The Cosby Show

"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."

"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.*"

"As part of his continuing education on the business, Larry Tisch traveled to Hollywood to meet the industry’s most successful enter' tainment executives—Michael Eisner of Walt Disney Co., Barry Diller, then CEO and chairman of Fox Inc., and Robert Daly, then chairman and chief executive of Warner Brothers Inc. These were the people who packaged and produced the programs that formed a network’s lifeblood. CBS, he recognized, needed the equivalent of a Grant Tinker and a Brandon Tartikoff. Tartikoff had developed the idea of “The Cosby Show,” which at that point was a major reason for NBC’s passing CBS in the ratings. Tisch wanted to know how they did it. He asked everyone who ought to know, unconcerned about the possibility of sounding ignorant."