The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game are popular enough TV pastimes. But the most expensive, bitter and hilarious game of all is the one that the public never gets to see: the Rating Game. The rules are vague, the scoring is arbitrary, and the pawns are prime-time programs. Top network executives claim to have outgrown the game and have tried to call it off, but two of the all-time great competitors—CBS Senior Programming Vice President Michael Dann and NBC Audience Measurement Vice President Paul Klein—somehow did not give up the fight. The fascination lies not in who wins or loses but in how hysterically they play.
A few Sundays ago, their contest got so overheated that Dann felt compelled to phone NBC President Julian Goodman at his home. Flabbergasted at hearing from a CBS official a couple of echelons below him, Goodman first figured that Dann had been fired and was job-hunting. Dann was, in fact, on the line to ask Goodman to stop Klein & Co. from planting newspaper items knocking Dann's efforts to "improve television." Well aware that Dann was a past master at using the press in the rating game, Goodman had no sympathy. "Mike," he said, "you've created a monster, and now it's biting your ass."
"You Are Scum!" Mike Dann, 48, is a feisty, loquacious virtuoso of survival who has risen steadily through 14 presidents and two networks. Paul Klein, 41, is an irreverent disciple of Marshall McLuhan who is convinced he is brighter than his NBC bosses and not afraid to say so. Oddly enough, the rival vice presidents have never met, but they exchange terse little notes with endearments like "You are scum!"
The game has never been fought harder than in the past two seasons. Until then, CBS could claim to have won for 13 straight years. NBC contented itself with the claim that it had become No. 1 in what really mattered—the "demographic" breakdowns; that is, its viewers were younger, wealthier, better educated, and thus more desirable to advertisers. Then, in 1968-69, NBC passed CBS in total audience for the first half of the season. Desperately, Dann countered with a few maneuvers: he rescheduled Hawaii Five-O, for example, so that it played opposite a more vulnerable NBC program. At season's end, when the whole game seemed to ride on the ratings of a Cinderella special, Dann sent a poignant wire to the managers of CBS's 200-odd affiliates.
"My option is coming due shortly," it began. It wound up: "And how you promote Cinderella will tell me something about your personal feelings toward me." In the end, by CBS figures, CBS was first again, by a slivery 20.3% to NBC's 20.0% (and ABC's 15.6%).* Klein argued that the tabulation ignored NBC's premiere week, and that actually the two networks finished in a dead heat, 20.1% to 20.1%.