NBC Sports Chief Ebersol to Oversee ‘Today’ Show

NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol will expand his role at the network to the News division to oversee the “Today” show; NBC News President Michael Gartner defended the network’s new prime-time news program, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” against accusations of “tabloid TV” tactics, and entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff took still more heat from the critics over last season’s lapses in prime-time good taste.

These were some of the highlights of NBC’s annual summer press tour, which continues through today at the Century Plaza. Television journalists from around the country will be gathered here for another week for a marathon of news conferences sponsored by the television industry; ABC’s conferences begin Tuesday, and CBS follows in the week.

In the first conference of NBC’s portion of the tour, Gartner, who was named NBC News president last August, said that Ebersol would become senior vice president, NBC News, “Today,” which would place the sports executive in charge of the top-rated morning news show, reporting to Gartner. His position becomes effective in mid-August.

Gartner also announced that NBC News and Sports would collaborate on several sports documentaries in the same vein as NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw’s controversial “Black Athletes” special, which aired in the spring.

Although Ebersol is an unusual choice to oversee a news show such as “Today,” the move represents a similar departmental crossover to that of ABC News President Roone Arledge, who, moving in the opposite direction, expanded his role as news chief to become the senior executive responsible for ABC Sports.

“I am not taking over the news department, I am working on one show,” Ebersol said in response to reporters’ questions about whether he would be able to function effectively as both sports president--a position he has held for only a few months--and as man-at-the-helm of “Today.” “I think I can delegate well, and both departments will be very well served.”

Gartner, when asked whether the co-ventures of sports and news represented a blurring of the line between news and entertainment programming, answered an emphatic no. “I don’t believe in artificial barriers, but I do believe in boundaries (between news and entertainment), very, very strongly,” he said.

Journalists’ queries also prompted Gartner to defend another possible blurring of that boundary in “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” the network’s new prime-time news show, which enters the fray with such prime-time news institutions as “20/20” and “60 Minutes” with a new twist: In some cases the producers plan to use re-enactments of events to illustrate the stories.

The show, which makes its debut Aug. 2, will have three trial airings before NBC decides whether to make it part of the permanent schedule. Chuck Scarborough, Maria Shriver and Mary Alice Williams will co-anchor the program, produced by Sid Feders.

Although the Big Three networks and Fox Broadcasting were taken to task by critics for re-enactments of brutal crimes on such “reality” shows as “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” Gartner said that the re-enactments on “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” would be used only in cases in which archival news footage is not available and that all dialogue and visuals would conform to absolute accuracy, down to the color of a car driven during an incident.

“I think the word ‘re-creation’ is probably a killer,” Gartner said. The former newspaper executive argued that re-creating an event visually is no different from a newspaper reporter re-creating the scene in words. But any sort of revisionism, Gartner added, is “totally unacceptable . . . the first time they go even an inch beyond that, the show will not go on the air, and we’d probably look for someone else to do the show.”

Producer Feders called re-enactments “an idea whose time has come” and denied that “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” was trying to cash in on the popular success of the technique on last season’s so-called tabloid shows. “I think re-creations are the next (phase) in broadcast news,” he said.

Also on the defensive was NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff, still the favorite fall guy for NBC’s well-publicized lapses in taste in its prime-time programming--including a Geraldo Rivera special on Satanism that described gruesome rituals in detail.

Last season, Tartikoff was flayed by critics for allowing “trash TV” to find its way onto the prime-time schedule. This time around, Tartikoff was flayed by the critics for trying to keep the NBC schedule too safe and clean.

Tartikoff’s statement that NBC had figured out a way to “get out of the gate in the fall” without providing any easy targets for last season’s protesters prompted pointed questions: Did that mean that NBC had officially bowed to outside pressure?

Tartikoff said no. Although he conceded that NBC would continue to be responsive to viewer protests over sex and violence, he said the network would also continue to present controversial material when it chooses despite the “feeding frenzy of advertisers trying to get into the spotlight” by boycotting such shows.

“What you become concerned about is a sort of new McCarthyism,” Tartikoff said. “We’re not going to become the PG network. . . . We’re not on a witch hunt to get out anything that is risque or controversial.”

Tartikoff reiterated that his decision to pull the controversial “Nightingales,” Aaron Spelling’s series about young nurses that drew criticism for favoring lingerie over medicine, had nothing to do with advertiser boycotts, but rather with deciding that another light hour drama, “Quantum Leap,” was more deserving of a chance.

Of Spelling, Tartikoff added: “He’s a human being--he was probably hurt by the cancellation. In our conversations, he acted like the gentleman that he is.” He added that NBC is still in discussions with Spelling about developing a new pilot for a series starring Rodney Dangerfield; one fall pilot for Dangerfield was already developed, but rejected.

Tartikoff was also asked whether NBC’s four new prime-time entertainment shows--including three new Friday-night action series, “Baywatch,” “Hardball” and “Mancuso FBI” and one comedy, “The Nutt House”--represents a weakening of the network’s commitment to develop more thought-provoking fare.

Tartikoff said no to that too. By programming three escapist action shows on Friday night, Tartikoff acknowledged that he is trying to win back the male Friday-night audience that the network used to capture with “Miami Vice” before it began to slip in the ratings; new non-action shows, including “The Jim Henson Hour” and “Dream Street,” failed miserably in Friday-night tryouts last season. But he added that new NBC projects in development--including an hour drama with Alan Alda, a Carol Burnett anthology series and a mini-series version of “Gulliver’s Travels” produced by Jim Henson and David Puttnam--indicate that NBC plans to maintain the reputation for quality it began with shows such as “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.”