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There is no better example of ABC's business style than Charlie's Angels, which now sells ad spots for $100,000 a minute. The idea for the show germinated a couple of years ago in the offices of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, producers who specialize in action-adventure shows (The Rookies, S.W.A.T., Starsky and Hutch) for ABC. "Our motivation," says Goldberg, "was the fact that action-adventure shows were dominated by inner-city realism starring such gruff types as Colombo and Baretta. We just thought, 'Why not inject some really stunning beauty into the genre and see what happens?' "
What happened at first was not very much, with the network rejecting the producers' first proposal (titled The Alley Cats). Later, they got a go-ahead on a revised proposal for a pilot from then ABC Vice President Michael Eisner. Still, the notion languished on the back burner until Fred Silverman (see box page 70) took over last year as president of ABC Entertainment. He was immediately attracted to the show and ordered Spelling-Goldberg to get cracking. They made a slick pilot, which won a place for the series on the fall schedule.
Silverman had apparently divined a rising public interest in seeing women more prominently featured on TV. To be sure, NBC had spun Angie Dickinson's Police Woman out of its Police Story series two years ago and had done reasonably well with a show that portrayed a woman as brave and self-reliant. Then, of course, there was The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner. Silverman ordered her resurrected after she was erroneously bumped off at the end of a special appearance on The Six Million Dollar Man; a heart and a rather engaging spirit coexist with the electronic circuitry under Lindsay's lovely skin. The fact that The Bionic Woman consistently rates in the top ten, country in which Colonel Steve Austin, the six-million-dollar man, is rarely found, was surely seen as a sign that there was room for more strong women in television.
Silverman likes to claim that during his five years as head of programming at CBS, he pioneered in giving women more starring roles in variety and dramatic shows. (They have always been prominent in sitcoms. Mary Tyler Moore is a realistic girl next door. Maude a tough neurotic, Laverne and Shirley cheerful bumblers.) But there is nothing altruistic about this; what interests Silverman is the "heavy viewer" of the medium. According to Ed Bleier, executive vice president for television at Warner Communications, such people are the ones "you have to reach out for if you want the ratings." He explains: "They have seen it all—the entire coastline of California, every inch of Universal Studios. They've seen every detective plot, every comedic pratfall. To attract them you have to let them experience sensations and hazards that have not been dealt with before. What is left but the evolution of women in society?"