– Roseanne Barr (yes, that Roseanne)

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Today, Norman is addressing the 50th anniversary (May 9) of FCC Chairman Netwon Minow’s famous “vaste wasteland” speech:

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

Now for the rebuttal by Norman Horowitz:  

I would describe myself as a “content  libertarian” — that is, a believer in freedom of thought and expression. I am and have been in favor of the commercial nature of programming in our country because it offers the opportunity for the viewers of television to “vote” with their remote controls on what they want to see and not what anyone else thinks they should see.

In the early ’60s, I went to see the head of programming at a New York station and screened a lovely five-minute children’s program called “Pick a Letter.” The potential buyer watched with great interest and then told me that he wouldn’t buy it.

“Norman,” he said, “if a kid starts to watch it, in less than a minute he’ll switch off and watch a cartoon.” Five-year-olds have a “shit detector,” he explained, ”and if they get a sense that you’re trying to teach them something, they’ll change the station.“

It was a valuable lesson for me to have learned.

A few years later, I met “The Wunderkind” Fred Silverman at CBS, where he was the head of programming for daytime and children. He was the most dedicated programming executive that I’ve ever met. His job was to get as large an audience as possible for CBS, and boy, did he do that…probably to the chagrin of those “elitists”who would, if given the opportunity, try to “inform and educate” young people.

You can put it on, but you can’t make them watch it.

Around the same time, I met Monica Simms, who was the head of children’s programming at the BBC. She was a bright and charming woman, and we spent some time together outside of the office. I booked three tickets to whatever the “hot” Broadway show that was in fashion at the time, and Monica asked if it was possible to change the tickets and go and see “Oh! Calcutta!?” I’m still recovering emotionally from sitting in the first row of the theater for an X-rated performance with my wife and Monica. I was unable then or now to connect the woman who was in charge of children’s programming at the BBC wanting to see and enjoying that play.

In the early ’70s, I was in London, and Monica invited me to her home for dinner. There were about a dozen people there, including a bunch of very senior BBC producers  and programmers. Predictably, the after-dinner conversation centered around the “inadequacy” of American television that provided their audience with “what they wanted to see,” as opposed to the BBC, which gave their audience (to a certain extent) “what they should see.”

We have allowed the “elitist” Newton Minow’s of the world to advocate “what is good, better, or best” on television, which is wonderful as long as they are not with the FCC or any other regulatory body. Please do not deify Newton Minow and those of his ilk who will have you enjoy only what they deem acceptable.

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1. Throw Another Christian to the Lions by Norman Horowitz Apparently, a mere 2000 years ago, Roman...

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I am the product of the industry in which I have worked for 50+ years. In fact, the only insight I can bring to anything is not based on my intellect, but rather on my experiences in life in general, as well as the Air Force and the business of television.

I grew up watching my father run his small dress manufacturing business at 1385 Broadway in New York. To me, he was to me the ultimate operating executive in that he knew everything he needed to know to run his business. Everyone who worked for him had a job to do (including my Dad). He had no “formal” business training, yet he ran a profitable business for many years.

My career in the entertainment industry started as a part-time, minimum-wage shipping clerk and messenger for the editorial department of Screen Gems Television in New York. In the intervening years, I became a functioning operating and sales executive. Although I’ve had many staff positions in the intervening years, I’m still an operating guy.  

Sadly, for the most part, I have reported to corporate “staff” people who had no clue what our people were doing. The Columbia CFO was very upset with me because I wasn’t happy that the “corporate” people took large profit-sharing awards for themselves and gave little to me and my people. When he told me about “their” great overall responsibilities, I suggested that that they “just kept score” while we actually did the business.

In the late ’70s, following an annoying budget meeting with my Columbia Pictures management, I met with the company’s president in his hotel.  I told him I was upset that neither he nor his people had the slightest idea what my staff and I had presented to them and that they had asked no questions about any aspect of our business. We made a detailed presentation about our business and its future, and not a single question was asked nor did they say anything other than they wanted us to spend less.

I pointed out to him that he was a tax lawyer, his COO had been the chairman of a car rental company, his CFO had been with an accounting firm, and his general counsel had been a partner in a law firm prior to joining Columbia. None of them had any operating experience whatsoever. None of them had a clue what we had been talking about. My associates and I had spoken about the expansion of the media, and no one seemed the least bit interested.

At Polygram, a multi-billion-dollar company, I was the only divisional president who was not a lawyer.  As I remember, they had 19 operating divisions.

At MGM, it was mostly the same. The President was a lawyer without an operating clue, nor did any of the corporate staff have any knowledge of our industry.

In order to end whatever vestiges of a career I have in the entertainment industry, I will comment briefly about “senior managements” I’ve reported to at Columbia Pictures (twice), CBS, Polygram, and MGM.

• Columbia Pictures, 1960-1968: Abe Schneider and Leo Jaffee — chairman and president, respectively — were finance executives and didn’t have an operating clue about their movie and television businesses.
• CBS, 1968-1970: Bill Paley and Dr. Frank Stanton operated the “Tiffany Network,” and look at the results. They respected their operating people.
• Columbia Pictures, 1970-1978: Alan Hirschfield told me something like, “Norman, you’re making a lot of money for the company. If anyone gets in your way, let me know, and I’ll take care of it.” Now how great is that? He “protected” me from the invasion of corporate staff people who only wanted to discuss and “approve” everything that we did, even though none of them had any operating experience.
• Columbia Pictures, 1978-1980: Francis (Fay) Vincent and Robert L. Stone. A total disaster. Vincent had no experience, and Stone was a notorious “cost cutter” who didn’t have an operating clue. I ended up reporting to Stone. He made my people crazy with his “expense policy guidelines.”
• Polygram, 1980-1985: Harvey Schein. Again, a lawyer without an operating clue. He was mostly interested that everyone knew that he was in charge!
• MGM, 1986-1992: Lee Rich (the chairman) once said something like, “Norman, I hired you to do a job. Just do it, and leave me alone.”

It’s still my opinion that, if you’re going to “manage” operations, you need to have had at least a modicum of operating experience in doing something.

I functioned as a manager of sales and production companies. Because of my operating experience, I understood the barriers to maximizing revenue. I tried to hire the best people I could get, pay them as much money as I could, clearly outline our goals, and “set them loose” to do their jobs. I also realized the importance of minimizing expenses but at the same time not being stupid about it.

Because none of my managements had an operating clue about what we did and how we did it, I would try to explain to them that they needed to love and encourage their staff and not take issue with them for small amounts of money. Bob Stone at Columbia exemplified the wrong attitude about this issue and would be critical of our sales guys for spending very trivial amounts of money. An associate and I were once in the middle of trying to conclude an $8 million deal when Bob Stone called me about a $25 item on a salesman’s expense report. Not good.

It was my attitude to have the “corporate staff” serve the “operating staff” and not the other way around. Now how quaint is that?

I’m reminded of the rabbi who had to give a eulogy about a reviled 90-year-old. He said, “What can one say about Jacob Abramowitz?” His mind was racing as he repeated the question, until a member of the congregation shouted out, “His brother was worse!”

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Apparently, a mere 2000 years ago, Roman Emperors came up with an early reality show to entertain and distract  ”the masses.”

They built the Colosseum, a 50,000-seat amphitheatre where they staged bloody gladiatorial contests and other “entertainments” that pitted men against one another and/or wild animals.

The most popular of the shows’ entertainment segments was throwing Christians to the lions. This concept was a winning idea, as it gave the masses something that they wanted. It has been reported that they didn’t think too hard about the shortcomings of their rulers or of the political system with this distraction, although I find this difficult to believe.

Many say that 2000-odd years later these contests are replicated, in a manner of speaking, by television.  Americans are diverted and entertained each Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter by all sorts of entertainment and sports carried on television.  

I’ve always loved the description of television as “chewing gum for the mind.”

Television in our times is designed to attract an audience as large as possible to sell to advertisers. Now how complicated is that premise? Included in that category is the “selling and commercialization of broadcast news.”

Admittedly, I have a long-standing animus to TV journalists as to their “piousness” concerning what they report on air.

Our nation is still bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, but if you regularly watched our network news programs, you would hardly know it. As the Republicans love to call health care in America “Obamacare,” I continue to refer to these ongoing societal atrocities as “Bush’s Wars.”

Instead, America’s media is preoccupied with “banal issues” to attract an audience.

Charlie Sheen is an American film and television actor. He was the highest paid actor on television, earning $1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men. I do not diminish him when I say that he is just an actor.

Sheen’s personal life has recently made headlines, including reports about alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems as well as allegations of domestic violence. He was fired from his role on Two and a Half Men by CBS and Warner Brothers.

I have a major problem with the purported news outlets on television who willfully gave extensive coverage to an apparently deranged actor for either “fun or profit.”

To report on the behavior of a “prominent” television actor would be one thing, but “egging him on” in his erratic behavior and televising the outcome is quite another.

Another “Christian” — and apparently a sick one — has been “thrown to the lions” to get ratings. It’s a sad commentary on our media.

Picture a suicidal man on the roof of a ten-story building, surrounded by transfixed crowds shouting, “Jump!”

What the broadcasters and cablecasters do today carries the same Constitutional protection as it always has, yet the “guardians” of our “airwaves” glory in what they present as “news,” yet for the most part they are presenting “extensive commentaries, or just plain programming” dressed up, and sold, as “news.”

Will someone please tell me why interviewing or reporting at length about Charlie Sheen is news?

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN kept asking Sheen to metaphorically jump. They even smiled as they egged him on. These pillars of journalistic integrity must be very proud.

Shame on them!

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Just to avoid confusion, from now on I’m going to put the name of the author at the top of each post. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m as prolific as Norman! — AWO

by Norman Horowitz

This post’s title is a quote from the brilliant Stephen Sondheim play Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

As a studio motion picture and television salesman, it was my responsibility to extract as much money from those buying such content as possible without cheating and lying in the process. Conversely, those buying the content were trying as hard as they could to pay as little as possible for it.

Here’s a confession, or at least an acknowledgement as to a relevant point in the process: For the majority of the motion pictures or television product, there is little to distinguish the value of the available content. It was mostly in the minds of the buyers, placed there whenever possible by the sellers like me.  

For many decades, there were times when the feds interceded to prevent the studios from extorting money from the theater and broadcast owners (but details about that that are for another time). I extorted money (not really) when I controlled content that more than one broadcaster wanted. It was my job.

I played in a commercial, victimless game of producing, buying, and selling programming. My managements were never pleased by my considering it a game, yet that is what it was.

I’m not an expert in the legalities, but I’ve been an expert in creating euphemistic opportunities of turning film buyers upside-down so that I could get the remaining loose change from their pockets after I had taken all of their bills.

So I may not be an investigative reporter, but I know a thing or two about taking people’s money. Keep that in mind for the following story.

For about ten years, I’ve suffered from gout. Everyday I’ve taken a prescription called “colchicine.” According to Wikipedia:

[Colchicine] was sold as a generic in the United States for many years. In 2009, the FDA approved colchicine for gout flares, awarding Colcrys a three-year term of market exclusivity, prohibiting generic sales, and increasing the price of the drug from $0.09 to $4.85 per pill.

[They may have had a valid reason for doing this, but I doubt it.]

Numerous consensus guidelines, and previous randomized controlled trials, concluded that colchicines is effective for acute flares of gouty arthritis. However, as of 2006, the drug was not formally approved by the FDA, owing to the lack of a conclusive randomized control trial (RCT). That year the FDA started their Unapproved Drugs Initiative, through which they sought more rigorous testing of efficacy and safety of colchicine and other unapproved drugs on the market. In exchange for paying for the costly testing, the FDA gave URL Pharma 3 years market exclusivity for its Colcrys brand, under the Waxman-Hatch Act, based in part on URL-funded research in 2007, including pharmacokinetic studies and RCT with 185 patients with acute gout. URL Pharma also got 7 years market exclusivity for Colcrys in treatment of familial Mediterranean fever, under the orphan drug act. URL Pharma raised the price from $0.09 per pill to $4.85, and sued to remove other versions from market. This will increase costs to state Medicaid programs from $1 million to $50 million.

April 2010 : In a critical editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Kesselheim and Solomon said that the rewards of this legislation are not calibrated to the quality or value of information produced. There is no evidence of meaningful improvement to public health. It would be much less expensive for the FDA or NIH to pay for trials themselves on widely available drugs such as colchicine. The burden falls primarily on patients or their insurers. URL Pharma posted a detailed rebuttal of the NEJM editorial.

Sept 2010: FDA orders halt to marketing of unapproved single-ingredient oral colchicine.

The cost for treating the gout that I have been gifted with has risen from under $3 per month to about $150 per month.

I would like to suggest that the feds or someone investigate this mess and, if called for, send a few to prison.

It seems to me that it’s okay to sell a James Bond movie for as much as possible, but for the feds to be complicit with a drug company in increasing the price of a drug so dramatically is not okay.

My daughter Eileen lives in France and is able to purchase colchicine for about 8 cents a tablet. I gather that this is the price for the product everywhere but here!

Never, never, never forget: “The history of the world, my sweet– Is who gets eaten, and who gets to eat!”

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