Q 13

PLAYBOY: By your own account, the first thing you do after entering your office in the morning is read the ratings. Is that because those ratings matter more than anything else? What wouldn't you do for ratings?

Brandon Tartikoff: Each morning, when I pick up those overnights. I get the sinking feeling in my stomach that I used to get in school the day the grades came out. Being in television is like getting a report card every day. However, there are a lot of shows that would get a 60 or a 70 share, but I'll never put them on, because they appeal to our basest instincts. If there were a show akin to Battle of the Network Stars called Battle of the Races, don't tell me everybody in America wouldn't be watching. But that concept is so ugly and divisive that no network will ever put it on. Speaking more realistically, a three-hour movie about Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun was developed recently. It was interesting, but I said, "Let somebody else do that." The Guyana movie that eventually did air came to us first, but we chose not to do it. At some point, you have to live with yourself.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: What shows would you like to do but can't because the ratings wouldn't be high enough?

Brandon Tartikoff: About a year ago, I was toying with a show called In Touch, but I was eventually convinced that it was "too soft." That's a television term, not PLAYBOY term. Along with informational segments, it would include profiles of maybe three ordinary people each week, real-life stories that dramatized some basic human values--sort of an everyman's 60 Minutes. Ultimately, it was a show that would encourage people to do something other than watch television. In my heart, I knew it would be one of the few TV shows I'd be really excited to watch. But I also knew it would never get more than a 15 share.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: At what moments are you most aware of the awesome power of your job?

Brandon Tartikoff: I'm always aware of it. Look, I don't get 100 calls a day because I'm a hell of a guy. And even more power is evidenced by the fact that almost everyone in the world will return my call. But I never forget that when I leave the network, all of a sudden my phone calls won't be returned and my jokes won't be so funny. But most of all, power is being in a meeting with an Emmy-winning writer and a talented, A-list producer and my ideas are being listened to. When I say, "I love the guy, I love the girl, but make the dog a Chevy," and they say, "What color?" and "Should it have a landau roof?"--that's when I tell myself to be careful.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: Are you ever uncomfortable because you have so much power at your age?

Brandon Tartikoff: Many of the people who come to sell me shows or do shows for me are much older than I and sometimes almost fatherly. That's an odd feeling more than an uncomfortable one. But because of my age, I'm sometimes intimidated by the wrong people. For example, I remember my first meeting with Norman Lear, a man whose accomplishments I truly revere. Yet he was just a guy who came into my office wearing a cardigan and a porkpie hat and we talked about shows. It was a very easy meeting. But I had butterflies in my stomach when I met Bill Dana, because he had played Jose Jimenez when I was a kid and I had all his albums. I still get butterflies when I'm with James Garner, Rock Hudson, James Arness, Dick Clark--people I used to watch on the little black-and-white TV set in my childhood room. Now they're live and in color and in my office--and I'm doing shows with them! I'd have to be dead not to feel something.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Very few top-level executives retire from the networks. Like Silverman, they are eventually fired or they quit and go on to careers in production. Why?

Brandon Tartikoff: Television is a burnout industry. Your body and mind take a lot of wear and tear with all the traveling and the long hours. There's a profound physical exhaustion that sets in simply because television is on 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The network is a machine that eats you up, and the machine always needs to be fed.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: What it you're fired?

Brandon Tartikoff: The last time I was fired, I was a 16-year-old usher at the Alhambra Theater in San Francisco and they threw me out for taking long dinner breaks. So an experience many Americans my age have had many times has eluded me, and if they fire me now, I'll realize that, in the historical sense, I had it coming: It's been a long hot streak. But if I'm fired right now, after this television season, well.... Reshaping a network takes several years, and I've just begun the process. So I'd feel cheated, cut off. And that would probably cause me, out of ego, to stick around this business, hoping for another opportunity to put my programing ideas into practice, both to satisfy myself and--honestly, humanly--to show a lot of people how wrong they were. But if I get a fair chance and then fail, I'll leave this business forever and never look back. That's really all any of us ever has the right to ask for: one shot in life to put your best horses on the track and let them run for you. And if they lose, it's time to walk away.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: Where do you see yourself at the age of 40?

Brandon Tartikoff: Doing something completely different, in a field where the challenges would be as great but where I'd have to start from scratch and see if I could do it all over again. Maybe I'll try to be the novelist Robert Penn Warren would have preferred me to become. Although now I think I'd change the Siamese twins to a Chevy.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: Do you have any ambitions for the medium itself?

Brandon Tartikoff: I'd like to get television to its next level of development. It's unrealistic to think that anyone can wave a magic wand and suddenly every show will be good. There aren't enough writers and producers capable of turning out quality material that fast. But part of my love affair with the medium is that we're the same age and the possibility of growth still exists for both of us. I think it's time for the medium to grow up and start making a living in a responsible way and be a bigger contributor to society. Its wonder years are over. Now's the time to settle down and raise a family.