Fred Silverman

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Silverman, Time, 1977

Fred Silverman (born September 13, 1937 in New York City) is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at CBS, ABC and NBC and was at least partly responsible for bringing to television such programs as Scooby-Doo (1969-1986), All in the Family (1971 - 1979), The Waltons (1972 - 1981), Roots (1977), and Charlie's Angels (1976 - 1981).

[edit] Biography

Silverman graduated from Syracuse University and then earned a Master's degree from Ohio State University and went to work for WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois overseeing children's programming. He soon moved to CBS and took over responsibility for daytime programming and later, took charge of all of entertainment programming.

Silverman was one of the people responsible for the "rural purge" of 1971, which eventually eliminated many popular country-oriented shows, such as Green Acres, Mayberry R.F.D. and The Beverly Hillbillies from the CBS schedule. In their place, however, came a new wave of classics aimed at the upscale baby boomer generation, such as All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore and M*A*S*H.

Silverman was credited with an uncanny ability to spot burgeoning hit material, especially in spin-off form. For example, he spun-off Maude and The Jeffersons from All in the Family, and Rhoda from Mary Tyler Moore (as well as The Bob Newhart Show from MTM's writers). In 1974, he ordered Good Times spun-off from Maude. That fall, he pitted the show against ABC's new hit, Happy Days, in order to bring down that program's ratings. However, he was soon promoted to head of ABC Entertainment and was in the awkward position of saving Happy Days, which soon topped the ratings and spawned the hit spin-offs Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy, among others.

At ABC, Silverman also greenlit popular shows such as Barney Miller, Fantasy Island, Starsky and Hutch, Eight Is Enough, Three's Company, and Charlie's Angels. He brought ABC's ratings from third place to first place. Although he was very successful with ABC, Silverman left to take on the presidency of NBC in 1978. His three year tenure at NBC was rocky and most of the shows conceived during that time were flops. By the end of his tenure his reputation at the network had become so bad that Saturday Night Live came close to airing a sketch in which Silverman would have been compared to the delusional Adolf Hitler towards the end of the Third Reich. (This was after Silverman had refused to deal with original producer Lorne Michaels, who left the show in 1980 along with the original cast and writers, setting off a sharp decline in ratings that wouldn't reverse itself until 1982). In a Saturday Night Live sketch that did air Silverman (played by John Belushi) admitted to guest star Kate Jackson that he was still working for ABC and working to bring NBC down from the inside. One of the shows he was planning on putting on the air to achieve this was called Superlimo, a satire of the spectacular NBC flop, Supertrain.

Ironically and unfortunately, Silverman spearheaded a grandiose campaign to promote NBC, entitled "Proud as a Peacock" which lead to an infamous parody entitled "We're Loud", aired once on the Don Imus show and today, widely circulated around the Internet. It was reported that Silverman had Imus personally fired from NBC Radio for playing the song which can be heard here.

Although a failure on the surface, Silverman's tenure at NBC did include a few high points. He put Hill Street Blues on the air, and gave David Letterman his first show (The David Letterman Show). NBC also had moderate hits such as CHiPS, Diff'rent Strokes, Real People and Gimme a Break during this period.

Silverman left the networks and formed The Fred Silverman Company to produce shows to sell to television. He had several hits including Matlock (1986 - 1995) and In the Heat of the Night (1988 - 1994).