Date: 11.30.1998
THINK OF FAYE DUNAWAY in the 1976 movie Network--the high-strung, hard- hearted TV executive. Then erase that thought completely. It just doesn't fit Patricia Fili-Krushel, 44, the newly named president of the ABC Television Network.
Fili thinks nothing of stepping out of meetings to take calls from her 6-year-old and 8-year-old about play dates and fruit roll-ups. "Does being a mom make me a better manager? Oh, yes," she says with a voice that suggests her New York upbringing. "It's perfected my negotiating skills."
Twenty-three years ago this FORBES lunch guest was a secretary answering phones for the big guys at ABC Sports. She rose through the ranks there, later at Home Box Office, at Lifetime, the cable network geared for women, and rejoined ABC in 1993 as president of ABC Daytime. Today, as ABC Television Network president, she is responsible for all programming, affiliate relations, marketing and broadcast operations. At Cafe des Artistes, just around the corner from ABC's studios in Manhattan, we order salmon, but our main course is the TV network business.
This is not the best of times for TV networks. All four networks are losing ground, while cable and satellite are gaining. ABC is showing some relative strength, being down just 4% so far this season, compared with NBC, down 21%, CBS 3% and Fox 9% in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic, a common measurement for the networks. Does it mean that Thomas Murphy, who sold Capital Cities/ABC in 1996, is the smartest person in media? he loses her smile for an instant: "Yes, he is very smart," she says, and adds very quickly, "so is Michael Eisner," head of the Walt Disney Co., which purchased the company for $19 billion. "We [networks] still control 55% of the market," she reminds us.
That's the pitch: If you want the masses, you still must go to the networks. "So we need to hold on to the pieces that get the largest audience like Monday Night Football, NYPDBlue, the Academy Awards, Super Bowl 2000. We are in the broadcast business." But, she concedes, the networks must get their costs down to compensate for the reduction in audience size. One way, she says, is to nail down longer, multiyear licensing agreements for the shows put on the network. What Fili wants to avoid is NBC's ER crisis--when a show becomes such a runaway hit that it can squeeze blood from the network or go elsewhere.
Historically, these financial agreements were locked up for four years or less. Fili says perhaps she would negotiate six to seven years. Networks are trying to wrestle down the cost beast by owning more of the shows they air. NBC's feisty Robert Wright is demanding an equity slice of every new show brought to NBC. But many producers and studios are hesitating to deal with NBC.
"Ownership is less a concern for us than for NBC," she says with a studied smile, "because we have a flow of product coming from Disney." Maybe so. Yet recently ABC started asking for domestic distribution rights for its made-for-TV movies. We take a bite of our salmon, and she says that instead of just fighting cable, the networks can cooperate with it. "There is a large audience of women who aren't home during the day anymore. Why not show the same episode of All My Children twice in one day using a cable channel to maximize the audience?" Which is exactly what she is doing in a three-market test.
While the early results are very positive, the 223 station affiliates can hardly be happy. This comes at a time when ABC is trying to pry money loose from the affiliates to help cover ABC's $550 million-a-year contract for Monday Night Football. How is Fili finessing this one? Still smiling, she takes a deep breath. "I tell the affiliates the truth, 'Give us the opportunity to exploit our programming so we can be healthy. We can't afford to keep going after Monday Night Football or the Academy Awards unless we are healthy.'" You can't have a fruit roll-up unless you eat your spinach. But in this case she has something else to offer besides candy.
Fili has told the affiliates that if she launches a soap opera channel she will come up with a viable way to share revenue and profits with them. She made it clear no other network has made this kind of an offer. Still, Fili has some things to smile about. ABC has edged out Fox, moving into a solid second place behind NBC in the 18- to 49-year- old category. Her network has had a promising start this fall--ordering additional episodes for its entire slate of new half-hour situation comedies, the only network to make that claim.
ABC's World News Tonight just overtook NBC's Nightly News to reclaim the number one spot. "We aren't getting enough credit," she says, then repeats that sentence in case I missed the point. I didn't. "The press focuses too much on prime-time performance," she says, and it needs to look at the network from sign-on to sign-off.
"We are number one with kids aged 2 to 11 on Saturday morning, and in daytime, we have been number one for 22 years." I mention she's just one of several women recently named to senior jobs in TV. A coincidence, or a sign that the industry is really looking for new ideas and new approaches? Fili replies: "TV for the most part is a female vehicle. Just like 12- to 17-year-old boys define a hit in theatrical releases, TV viewers are about two-thirds women. We'd better reflect our viewers' interests."
The cappuccino arrives. Our time is almost up. We're both mothers, so I must ask her about all that sex and violence on the tube. She takes the safe route and smiles. "We follow our labeling requirement and believe the viewer is pretty good at letting us know. "I'm particular about what I want my children to watch. They can only watch one half-hour during the weekday, and that happens to be a Disney show called Bill Nye the Science Guy. Because they get up so early on Saturday, they can watch ABC, Disney or Nickelodeon. I do not let them watch other, violent cartoons."
How do you enforce your TV policy with your children, I ask? "That's no problem," says this executive mom with sublime confidence: "They listen." I'll bet they do.
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