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She has, moreover, proved less than adept at massaging the egos of top producers. Bochco, for example, was furious when he belatedly found out that Tarses had decided against airing the last six episodes of his struggling drama series Murder One in April, as promised. He went over her head to Iger to protest. ("From his vantage point he had legitimate complaints," Tarses says. "It's all about the way you handle a situation.") Iger has since taken on the role of running interference between Tarses and some Hollywood heavyweights. When The Practice, a lawyer drama from producer David E. Kelley, was shunted to a weak Saturday-night time period so PrimeTime Live could remain on Wednesdays (Iger's call), Iger broke the bad news in a conference call with Kelley and Tarses. "Jamie and I agreed that there are certain things I could help her with," he says. "That should not be interpreted as a lack of authority on Jamie's part at all. We decided I would handle some of the tough calls."
Both Iger and Eisner played an active role in setting the fall schedule. "It really got down to Bob and Michael and me in a room," Tarses says, while insisting that "there was truly not a tremendous amount of disagreement." Sources describe at least one instance, however, in which Eisner overruled her. When Tarses' final schedule board was presented to him, Eisner reportedly noticed one prominent show missing--the newly outed sitcom Ellen. The omission, he said in front of several executives, was "inconceivable to me," and the show was put back on the schedule. (Tarses says the show was left off an early version of the schedule only because Ellen DeGeneres had said she didn't want to continue the series. "I love the show and wanted it on the schedule," says Tarses.)
In some ways, Tarses is an odd person to be an insider in such network gamesmanship. Her father, producer Jay Tarses (Buffalo Bill, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd), has long been known for his combative relations with the networks suits. "I learned from him that network executives were hateful, horrible people who should be shot on sight," says Tarses with a smile. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Woodland Hills, where her parents kept her safely aloof from the show-biz scene. But her dad liked to read his scripts aloud at the dinner table and discuss his shows with the family. "It was more in the context of Dad's work," she says, "not the television business."