Fox

"At ABC, Paramount, and Fox, I had known what could be done with video screens: we told stories on them. But when I went to QVC in that eventful year of 1992, I watched a screen do something I’d never realized it could do. It wasn’t just a passive one-way delivery system of content. At QVC I witnessed the primitive convergence of telephones and televisions and computers all working together. They were interactive. There was a little video monitor on the set that showed the number of calls coming in when a product was offered for sale. The vertical lines representing the calls rose during the period of the sales pitch, and then, when it ended, they subsided. I was thunderstruck. To me, those calls were like watching waves coming to shore. I thought, *Screens don’t have to be just for narrative, for telling stories. Screens can interact with consumers—*that was the epiphany. It was clunky and rudimentary and I had no clear idea how to turn that revelation into action, but it sat there for a while warming up on the back plate of my brain."

"*Home Alone* was number one at the box office for twelve weeks. The cash that poured in came along exactly when Rupert’s News Corp was technically on the verge of bankruptcy. Rupert had been going around the world to bank after bank to persuade them not to call in the huge loans he’d taken out over the years to finance his acquisitions. Of the many things I do respect him for, the biggest was his handling of the seminal crisis in his career. He was under tremendous pressure for more than a year, but he never complained or tried to lay off the blame. He was humbled but stalwart throughout; a real mensch is the only way I can describe him. If not for Fox and *Home Alone,* his whole company would have gone down. It really was the cash, almost five hundred million, from *this* one film that saved him. Think of that—a little Christmas comedy saved Rupert Murdoch and allowed all that followed."

"I much prefer hiring people who are relatively blank slates, but who have sparks of energy and smarts. And some edge. If you do that consistently enough, which we did at Paramount and at Fox, you end up with a very strong group once they’ve had a few years to marinate. Maybe it’s a simplistic formula, but it works: Give them responsibilities before they are considered ready. Drop them in the deep end and see who struggles and who survives. Keep promoting those who survive."

"“You don’t have to bid against anyone. This merger makes more sense to QVC shareholders than being bought out for a premium.” Tisch, without a pause, snapped back: “I don’t get into contests, and I don’t look at what might have been.” He announced that night that the QVC deal was dead and buried and he was going to give a dividend of a billion-plus dollars to their shareholders to make them happy. It was over—my year and a half since storming out of the Fox gates with so much heat and moment was ending in ignominy."

"Michael and I negotiated with each other tortuously on every detail before we engaged with Lucas’s representatives. Michael was right to win the risk argument and take on the movie, but I did make certain that if it was successful, we wouldn’t be in the position of Fox, which had only a one-picture license from *Star Wars.* I insisted we had the right to make sequels on the same terms as the original, given that the terms on the original were so much higher than anyone else had ever received. I wanted to retch once, and then not have to regurgitate in a new negotiation if the film was a success. And I wanted it in the clearest, most unambiguous language that all the parties agreed to and understood; there would be no new negotiating if George Lucas wanted to do a sequel. After the squabbling, all was settled and off they went to make the movie, and miracle of miracles, they made it on budget and on schedule."

"Ultimately, Wells graciously agreed to be president, but those complications were what had kept it all up in the air—and kept Michael unreachable. He didn’t want to risk his one firm job offer by telling me he was after the Disney job. I was at home on a Sunday morning when Warren Beatty called to say that Michael was going to Disney. The pieces in the disappearing puzzle of Michael now fit. Shortly thereafter Michael called me from his car to say that he’d just left the Disney board meeting and it was going to be announced that he was its new CEO. I was angry that he hadn’t told me the truth about his maneuverings, and I was terribly disappointed that he wasn’t coming with me to Fox, but of course he was right to take the Disney job. Even though Disney was a much smaller operation at that time and had been moribund in the last few years, it was also an extraordinary opportunity and Michael was right to do it. And what a beyond-spectacular success he was to make of it."

"The result was *The Tracey Ullman Show,* a sketch and music variety series that turned out to be far too highbrow for Fox. But inside it were these little animated one- or two-minute interstitials about a family called the Simpsons. Short though they were, Brooks and his co-creator, Matt Groening, thought they could make a half-hour series. It was expensive—a huge gamble. But more than any other show, it built Fox. *The Simpsons* is probably the longest-running, most successful show in the history of television. Ironically, we scheduled it directly opposite that number one series, *The Cosby Show,* and we beat it that first night out. That cemented Fox Broadcasting firmly as the fourth network."

"I had told the outgoing CEO, Alan Hirschfield, that he could stay in his office, that he didn’t have to leave right away. I hadn’t emotionally let go of Paramount and found it hard to get up much enthusiasm for Fox. Another day, another studio to run. I was still officially at Paramount for the three-week interregnum before I was to begin the new job, but I regularly went over to Fox to meet some of the executives. All their offices were in this three-story art deco–style building that Darryl Zanuck had erected. Huge wide hallways from one end to the other, with even more cavernous offices on the first floor for the top four executives. Each one had a private staircase going down to the basement, where there were two private projection rooms, a gym, a cold pool, a sauna, and a massage room. Zanuck, who reigned from the 1930s to the 1950s, would have a daily massage, a jump into the cold pool, and then a further jump onto the starlet of the day. Zanuck’s office had a trophy room with a bed next to the fifty-foot-long main office."

"As that feeling swelled, I went to have lunch with Jack Welch, the chairman of GE, which owned NBC. He was deeply unhappy with the network’s performance. It was a disaster, and I thought it would be fun, even exciting, to try to turn it around. And Jack was encouraging, as he was toying with the idea of selling it. I wondered if I could raise the necessary money, but quickly realized I couldn’t pursue that while being an employee of one of its competitors. The truth was I couldn’t pursue anything without quitting Fox, without being independent. But that prospect frightened me into inaction. How could I turn from my exalted position to standing out in the cold without the protection of a big company behind me? The very thought froze me."

"By now, I had zero relationship with Marvin Davis and began to play by the strictest interpretation of the joint venture. I disliked the way Marvin had mixed his personal life with the business of Fox, so I called him up and said now that the company was a joint venture, he would no longer be able to dictate or authorize any expenditure on his own. He couldn’t have his Carousel Ball charity dinner paid for by Fox, or have his children officed at the studio, or any of the myriad nonbusiness items he’d been charging to the studio. He said, “I’ll do what I want.” I told him, “I want to be very clear—listen carefully. You own fifty percent of the equity of this company, and you have fifty percent rights with the other owner, News Corp. I’m the chief executive officer, and I have all operating powers. All you have is your half vote, so you can literally do nothing in the conduct of the business other than vote your shares, which unless you have the vote of Murdoch means you can’t do squat.” Fox wasn’t going to be any more fun for Marvin Davis. I was finally learning how to play by big-boy rules."

"I found myself stuck in this slow, snaking receiving line with Anna Murdoch, Rupert’s wife at the time, who was also a News Corp board member. She casually asked me what I thought of the meeting, and out of my mouth flew, not without some surprising and uncalled-for vehemence, “What difference does it make what I think? I’m just a hired hand.” Anna laughed it off, but I didn’t. Those words escaped before I knew I was even thinking them. It was such an unusually unguarded moment that a bell rang in my head, one that not only was overpoweringly loud but couldn’t be unrung. I had been thinking something I hadn’t yet acknowledged to myself: that Fox wasn’t really mine, that however I acted as if it were, it wasn’t."

"It was early evening after the court victory when I got a call from our lawyers; they were finalizing the agreement and wanted me to come down to their offices to sign it. I walked down Second Avenue, shaking my head in amazement that it was almost ten years earlier when I’d left Paramount for Fox, then left Fox to go off on my little own. Now here I was returning to the movies, but this time as a principal, actually *owning* Paramount. When I arrived, all the lawyers were scrambling about, papers flying between different floors of the building. I was put in an office to wait for Martin Davis to arrive, because we had to cosign the agreement."

"For the last few years, Fox had been run by Alan Hirschfield, a finance man who’d previously run Columbia Pictures. Davis was very direct with me. He wanted me to take over Fox; he’d give me 25 percent of the studio and anything else I needed. A desperate offer from a desperate man to another quietly desperate man. What I didn’t know then was that there was a darker reason for his extremely generous offer. I told him disingenuously that I might be interested and we ought to have our mutual lawyers get into the details. *Might be interested? Please.*"

"Rupert and I met secretly at Hillcrest Country Club across the street from Fox, where Davis was a member. It was just the two of us. Rupert is gifted with great charm whenever he is after a goose, and it was on full display. He wanted to know what my plans for the company were. As I told him, he was completely enthusiastic, and the hot bath of Rupert Murdoch’s enthusiasm is something quite extraordinary. The only issue that worried him about buying into Fox was my agreement with Davis. He said he’d be very uncomfortable if by contract he could talk to me only once a year and couldn’t speak to any Fox executives. I said that was a purely defensive move on my part toward Marvin Davis, and that I thought with him I’d enjoy more collaboration."

"With the nerve of a cat burglar, I told Marvin, “Since I don’t know you very well, you would have to agree never to speak to a single person in the company other than me. And while I’ll surely be in touch with you informally about the state of the company, I will formally agree to meet with you once a year.” I had been so scarred by Martin Davis’s behavior that I wanted these extreme protections, particularly with someone who had already interfered willy-nilly with the people at Fox. He wasn’t happy about such distancing, but he did agree."

"During that first year, there were endless stories about our folly. Larry Tisch, the venerated industrialist who owned CBS, said he wouldn’t give “a plugged nickel” for Fox."

"I had almost no frustrations with Rupert. I made every material decision while I was at Fox. Although I talked to him about our progress or lack thereof, I didn’t ask him about the movies we should make or get his permission. I always *acted* like a principal."

"By the time I started, it was clear I wasn’t going to bring Michael Eisner with me, and because Disney was so alluring, Michael was able to get most of the Paramount executives over with him. I wasted weeks trying to convince them that Fox would be better for them, but by then Michael was able to show them that Disney had these extraordinary hidden assets that hadn’t been tapped since Walt Disney died."

"At the time, there was no such thing as “media.” Movie studios dominated entertainment, and the five majors (Paramount/Warners/Columbia/Fox/Universal) had worldwide importance. If you ran one of these film companies, you were a prominent figure wherever you went. In those early years, though, I wasn’t swanning anywhere; I was just trying to figure out this weird and dysfunctional studio I was now in charge of. Because I’d offed Yablans in such a public and brutal way, everyone was now afraid of me. And I was petrified that they would find out just how unqualified I actually was. Only if I slowed everything down could I begin to understand all the parts and then try to rearrange them into something coherent. I tend to make things worse in the beginning as I fumble around trying to get to base truths. Instinct, which I prize almost above all else, doesn’t work very well for me in abstruse matters. I have to get to the core DNA on any matter, its logical essence, before I can add anything of value. For me this takes a lot of time, often to the irritation of faster thinkers. But when it does crystallize, I can’t be deterred."

"He called Murdoch and agreed to sell him his 50 percent for $350 million. I was thrilled to finally be done with him. But my thrill was stayed by one last gauntlet. After all the details had been ironed out, weeks went by, and Davis began braying around town that he wasn’t sure he was going to be out of Fox, because Murdoch probably didn’t have the money to close. I had no idea why he would trash Murdoch, other than he didn’t want people to believe he’d been forced out. It was just nasty. He held on to the final signing papers for days without returning them, crowing publicly th"

"Our investor group began falling apart. Donald Newhouse, the head of Advance, called and said his family was uncomfortable the price was getting this high and wanted out. I argued with him, saying that if he did so, we’d be finished. I assured him that if he stayed in and we won, we’d take him out and pay him off after it closed. He finally agreed, but said he wouldn’t do “one penny more.” We were still the high bid when Tom Sherak, my old head of distribution at Fox, called—as a “friend”—to say, “I just talked to Sumner, and I think he’s really finished. You’ve won. You’ve driven him crazy.” Of course, Sumner had put him up to it; he just wanted to fake weakness."

"I was now a mogul manqué. I’d made two attempts at the big time and failed at both. And lost QVC in the bargain. *Congratulations, Barry, you are now really and truly independent and under no one’s thumb other than your own. Yes, you presciently forged your way into the beginnings of e-commerce, but now you’ve got no job and no prospects*. I was back where I started after leaving Fox, except now I was nationally known damaged goods. With a stone-cold blood oath I resolved I’d never do anything again where I didn’t have hard and absolute control, even if it was owning a corner delicatessen. And that wasn’t too far from what was in my future."

"He wanted to banter, but I got right into it, telling him the bankers wanted at least $150 million in new equity to be put in or they’d not renew the loans. I told him I resented having to come to him for this and was gobsmacked that he hadn’t disclosed that the loans were in trouble. Although I was angry about having to sit there and ask for money, I had no reason to assume he wouldn’t quickly affirm the contract between us that said he would fully fund Fox personally. Instead, he put down the caviar, looked up at me for the first time, and slowly said, “I’m not putting any more cash into the company.” Astonished, all I said was “What?” Another mouthful and he repeated, “I’m not putting up any more cash.” I sputtered god-knows-what until I was able to croak out, “But you have to, you signed a personal guarantee to fund the company.”"

"after we’d become a big success and were overdelivering everywhere, I called Keough to say that another company had made a commitment for the next season and would replace Coca-Cola as our biggest advertiser, and I just thought he should know. In an instant he responded, “Let’s be clear: We *are* your biggest advertiser and will remain so. Just tell us the number that gets us there and that’ll be that.” This became a rule of the house between Coca-Cola and Fox, lasting for the next six years. Some ten years later, I joined the board of directors of Coca-Cola, and I’ve been serving now for twenty-three years"

"I fought back and said, “We *are* making progress. It’s a process and I can’t do it faster.” He said, “You’re costing me a fortune.” I was by then confident we’d pull it off and the value of his stock would increase enormously. I snapped that instead of grandstanding about what it was costing him, he might consider that it really was me making a financial sacrifice for his eventual gain, since every dollar we lost at Fox was deducted from my 5 percent of annual gross profits. This went back and forth as we descended into the Valley, and I was so angry I almost told him that I had real work to do and he ought to just *go in there and buy his own fucking movies*!"

"I don’t think he cared whether I was Barry or Harry or Billy or Dopey. Davis hated putting up his own money for anything (it later turned out that he’d even borrowed the money to pay for the paintings on the walls of his house). As for me, I simply needed someplace to go. It wasn’t as if I craved running Fox, though I did smile at the thought that not so long ago I’d been a romping teenager jumping over the fence at Beverly High to roam its back lot."

"I walked dazedly downstairs to my office, closed the door, and sat at my desk, my head in my hands. It hit me with such force what a monumental fool I had been not to have fully understood Fox’s underlying financial structure and debt. I’d been the most successful executive in the film and television business over most of the last ten years, and yet I’d just been duped into joining a soon-to-be-bankrupt company."

"I learned later the real reason he needed me: the banks he’d borrowed all that money from either wanted it back or wanted him to put more equity into the company to protect their loans. I was considered, at that moment, the most successful movie company executive, so he could use my hiring to keep from having to put actual money into the business. Remember, the only cash he put into Fox was that original $25 million."

"As for Rupert, the grand risk-taker, with only a verbal assurance that we could actually start a fourth network from someone he’d just met—me—he’d agreed in a flash to buy these stations for more than $1 billion. And this was all done before he even officially owned his one-half of Fox and without any regard for the stringent rules about foreign ownership or any other of the endless details that would have to be worked out."

"My original five-year contract with Fox had ended, and when it expired I told Rupert I didn’t want to enter into a new contractual relationship. I thought it better for us both to just have a six-month mutual termination clause: either of us could end things with half a year’s notice. We had stability and confidence in each other, and my compensation was fair. We both thought that if either of us wanted to stop working together, all we had to do was push a cease button. As my frustrations and aspirations rose in the summer of 1991, I went to Rupert and told him I wanted to be a principal. I remember saying to him, “We both know I *act* like it, but I want to actually *be* it. I want to be some kind of a partner in this enterprise.”"

"Between our lunch and the time Murdoch finalized buying into Fox, he’d gone to Australia, and then on his way back to New York stopped for two days in L.A. He called and I invited him to come over to the studio for a chat. And, here’s where my North Star of serendipity once again showed up: three seemingly disparate events threaded themselves into the opportunity of a lifetime—at least my lifetime. First, that particular day was Michael Milken’s annual investors’ conference, called by some the Predators’ Ball. Milken was at that time the biggest financier of companies in the United States. He had previously called to say he had just financed John Kluge’s buyout of public shareholders at Metromedia, which owned six blockbuster television stations. They wanted to have a reception away from the place where the conference was being held, and Milken asked, as a favor, if I would give them a soundstage to have it on. The afternoon of that day, Murdoch arrived in my office. And finally, as soon as Rupert sat down in my conference room to talk, my assistant buzzed me to say that Mike Milken and John Kluge were in my reception room to say hello before their party."

"Finding our own vein took some false and painful poking about. Finally, in the nick of time came a script that lit my contrarian spark and came to define what Fox was. The title on the first page woke me up: *NOT THE COSBYS.* At the time, *The Cosby Show* was the most successful program on television, a gentle sitcom about an idealized, decent, and loving family (just how idealized we now know, given the revelations about Mr. Cosby). *Not the Cosbys* was about a dysfunctional family saying and doing every impolitic, incorrect thing possible. And it was hysterically funny. We’d found our edge. We were going to be an *alternative network*! We had to change the title, of course—it became *Married… with Children.*"

"Before I arrived, Davis had been having a good time at Fox. He liked lording his status over everyone on the lot, and liked Hollywood and all the extracurricular stuff that went with it. The Davises were very socially ambitious, and they had an interesting technique to attract celebrities: they would send them elaborate flower arrangements or gifts, invite them to some event, and then send a thank-you gift afterward. I said to some of my friends who received this graft, “Rather than accept these gifts, why don’t you just get paid directly in cash for coming? Why don’t you say, ‘Ten thousand dollars a pop for drinks, one hundred thousand to come for dinner’? Because, you know, this is not about being social. This is about being bought, so you might as well get paid in cash without the froufrou.”"