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Tartikoff began to prove he could do better when, at 23, he went to work as director of advertising and promotion at WLS-TV in Chicago. He impressed his boss, Lewis Erlicht (now president of ABC Entertainment), with successful gimmicks like "Gorilla My Dreams Week," a festival of ape movies. Fred Silverman, then ABC'S programming chief, soon hired him, but Tartikoff left after a year to join NBC. Silverman later became president of NBC and promoted Tartikoff to the top programming slot in January 1980.
After Grant Tinker replaced Silverman in 1981, Tartikoff seemed a sure bet to take the fall for NBC's ratings troubles. But Tinker stuck with him. "I think he is the best guy to do that job — it's that simple," says the NBC chairman. One of Tartikoff s severest problems was that top producers were reluctant to bring their shows to NBC. "The unfortunate thing for the last-place ball team is that you don't get to hit against your own pitching," he explains. "Producers went to NBC third because they didn't want their new show to face a 40-share on ABC called Happy Days or Three's Company. "NBC's solution was to convince producers that the network would stick with new shows longer. "We wanted to give the audience time to find a show, and the creative community appreciated that," Tartikoff says.
Indeed, NBC stuck with adventurous shows like St. Elsewhere and Cheers even when their early ratings were disappointing. "I don't give the public what they want," Tartikoff says. "I'm more interested in giving them what they will want. I like to challenge the audience. That's not to say that you don't do your share of pandering." Some would place in the latter category NBC's mass-appeal show The A-Team, which was based on an idea Tartikoff hatched after meeting Mr. T at a boxing match. He came into the office one day and wrote a note: "A-Team. Magnificent Seven, Dirty Dozen, Mission Impossible, Road Warrior all rolled into one, and Mr. T drives the car." The rest is Nielsen history. "I am not an intellectual," says Tartikoff. "I have very restrained, middle-class tastes."
While working in Chicago in the early '70s, Tartikoff discovered that he had Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer that he survived after more than a year of radiation treatments and chemotherapy. He worked straight through it, but the experience made him realize that "you're not given an unlimited time on this earth, and you shouldn't fritter it away." Tartikoff does not look like a man given to frittering as he flings out nonstop ideas, jots his notes and takes aim at the No. 1 slot in the ratings. Says he: "I think I feel more pressure than I did when we were No. 3. 1 don't want to blow this opportunity."
— By Richard Zoglin. Reported by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles