The Ride of a Lifetime Read online

  That’s genuinely how I felt at the time. I didn’t regret trying it. And it’s how I felt a few months later when we pulled the plug on Twin Peaks. I didn’t want to be in the business of playing it safe. I wanted to be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness. Of all the lessons I learned in that first year running prime time, the need to be comfortable with failure was the most profound. Not with lack of effort but with the unavoidable truth that if you want innovation—and you should, always—you need to give permission to fail.

  Steven and I shared the flop that was Cop Rock together. We had a sense of humor about it, and I made a point to never distance myself from the decision to put it on the air. It felt like a much-higher-stakes version of the lesson I’d learned in that room at ABC Sports years before. You can’t erase your mistakes or pin your bad decisions on someone else. You have to own your own failures. You earn as much respect and goodwill by standing by someone in the wake of a failure as you do by giving them credit for a success.

  Once the Cop Rock wounds had healed a bit, Steven told me that he wanted to make what he called “the first R-rated show in TV history.” I said, “Steven, you did Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law for NBC. Where is that for us? I get a police show and it’s Cop Rock. And now you want to do something that will send advertisers running for the hills?” What I didn’t appreciate is how much Steven felt that he’d already done all that other stuff and was driven to do something different—and how much he was responding to the shifting landscape of television. He felt HBO was going to be eating our lunch soon because their shows’ creators didn’t have to comply with prudish network censors or worry about offending advertisers. So he pitched NYPD Blue as the first R-rated drama on network TV.

  I agreed with Steven about the changing nature of television and the stodginess of the networks, but I also knew there was no way I could get permission to put an R-rated show on TV. The sales guys told me that, and I told Steven, and for a while we both walked away from the idea. I did believe, though, that we could do something that stretched the boundaries but wasn’t quite R-rated, and Steven eventually got intrigued by that idea. “If we were to do that,” he said, “what would it look like?”

  He and I consulted with the censors and came up with a template for what we could and could not do on a “PG-13” show. We made a glossary of all the words that were technically inbounds. (Asswipe was okay; asshole was not. You could use prick to describe a person but not a body part.) We pulled out a notebook and drew stick figures, basically, of naked people, figuring out what angles would reveal enough but not too much.

  The next step was to sell it to Dan Burke. Dan flew out to L.A., and the three of us had lunch near Steven’s office. We showed him our glossary and our stick figures and explained why this show was important to us. “You guys can do this,” Dan finally said. “But when the shit hits the fan, and it’s going to hit the fan, my skirt isn’t wide enough for you”—he pointed at me—“to hide behind.”

  It was another example of my being willing to take risks in part because of the faith Dan and Tom placed in me. They gave me this job, and I’d delivered quickly, and that gave me an enormous amount of latitude with them. I couldn’t do whatever I wanted, but I had the freedom to exercise a considerable amount of authority. It’s a trust that Brandon Stoddard, my predecessor, never earned. He refused to respect them, and therefore they didn’t respect him, which in turn meant they were determined to tell him no when he fought for things he wanted.

  After we got Dan’s approval, there was a long, painstaking development period, in which Steven pushed in one direction and ABC’s standards-and-practices folks pushed back, until compromises were finally reached. The show premiered in the fall of 1993, a full season after we’d initially intended to put it on the air. The American Family Association called for a boycott; many advertisers refused to buy spots; more than 50 of our 225 affiliates preempted the first episode. But the critical reception was extraordinary, and in its second season it was among the top ten shows on TV. It would become a mainstay of prime time for a dozen years, winning 20 Emmys and being regarded as one of the best dramas ever created for the network.

  During my stint running prime time, we ended up number one with the coveted 18–49 demographic four out of five years. We even unseated Brandon Tartikoff, who’d kept NBC atop the Nielsen rankings for sixty-eight straight weeks. (Brandon called to congratulate me when the rankings came out showing ABC on top. He was a classy guy, and he’d done something that no one will ever do again. “I feel a little sad about it,” I told him. “It’s like Joe DiMaggio’s streak coming to an end.”)

  Our success was a team effort, always, but it was also the first success I experienced in my career that was publicly ascribed to me. On the one hand, it felt odd that I was getting credit for things that other people made. I’d come to Entertainment knowing nothing about the job, and this group of incredibly talented people shared everything they knew with me. They worked hard and weren’t threatened by the fact that I’d become their boss. Because of their generosity, we succeeded together, and yet the credit was largely given to me.

  I think it’s also fair to say, though, that we wouldn’t have gone to number one in prime time without my running it. Dan and Tom’s faith gave me the courage to take big risks; and if I had a strength, it was my ability to urge creative people to do their best work and take chances, while also helping them rebound from failure. It’s always a collective effort, but my years running Entertainment gave me a new appreciation for what it takes to get a group of talented people to produce at the highest level.

  Finding that balance between accepting credit for real achievements and not making too much of the hype from the outside world has only gotten more necessary during my years as CEO. I often feel guilty in front of other people with whom I work, when so much attention and credit is being directed toward me. It manifests itself in strange ways. I’m often in meetings with someone from outside the company and that person will look only at me, even though I’m surrounded by colleagues at the table. I don’t know if other CEOs feel this way, but it’s embarrassing to me, and in those moments I make a point of directing praise and attention to my coworkers. Similarly, when I’m the one attending a meeting with a group outside of Disney, I make sure to connect and speak with every person at the table. It’s a small gesture, but I remember how it felt to be the overlooked sidekick, and anything that reminds you that you’re not the center of the universe is a good thing.

  * * *

  —

  OVER THANKSGIVING WEEKEND 1992, Dan Burke called me to say that the president of ABC was retiring. They wanted me to move back to New York and take his place. This wasn’t a total surprise. When they’d made me head of Entertainment, Tom and Dan had suggested that, if I did well, they wanted me eventually to run the network. It was a surprise, though, when I asked Dan when they wanted me to start. “January 1,” he said, just over a month.

  I was happy to be going back, and not just for the job. Earlier that year, Susan and I had separated and she had moved back to New York with our daughters. Susan never liked L.A., and she liked it less once we were apart. New York was where she felt at home, and I couldn’t begrudge her that. I flew back as often as I could to see the girls, but it was a terrible year.

  On short notice, I sold the house in Los Angeles and packed up my things and moved in to a room at the Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side. And on January 1, at age forty-three, I became president of the ABC television network. I’d known it was coming for some time, but it was still surreal when it happened. My old mentors—Roone in News, Dennis Swanson in Sports—were now reporting to me. Ted Harbert, who along with Stu Bloomberg had taught me how to be a television executive, took over for me at Entertainment.

  Less than a year later, at the end of 1993, Tom Murphy called me into his office. “Dan’s going to retire in February,” he said. “I need
you to take his job.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said. “I’ve barely started this job. Who will run the network? You gotta wait.” As much as my instinct was to say yes to every opportunity, this felt too fast.

  Eight months later, Tom came to me again. “I need you in that job,” he said. “I need help running the company.” In September 1994, I became president and COO of Capital Cities/ABC, a year and nine months after becoming president of the network. It was a dizzying and sometimes destabilizing trajectory. I wouldn’t as a rule recommend promoting someone as rapidly as they promoted me, but I will say one more time, because it bears repeating: The way they conveyed their faith in me at every step made all the difference in my success.

  Soon after I became Chief Operating Officer, in the spring of 1995, Michael Eisner, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, began making inquiries into a possible acquisition of Cap Cities/ABC. It didn’t go anywhere initially, and right around that time, Tom told me that he was planning to talk with the board about my succeeding him as CEO. That July, we were in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the annual Allen & Company conference. I was standing in a parking lot talking with Tom, and I could see Warren Buffett, our largest shareholder, and Michael Eisner talking nearby. They waved for Tom to come over, and before he walked away, I said, “Do me a favor. If you decide to sell to Michael, give me some warning, okay?”

  It didn’t take long. A few weeks later, Michael reached out to Tom formally to begin the negotiation for Disney to buy Capital Cities/ABC.

  CHAPTER 4

  ENTER DISNEY

  SO MUCH HAS been said and written about Disney’s acquisition of us that I have little to add, except from my own unique perspective, given my position at ABC and the fact that I was told at the time that it was of critical importance to Michael Eisner that I sign a five-year contract to remain with the combined company. Michael had been Disney’s CEO since 1984, and he’d been running the company without a number two for more than a year, after his COO Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash in the spring of 1994. If this deal went through, Disney would nearly double in size, and Michael knew he couldn’t integrate the two companies and run the newly combined entity on his own. It was a lot for me to absorb. One day I was in line to become the next CEO of Cap Cities/ABC; the next I was being asked to run the media division of Disney for at least five years. While the latter was an intriguing job, objectively, it felt at the time like a bitter pill to swallow.

  I knew if I agreed to stay on, it would likely require moving back to Los Angeles, and I didn’t want to do that. I hated the thought of being away from my daughters again, and my aging parents were on Long Island, and I wanted to remain close to them. I was also now engaged to Willow Bay, whom I had started dating a little more than a year earlier. Willow had her own great job in New York, anchoring the weekend edition of Good Morning America, subbing for the weekday host Joan Lunden during the week, and being groomed as her successor. I didn’t want to be apart from her, and I didn’t want to ask her to give up her job so she could come across the country with me.

  So, on one side of the scale, the personal reasons for walking away were piled fairly high. On the other side, the professional reasons for staying were stacked just as tall. I didn’t know Michael well, but I liked and respected him. We had overlapped briefly at ABC years before, but I was a low-level employee then and our paths never crossed. Years later, he and Jeffrey Katzenberg, whom Michael brought in to run Walt Disney Studios after he became CEO, had tried to hire me when I was running ABC Entertainment. That he was now saying the deal wouldn’t happen without me suggested that one day he might ask me to fill the role of COO that had been empty since Frank Wells’s death. I’ve generally tried over the years to keep my eye on the job I have and not the jobs I might someday have, but the thought that I might have a shot at running Disney one day was hard to ignore.

  Willow was unequivocally supportive. She said I had nothing to lose and a lot to possibly gain by staying, and that she trusted that she and I could figure out whatever we needed to figure out. I sought some wisdom from Tom Murphy, too. Tom was conflicted (he wanted to deliver me to Michael as part of the deal), but he was also capable of separating out his interests, and he’d always been a good sounding board for me. I knew he was being genuine when he said, “Pal, if you play your cards right, one day you will run that company.”

  Disney and Capital Cities/ABC agreed to financial terms on a Friday afternoon. While there were some finer points still to be hashed out, the only major issue left unresolved was whether I was staying or going. That same night, Willow and I had scheduled a dinner with the Jesuit priest who was going to marry us. (I’m Jewish and Willow’s Catholic, so we’d enlisted both Father Ghirlando and a Jewish cantor from New Jersey to officiate our wedding.) There I was, a divorced Jewish guy hoping to impress the priest who would perform our service, and every couple of minutes I had to stand up and excuse myself from the table to take calls regarding the deal. I began to worry about seeming disrespectful to Father Ghirlando, so I finally apologized for the interruptions and said, “I know I’m Jewish, but I need to ask you for ‘priest-client’ confidentiality.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “We’re about to announce the biggest deal in entertainment history, and I’m trying to make a decision on whether to stay on with the company or not. That’s what all of these calls are about.”

  Father Ghirlando didn’t offer any clerical wisdom, but he did bless whatever decision I was about to make. We continued talking about our wedding service, but every time I excused myself to take another call, Father Ghirlando seemed mildly thrilled, knowing that he was hearing about one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of American business before the rest of the world.

  On Tom Murphy’s recommendation, I hired a lawyer named Joe Bachelder, and on Saturday morning I went to Joe’s office in midtown Manhattan and told him that this needed to be resolved fast. I was leaning toward staying, so now I was basically sending Joe in to do battle with Disney’s general counsel, Sandy Litvack, to work out a deal that felt right to me. The following night, ABC and Disney board members convened at the offices of Dewey Ballantine, the firm representing Disney. It was a tense situation. While the boards were hashing out the specifics of this mega-merger, Sandy Litvack was complaining that the entire thing was going to blow up because Joe was being too tough. At one point Michael Eisner pulled Tom Murphy aside and begged him to intervene and get me to agree to the deal Disney was offering. Michael then confronted me himself a little later. “Bob,” he said, “it’s easier to negotiate this $19.5 billion deal than it is to figure out yours. Will you please just say yes?”

  The final sticking point was the matter of whom I would be reporting to. Joe was pushing for a formal agreement that I would report directly to Michael, and Michael refused. He wanted the freedom to name a president, someone who would exist between the two of us, and he wanted to make sure that I understood he could do that. While I would have liked him to say that I was formally his number two, I appreciated how direct Michael was with me. I finally told Joe to accept later that night. I was hoping for a path to possibly becoming CEO one day (understanding that nothing is ever guaranteed), but it wasn’t the right time to fight for that. I wanted the merger to go well, and I wanted to make sure the Capital Cities team was treated well by Disney. Without me there, I was fairly certain they would get subsumed by Disney in potentially dispiriting ways.

  We all convened the next morning at the crack of dawn at ABC’s headquarters on Sixty-sixth Street. The plan was for us to make the announcement, do a press conference in one of ABC’s studios (TV-1, where one of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates took place), and then Michael and Tom would walk next door to TV-2 to do an interview on Good Morning America, which was airing live. It truly would be breaking news. No one at ABC News had been told in advance that a deal was imminent. Coincidentally, Willow was filling in for
Joan Lunden that day. When Charlie Gibson, her co-anchor, noticed the commotion in the studio next door, he asked her, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate what is happening next door?” Willow, who of course knew what was up but was sworn to secrecy, responded, “I’d give it a twelve, Charlie.”

  My five-year extension was announced along with the deal. Afterward, I immediately convened a meeting of all of the top Cap Cities/ABC executives. None of them saw this coming, and they were still in shock. There were people around the table who had worked for Tom and Dan for their entire careers, and they were looking at me asking, “What happens now? What do we do?”

  I spoke as frankly as I could. Disney was a very different corporate culture than ours, but Tom had the interests of the entire company at heart when he agreed to the deal. It was going to be a difficult transition, though; there was no way around that. I wanted people to understand that I knew how unsettling it was. The corporate culture we were all used to was about to end. Disney was more aggressive, more creative, more a creature of Hollywood than the company we’d all worked for. I was in a position to make the transition easier, though, and I wanted them to know they could rely on me if they needed my help.

  As for the deal itself, a lot of people were shocked at the $19.5 billion price tag; others thought Tom could have held out longer and sold for much more. It’s impossible to say. It turned out to be a bargain for Disney, though; that much is certain. Michael never got much credit for having the guts it took to make that deal, but it was an enormous risk, and it paid off for years to come. The acquisition gave Disney the scale to remain independent when other entertainment companies were coming to the painful realization that they were too small to compete in a changing world. The assets Disney acquired in the merger—especially ESPN—drove growth for years and were a vital buffer for nearly a decade as Disney Animation struggled with a series of box-office disappointments.