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According to Paley, CBS's problems began several years ago, when it ran out of inventory: attractive shows to replace the aging hits that it started the decade with. "We made a very, very serious blunder," he says. "Maybe we were too content, but when things started to go bad, we just didn't have the inventory we used to have. This was during the time Silverman was programmer [before he moved to ABC] too, so he has to take some of the blame along with other people. I frankly didn't know we were that far behind, but when the chips were down, we just were."
To put itself back in contention, CBS restructured its entire organization in October 1977, modeling itself on the winner, ABC, and in the process replaced almost its entire executive lineup. NBC also made big changes when Silverman arrived, and in Hollywood, where shows are produced, the standing joke is "If my boss calls, get his name." Robert Daly, president of CBS Entertainment, and Bud Grant, programming vice president, moved to Los Angeles to be nearer production. They were handed what seems to be a blank check to order pilots, giving them a much larger choice than their predecessors ever had. "They are grinding away very quietly there," says one Hollywood producer. "They are very low key, but they are working." So far, however, the results are not very impressive. One show, Coed Fever, was taken off the air after the first outing. Others, like Paper Chase, have been switched around so often that no one knows from week to week where they will be—a scheduling sin now committed by all the networks. "When they moved our show up to 10 o'clock on Tuesday our ratings picked up substantially," says John Houseman, 76, who plays the world's most formidable law professor in Paper Chase. "Now we are back to 8 p.m. against Happy Days, and we are going to be pre-empted twice in March. You can't build an audience that way. Bill Paley told me that he is very proud of our show and wishes more people would watch it." Sounding like the character he plays, Houseman adds: "But I'm the specimen that is trotted out to show how respectable CBS is. I am token quality, and I am not overflowing with gratitude."
At Fred Silverman's NBC there is so much movement that the RCA building, which has never before known so much activity, almost visibly shakes. But the network is further behind today than it was a year ago. Silverman more than doubled his California programming staff, adding 21 "talent" executives so quickly that the entire Hollywood press office had to move into trailers to make room for them. The trailers were immediately christened the Silverman Express. Then, in an unprecedented action last fall, Silverman dumped all seven of NBC's new shows, replacing them earlier this year with those more in his image. Most have been disasters, but none has failed quite so resoundingly as Supertrain, which cost almost $12 million just to pull out of the station.