Broadcast TV is complaining that cable has an unfair advantage in the Emmy competition in the field of movies and mini-series. They can complain all they want; what they should be doing instead, though, is trying harder.
It wasn’t always this way.
The Museum of Television & Radio in New York has launched a series this month presenting public screenings of major made-for-TV movies. First up is Steven Spielberg’s brilliant direction of scripter Richard Matheson’s car-versus-truck “Duel,” from 1971, followed in November by Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen as gay lovers in 1972’s “That Certain Summer,” and in December by Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in “Love Among the Ruins,” directed by George Cukor in 1975.
All of those ambitious, excellent telemovies were made for and shown by commercial network television — specifically, by ABC. My question is, if the museum’s retrospective was limited to today’s best telemovies, how many would come from CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, and how many would come from cable and PBS?
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Easy answer: Cable and PBS would dominate.
They’re dominating, certainly, at the Emmys. Of the nine major awards handed out to made-for-TV movies and mini-series this year, all but two went to HBO and PBS, including the biggest awards of all: HBO won for the telemovie “Miss Evers’ Boys,” and PBS for the mini-series “Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgment.”
Network executives have since complained that this sort of competition has become unfair — that cable movies have slightly bigger budgets on average, and freedom from censorial standards, and no need to appeal to the greatest number of viewers. Broadcast TV would like to see cable programs — at least cable programs not supported by advertising — competing for Emmy honors in a separate, specially created category.
Nonsense. To executives at the broadcast networks whose pride is sullied by watching PBS and HBO executives saunter up the aisle to pick up their Emmy statuettes, I say this: You want to win this fight? Don’t moan about the rules; make better movies.
First of all, the commercial-versus-noncommercial argument doesn’t explain how ad-supported cable networks such as TNT, Lifetime and, recently, even the USA Network can mount ambitious productions. TNT’s “George Wallace,” with Gary Sinise, is one example.
Second, the budgets aren’t the key factor in these qualitative assessments. NBC’s “The Odyssey” had a huge budget, and even a laudable literary story, but was no “Gulliver’s Travels” (also an NBC mini-series).
The presence of network censors is the one genuine argument — but HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show” is as funny as NBC’s “Seinfeld” or “Frasier” and not because it contains profanity. It’s as funny because it’s as well written and as artfully performed.
The truth of the matter is that network TV has all but abdicated its once-dominant position in the movies and mini-series arena. u