 -- The producers: Paltrow and Spelling -- Tabloid TV -- ABC, NBC, and CBS take different routes, 1988 -- Tartikoff: "It's easier when you don't know you're guessing" -- ABC, NBC, and CBS, summer 1988 through 1989 -- Three blind mice, 1990-91 and beyond.

ISBN

0394563581
9780394563589

LCCN

90052925

OCLC

ocm23286707
23286707
SCSB-1941811

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library