"Richard Leibner has
talent in a big way"
Former CBS News president
Ed Joyce called N.S. Bienstock the "GM of talent agents" in
the news business. Joyce and other TV news managers have also called
Bienstock principal Richard Leibner a lot worse. But his clients love
him, for he is largely credited with establishing dramatically higher
salaries for television news talent. The most recent coup: Diane Sawyer’s
roughly $6 million-a-year deal at ABC. The kicker: Bienstock had every
other network, including Fox, trying to lure her away. In the following
interview with BROADCASTING & CABLE’S Steve McClellan, Leibner is
discusses the Sawyer deal, how Bienstock is expanding in the face of
network belt-tightening, his company’s new link to Hollywood superagent
CAA, and developing trends in the news business.
People say you’re a power
broker in the television news business. Are you?
I just
think I’ve been doing it for over 30 years. So I know a lot of people
and I represent a lot of wonderful talent. That allows you to talk to
the people who hire people and have access. That allows you an opportunity
to get certain things listened to and, inevitably, done. I think the
press builds us up as a power broker more than we are. It’s more a questions
of respect and relationships.
But you don’t just haggle
over money. Diane Sawyer will more than double her on-air exposure under
the new deal you cut for her. You position clients and groom them for
certain roles within the television industry. Don’t you therefore shape
and influence the direction of news programs and news divisions?
But the decision
to try and get Diane to strip a magazine in prime time for NBC was an
offer that came from Andy Lack and Bob Wright and it was their perception
and concept and their decision. It didn’t originate with me. It was
not a demand; it was an offer that came from them.
Then ABC countered?
ABC’s response was to
NBC’s concept, and it was to try to get everyone [involved with ABC
News’s prime time magazines] to pull together and make them dominant
in prime time. One of the things that has been difficult with the proliferation
of the magazines is the competition—even within each news division—for
stories. With one stripped program you eliminate wasted time and effort
and pull together rather than have these separate fiefdoms within a
shop beating each other up. That was at the heart of the NBC concept,
and ABC saw some merit in it.
Before ABC countered,
did it ask you, or Sawyer or both, what it would take to keep her from
leaving and if so what did you tell them?
I don’t want to
get that detailed. They came up with a package that evolved around a
journalist who works hard and is a brilliant presenter and who stands
in front of a broadcast.
Right. But ABC reorganized
its prime time magazine division as part of its effort to keep Diane
Sawyer. That’s not power brokering?
You don’t change
the way you do business just to not lose someone—unless that person
is a major contributor and has a vision of evolving even better and
stronger product with a staff around them. In the end, ABC saw virtue
in trying to get more cohesiveness between its shows. And they recognized
Diane’s value as a worker as well as her marquee value.
What is Sawyer’s role
going to be with Day One?
I’m not going
to speculate on how that will evolve.
Will she take an anchor
position?
I think anything
is possible.
NBC still wants to launch
a magazine strip in prime time. CBS and ABC each have three on the air
and have plans for more. Is there a limit to how many of these shows
they can do?
If you can do
two 24-hour news channels and if you can have as much talk on the air
as there is, then the dissemination and the telling of good stories
by good producers and good talent are important. People don’t read the
way they used to read. Someone is going to fill the void, so you hope
the news division will have as many good news stories on the air as
they can handle.
The CBS offer involved
a plan to syndicate a Sawyer-hosted magazine in prime time access. Was
it just too risky?
That was only part of
it. When you go into syndication, so much time in the initial years
is spent in the selling process. CBS could deliver its own stations
at 7 p.m. Other stations probably had strong contractual commitments
to other product, so the show would have ended up at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.
in many markets.
The show would have to
be fed at 3 p.m. It was an issue of practicality as well—could you get
the quality into it, especially going against more populist product?
It was difficult.
How much of an advantage,
or disadvantage, did ABC have as the incumbent in the Sawyer talks?
Relationships
always give the incumbent the advantage. ABC is a strong organization.
NBC has made it clear, under Andy Lack and Bob Wright, that they intend
to build the news division. It’s a clear signal to everybody. They didn’t
get Diane but they came close and Andy has said that the fact that they
came so close has caused a kind of resurgence in the esprit de corps
at NBC.
What put it over the top
for ABC?
In the end the
five years of relationship and the existing depth of the organization
are what did it.
How frequently do you
get involved in a negotiation about the type of program, or role in
a program your client will have, as opposed to just placing your client
at x, y or z news organization? Most of the time?
Whenever somebody
goes to the network or somebody’s contract comes up, you talk about
what their continuing role is going to be if they are a quality broadcaster.
It comes up all the time. You want to see people get recognition and
prominence for what they’ve done.
Yet you deny playing a
role in influencing the shape of or the direction that certain news
programs or news divisions take?
In the end it’s
the talent. You have to represent the right people.
Who got involved in the
Sawyer talks on the network side?
At ABC, Roone
Arledge was the point person and Bob Iger got involved at the end so
that Diane knew the network was really committed to what they were talking
about.
At NBC?
Andy Lack took his concept
of a stripped magazine to Bob Wright, who got involved. I’m sure decisions
of this magnitude that involve three or four hours of prime time are
discussed even above those levels.
Are they borrowing a page
from syndication, which has launched several hugely successful first-run
magazine strips?
Syndication is
different. I think part of it is borne out to some degree by the economics—the
cost of producing hour shows at 10 p.m., the network share of the marketplace
is declining and the fact that a news show can be successful with a
lower share and rating than an entertainment show.
And the network also owns
the programming.
Right. And NBC’s deep involvement
in international satellites and programming abroad [e.g., the recent
acquisition of the Super Channel] also makes the expansion of news very
attractive because they have programming overseas to fill with.
Did Rupert Murdoch get
involved in the talks with Diane Sawyer?
Mr. Murdoch was very interested
and spoke to Diane. He’s a very hands-on guy.
Howard Stinger was the
point person at CBS?
Yes.
In his published memoir,
former CBS News president Ed Joyce said your bankroll-busting contract
deals for talent in the early 1980s forced him to close news bureaus.
Comment?
If I’m proud of
anything in my career, I think this organization helped establish the
wage scale in network news and a fairer share for talent. We never closed
a deal with a gun in our hands and the companies make significant profits
and our job is to get a fair share of income for our clients. If I’d
like to see anything in my epitaph it would be, "He and his company
were pivotal in establishing the wage base for people at all levels
in this industry."
You’ve also entered a
joint venture with Hollywood talent agency CAA. How did that come to
be?
They wanted to
get into reality programming. We do so many individuals, and so much
of the programming goes on on the West coast, that we were interested
in being able to better represent our clients because the business was
moving more and more toward programming and not just in the news divisions.
What are the goals?
To package concepts
and programming and get them on the air. Not to produce them, but to
package them and put them together or match our talent with projects
or things CAA is aware of on the West Coast.
When will the venture
with CAA announce its first project?
Probably in the
next few months, but I can’t be more specific than that right now.
Have the ownership changes
in network television—and the belt tightening—made your job more difficult?
Yes. The proliferation
of news magazines has helped open the doors again. The number of quality,
experienced electronic journalists and producers is limited. We’re expanding
in other directions as well. We used to be exclusively in the news business;
now we are in news and information, including talk and information programming
in syndication. Bill O’Reilly at Inside Edition is a client.
So is Linda Bell Blue, executive producer at Hard Copy. We represent
producers Ed and Debbie Glavin at Jenny Jones; Mary Duffy [senior producer]
at Montel Williams’ [executive producer] Gail Steinberg and [supervising
producer] Stu Krasnow at Ricki Lake.
Are you making other forays
into first-run and cable?
Dennis Prager
will likely be on television next year [via syndication and Multimedia
Entertainment]. He’s a client. We also represent J.B. Blunk, who is
working on the programming for FX, Fox’s cable service. So we’re moving
with the industry. We’ll always be the news specialists, but we’re broadening
out to information and reality programming in a response to the changes
in the industry.
How does CNN compare with
the big three from a negotiating standpoint?
CNN does not pay
what the other three pay. They have a different approach to the business,
obviously. The original CNN hire was Dan Schorr. I did that deal with
Reese Schonfeld and Ted Turner and finished it two days before the cable
convention where Ted announced he was going to do CNN. That morning,
in fact, I was on the phone with Dan and Ted going over the conditions
under which Dan would work editorially. They were established that morning
on the back of a piece of hotel stationary.
Murdoch got into sports
with the stroke of a pen. Can he do the same with news?
I think the transition
into the news business is not an easy one. Because most of their affiliates
are 10 p.m. news-oriented. Fox needs more affiliates involved in news,
and once that happened the next steps toward more network news can occur.