Former CBS Programmer Michael Dann (1921-2016) Brought AITF & Mary Tyler Moore to TV

[Zoneboy]

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Michael Dann, one of the most powerful and effective programmers in network television in the 1950s and 1960s, who brought “The Defenders,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “60 Minutes” to the screen, as well as less prestigious but enormously popular shows like “Hee Haw” and “The Beverly Hillbillies,” died on Friday at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Patty Dann.

Mr. Dann began his television career at NBC, where he worked alongside Pat Weaver as he transformed the network and created such innovative programs as “Today” and “Tonight.”

At CBS, where he rose to become head of programming in 1963, he proved an astute judge of audience appeal, a master of scheduling and a shrewd marketer.

When CBS broadcast the movie “Born Free,” Mr. Dann promoted it heavily on the network’s Saturday morning cartoon shows and enlisted Dick Van Dyke to introduce it. It earned the third-highest ratings for a film in television history, after “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “The Birds.”

He thrived by serving up a mix of high-toned specials and quality offerings like “CBS Playhouse,” well-scripted comedies like “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show,” and a slew of crowd-pleasers like “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres” that earned CBS, the Tiffany Network, a second nickname, the Hillbilly Network.

Mr. Dann hated the rural shows, but he loved the ratings.

“By and large I operated under a principle I was trained in, and that was that there was no such thing as a good program executive with low-rated shows or a bad program executive with high-rated shows, and I never changed my position as long as I was working in the commercial networks,” he told Electronic Media in 2002.

His most daring show, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” led to the greatest crisis of his career. For years he had tried, without success, to nudge “Bonanza” from the top of the ratings at the important time slot of 9 p.m. on Sunday.


After “The Garry Moore Show” failed to oust “Bonanza,” Mr. Dann made a desperation call to the William Morris Agency, which offered him the Smothers Brothers. “I didn’t even know who they were when I put them on,” he said in a 1998 interview with the Archive of American Television.

The show, which made its debut in 1967, was a hit, attracting a hip new audience thrilled by its anti-establishment tone, the cutting political humor and guests like Joan Baez, The Who and Pete Seeger. It ran into constant trouble with the CBS censors, alienated many of the affiliates in the South because of its anti-Vietnam War stance, and eventually came to grief.

In April 1969, after the network said the brothers had failed to deliver, as required, a preview tape to the network affiliates and censors before broadcast, CBS canceled the show, over the objections of Mr. Dann.

“It was the most talked about, important variety program ever done,” Mr. Dann said in the Archive of American Television interview. He added, “The loss of the Smothers Brothers was a blow to freedom of expression.”

The debacle was a rare setback for Mr. Dann, who consistently kept CBS in a position of ratings dominance.

Michael Harold Dann was born on Sept. 11, 1921, in Detroit, where his father, Moe, ran a scrap-iron business. His mother, the former Dorothy Bobroff, was a homemaker.

After earning a degree in economics from the University of Michigan in 1941, he enlisted in the Army. A childhood case of polio had left him with a limp, and he was unfit for combat duty. Instead, he wrote for the armed forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

On leaving the military, he tried his hand as a comedy writer for radio shows of Louis Nye and Jack Albertson. He worked briefly in public relations for the New Haven Railroad before joining NBC’s publicity department in 1948. Over the next decade he worked as the network’s supervisor of specials and head of programming, playing an important creative role in developing “Ding Dong School” and “Matinee Theater.”

In 1949 he married Joanne Himmell. The marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Louise Cohen Hess, died in 2007. In addition to his daughter Patty, he is survived by his wife, the former Audrey Kline; a sister, Barbara Berry; a son, Jonathan; another daughter, Priscilla Dann-Courtney; and four grandchildren.

In 1957, Mr. Dann left NBC to become president of Henry Jaffe Enterprises, a leading television production company, but was soon hired by CBS to head its programming on the East Coast.

He believed in the power of half-hour situation comedies and solid dramatic series to generate revenue, which he lavished on lustrous specials. He presented the first televised recitals by the pianist Vladimir Horowitz, broadcast John Gielgud in “Ages of Man” without commercial interruption and invested heavily in “CBS Playhouse,” subsidizing the writing of new plays.

His taste was not infallible. He doubted that Mary Tyler Moore could carry a comedy series. Moreover, he made James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, the show’s creators, rewrite the character, who had originally been divorced. “Huge mistake,” he told the Archive of American Television. “We should have let her run wild, let her be divorced, be normal, have a couple of affairs.”

When NBC dropped “Get Smart,” Mr. Dann spent $3.5 million to persuade its star, Don Adams, to stay with the show on CBS. It flopped.

On the other hand, he coaxed hits out of some shows by putting them in the right spots. “The Dick Van Dyke Show” failed to attract an audience initially, but when he placed it after “The Beverly Hillbillies,” it rose to No. 3 in the ratings.

“I’d learned from ‘December Bride,’ a perfectly ordinary show starring Spring Byington that became a No. 2 show when it followed ‘Lucy’ on Monday night,” he told Electronic Media. “In syndication it never did anything; it couldn’t stand alone.” He added, “That’s when we learned what ‘hammocking’ a new comedy was. Whenever we got a new show, I always hammocked it between two comedy shows that were successful.”

In 1966, when all three networks faced a drought of feature films to broadcast, he bought the old Republic Pictures lot and created CBS Studio Center to make movies for television, a move that NBC and ABC copied.

In the 1963-64 season, CBS had 14 of the top 15 shows, with “Bonanza” spoiling the clean sweep. In 1966-67, CBS had eight of the top 10 shows (“Bonanza” and ABC’s “Bewitched” filled out the list) and the following season, all of the top five series were on CBS.

With the arrival of Robert D. Wood as president in 1969, Mr. Dann’s star faded. Mr. Wood, believing that the network’s future lay in riskier shows that appealed to a younger demographic, instructed Mr. Dann to cancel several shows that were popular with older viewers, notably “The Red Skelton Show” and “The Jackie Gleason Show,” as well as rural-themed shows like “Green Acres” and “Hee Haw.”

Mr. Dann chafed. “Just because the people who buy refrigerators are between 26 and 35 and live in Scarsdale, you should not beam your programming only at them,” he told New York magazine in 1970, shortly before he left CBS to become Joan Ganz Cooney’s second-in-command at the Children’s Television Workshop.

Before leaving, he acquired a new series for CBS that was to become one of the hallmarks of the post-hillbilly era, “All in the Family.”

[mets82]

A true visionary. RIP.