The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television - Hardcover

Kimmel, Daniel M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566635721 ISBN 13: 9781566635721

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2004

Synopsis

When Garth Ancier left NBC for the start-up FOX network, NBC head Grant Tinker told Ancier he was making a terrible mistake. "I will never put a fourth column on my schedule board," Ancier recalls Tinker telling him. "There will only be three." Today, fewer than twenty years later, FOX is routinely referred to as one of the "Big Four" television networks while more recent arrivals like UPN, PAX, and the WB strive to be number five. The Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, and the many executives who have worked at the FOX network over the years changed the rules of the game. They showed it was possible to build and sustain a fourth American television network through innovations in prime-time shows, sports, children's entertainment, news, and new business models that challenged the assumptions of how the industry operated. Daniel Kimmel's lively account of the FOX story carries the reader from the launch of the ill-fated Joan Rivers Show in 1986 to the challenging media environment of the twenty-first century-an environment FOX helped create. The Fourth Network is filled with behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, outsized personalities, improbable risk-takers, and the triumphs and disasters that led to such signature television series as The Simpsons,Beverly Hills 90210,The X Files, and America's Most Wanted. For better or worse-or perhaps a bit of both-the story of the rise of FOX is the story of contemporary American television.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel M. Kimmel is the Boston correspondent for Variety and a reviewer of television and film for such publications as the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Herald, and Film Comment. A graduate of the University of Rochester with a law degree, he has also taught film-related courses at Emerson College, Boston University, and Suffolk University. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he occasionally watches The Simpsons with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

According to Peter Roth, FOX Entertainment Group's former president, the network's formula for success was simple: executives must "be nimble, be opportunistic and be aggressive." Kimmel, Variety's Boston correspondent, relates how FOX developed this mantra and eventually became a serious competitor to the Big Three networks. The key to the victory was timing and shrewd analysis of market research. FOX's two pioneering tactics, counter-programming and narrowcasting (delivering messages to a select audience), put them on the map. Airing Married... With Children against CBS's 60 Minutes was their breakthrough maneuver. FOX may not have won the time slot, but it generated buzz and attracted Gen Xers. By aiming for a sophisticated and upscale demographic, the network was able to lure specific advertisers. This strategy was a radical departure from the established tradition, which aimed at the general population. And on the programming front, the creation of The Simpsons, The X-Files and Ally McBeal cemented FOX's commitment to innovative programming. But Kimmel gives equal time to FOX's snafus. The tortured history of The Late Show with Joan Rivers is an object lesson in how egos can destroy an endeavor. Unfortunately, this kind of lively recital is infrequent. Kimmel's primary focus is business and negotiations. Innumerable executives and programmers, many of whom he has interviewed, are rarely portrayed with any distinguishing characteristics (a notable exception is the colorful Barry Diller). This is a solid but rather dry account of the birth of a network and its impact on TV.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Initially ridiculed as the "hanger network," meaning that it had a signal so weak that viewers would need hanger antennas to watch it, the Fox network has grown to be an influential force in broadcasting. Independent journalist Kimmel explores the growth of Fox from an outrageous idea entertained by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch and entertainment executive Barry Diller, to its first major coup in luring Joan Rivers from her position as guest host of The Tonight Show to an ill-fated show of her own, to its position as a risk taker and trendsetter in television, with groundbreaking shows such as The Simpsons, The X Files, and America's Most Wanted. Kimmel offers a behind-the-scenes look at the corporate and financial machinations behind the creation of a fourth network 20 years ago, at a time when few could imagine a viable network beyond the Big Three. Fox took advantage of the segmentation of the market and filled niches that were neglected by the big networks, in the process changing standards for television programming. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566635721
• ISBN 13: 9781566635721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 340