The A-team Fans V3.0 ~ Bekijk onderwerp - THE SHOW: ‘A-Team' helped pull NBC from ratings pits

Moderator Geregistreerd op: 23-12-2004 Berichten: 368 Woonplaats: Wevelgem

To discriminating viewers, "The A-team" is merely the loudest, fastest, silliest, funniest - and, some say, the most exciting - action adventure series to come out of Hollywood in a decade.

But to people behind the scenes whose lives and careers are made or broken on the strength of tv ratings, it’s the show that helped to keep a network alive - until something classier came along.

When Hannibal Smith, B.A. Baracus and their cohorts exploded on the American scene in January 1983, NBC was a distant third in the ratings race, limping along under the often-denied threat of being dumped by it’s giant parent corporation, RCA.

Rival CBS had "Dallas", ABC had "Dynasty", NBC had settled for a programing policy that encouraged the deception that it was the network that put quality above viewers in quantity by granting air time to shows like "Hill Street Blues".

"The A-team" shattered the illusion. Boosted by relentless promotion spots aired during NBC’s coverage of the Super Bowl, the two hour pilot episode for the series attracted more than 50 million viewers. The show wound up fifth in the weeks rating lineup, invading territory the also-ran network hadn’t visited in years.

The critics were unanimous: it was dreadful.

NBC’s accountants were also unanimous: forget quality; ratings like these were heavenly harbingers of awesome profits. And, heaven knew, the network needed those.

The initial reaction from NBC’s programers - and from "A-team" leader George Peppard when I first talked to him about it in 1983 - was guarded.

The public's instant acceptance of the show’s flashy, knockabout format could be short-lived, said the pessimists.

After all, the viewing audience had by then started to reject "The Dukes of Hazzard," closest equivalent of "The A-team" on another network (CBS), as a carcrashing bore. Maybe they’d tire of Hannibal and company just as quickly?

But, propelled by artful promotion and the public’s fascinated interest in Mr. T., the barrel-like black man whose selection to play B.A. (for "Bad Attitude") Baracus was the show’s first and most inspired piece of casting, "The A-team" sustained its stratospheric ratings.

Now, two years later, the series has become everybody’s success story. NBC executives who had privately dismissed it as trash are discovering glimmers of wit and social comment between the crashes, punch-ups and bloodless gunfights which are the show’s weekly stock in trade.

Taking titular credit for its creation is Stephen J. Cannell, a former carpet salesman who overcame dyslexia to become, first, one of the most inventive tv writers in Hollywood - witness "The Rockford Files" - and now one of the most powerful independent producers in town.

Also credited on screen each week is Cannell’s partner, Frank Lupo.

But Cannell is quick to hand a big chunck of the credit to Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s once-beleagured head of programing.

Cannell told me: "Brandon called me in to network HQ, gave me a title, and said, "We need a show sort of like "The Wild Bunch" - and mr. T drives the truck.

"Frank and I did the rest - but it was a big help to know in advance what the network was looking for, and what kind of spirit we should aim for."

Cannell’s reputation as a writer is built on James Garner’s Jim Rockford and daring, witty work like "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe", a detective series that ran for six months in 1980 and faded from the air because, presumably, it was too intelligent for the masses.

But the production HQ that has enabled Cannell - never a shrinking violet - to hang the 15 letters of his name in six-foot blue symbols high above Hollywood Blvd. was built on the proceeds from less-cerebreal stuff. The famous Hollywood sign, not far away, stands taller. But it doesn’t glow in the dark like Stephen Cannell’s fluorescent lit monument to his own ego.

Said Cannell: "It’s not a matter of great or good or bad or terrible - "The A-team" is about entertainment, that’s all. As a writer, you do the best you can, and if you’re very lucky, people watch it.

"As a producer, you know that good scripts still matter, but other things matter as much or more - and one of them is ratings."

In its first year, "The A-team" put close to a million dollars a week into Stephen Cannells coffers, making small beer indeed out of the $2,500 he was paid for his first script, for a long since canceled cop show called "Adam-12".

Said Stephen: "I quit the family business then, came to Hollywood and assumed I’d be rich by the end of my first week. For 18 months, I starved.

"OK, it took me a little longer than a week to get here, but this is what I was aiming for."

As well as NBC’s "The A-team" Cannell has another sizable hit, "Riptide," on the same network, and ABC is well pleased with his "Hardcastle and McCormick."

Whatever the critics may say about "The A-team," it is more than "The Dukes of Hazzard" without hayseed - buildings explode, cars crash in balls of fire and machine guns drill holes in viewers’ eardrums, but somehow the bad guys always get up and walk away - to jail.

George Peppard, noticeably more cheerful than he was the last time we met, told me: "The only people you’ll ever see bleed are me, mr. T, Dwight Schultz and Dirk Benedict. Campaigners who write in and say we’re too violent for the good of the kids who watch us don’t ever seem to notice that."

NBC doesn’t care. Thanks in great part to the success of "The A-team," which ranked sixth out of 60-plus series in the tv season, the also-ran network came closer than it has in years in winning the lucrative ratings race.

NBC was finally hauled out of the Nielsens cellar by the spectacular success of "The Cosby Show," a sweet and sentimental sitcom that has held the no. 1 slot by a wide ratings margin every week since Feb. 6.

Cosby has also made hits out of "Family Ties," "Cheers" and "Night Court" - Thursday night shows that were helping NBC’s new image as a quality network, but were being regularly hammered into second place by CBS.

Now, it suits NBC to pin its turnaround on Bill Cosby. His is, after all, a show the critics love.

But the truth is that without "The A-team," a ubiquitous Coke-swilling peddler of pudding pops and personal computers might not have had a network to save.

Even before Cosby rose to the rescue, Peppard and his chronies attracted an average of 48 million viewers a week, boosting NBC’s flagging advertising revenaes by tens of millions of dollars and ending (for now) rumors that the network’s parent company, RCA, would dump it and stick to manufacturing tv sets instead of making programs for them.