Cable’s Celebrity Headaches

Michael Grebb in Cable’s Iconic Journey is right. With ratings and buzz climbing and celebrities increasingly interested in working in cable, the chiefs of cable networks are ensconced in heady but also head-achy times. They must balance the urge to grab viewers and press with high-priced, big-name talent with the exigencies of running a business.

Put yourself in the shoes of a cable network head. Do you endure the difficulties of working with prima donnas and divas (of both sexes) for the payoff of ratings, which ultimately can lead to higher ad revenue and perhaps a bonus for you? Or do you save money and headaches and try to develop your network with homegrown talent (also known as nobodys).

It’s a lot like being the owner of a baseball franchise. Assuming you have it, do you shell out cash for high-priced athletes who can bring quick results or do you depend on your farm system?

Oh, but the superstars in baseball and show biz sometimes bring headaches. As one network official recently confided, working with some (but not all) big-name celebrities can be trying (the official was being discrete). Getting top stars to cooperate with you to promote series on press tours, in the community or to advertisers can be difficult, the official said (discretely again). You literally have to fetch them from their homes and/or hotel rooms to get them to appointments, several officials said. As Mike Grebb remarked recently, it’s a miracle that so few celebrities miss press tour appointments. Credit goes to the cable PR personnel, I guess.

It’s probably small consolation to cable networks that difficult behavior by top-name stars is hardly a new phenomenon. The good news is that in some cases managing around superstars can bring a positive outcome. It is said that the baroque composer Georg Frederick Handel wrote his now-famous oratorio Messiah in part to avoid high-priced, temperamental soloists. Messiah, whose Hallelujah chorus has become a holiday staple, raises the importance of the chorus as opposed to the soloists, who are preeminent in opera. Handel had good reason to downplay soloists. He was fed up with quarrels he’d had with soloists and fights soloists had with each other (one such battle came to blows on stage during a 1727 opera performance, and this was between two female soloists).

But back to today and our cable network chiefs. As in Handel’s day, sometimes the results are excellent when big stars are shunned in favor of journeyman actors. Mike’s blog post brings up the example of AMC’s use of nobodies to people its Mad Men cast. While some of the thinking at AMC might have been financial, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner purposely wanted a non-star ensemble. He’d seen it work before. Weiner spent many seasons writing for David Chase on HBO’s The Sopranos, which also began without big-name stars. Of course, there were some headaches with that strategy, too. While actor Jon Hamm seems born to play nefarious ad man Don Draper, he had to audition multiple times to get the part, largely because officials were wary of an unknown being the series’ star.

Thing is, after cable nets create stars from talented but relative nobodies, some of them begin to demand more money. Evidence: Emeril at Food Network and, yes, members of The Sopranos cast at HBO.

In Food’s case, Scripps let Emeril go at the height of his stature. Fortunately, Food has been able to survive and even thrive without him by creating new stars and relying on reality series, whose superstar quotient by definition is low.

At Disney Channel, Hilary Duff reportedly left Lizzie McGuire in a huff, although both sides made nice in public.

After several seasons of success, James Gandolfini and other cast members of The Sopranos were able to force HBO to pay salaries that had been unheard of in cable. Reportedly Gandolfini and company, unlike their Sopranos characters, did not resort to strong-arm tactics, however.

Ultimately a cable network, hoping to use star power for ratings and buzz, can follow one of several strategies:

A. Deploy Unknowns: This could hurt in terms of buzz, ratings or press attention, especially at the outset. (We were able to snag Jon Hamm for an exclusive interview during the CableFAX 100 festivities three years back, when nobody knew him. Getting him today, well, let’s see: Oprah, Letterman or The CableFAX 100? Which one would you choose?) Still, for the budget-conscious network, this is sometimes the only way to go. And remember, there’s no guarantee that star power will bring success. Remember Chevy Chase’s numerous television debacles after Saturday Night Live. Or think of the after-Seinfeld careers of Jason Alexander or Michael Richards or the post-Frasier mishaps of Kelsey Grammer.

B. Hybrid Strategy 1: Employ just one big-name star and surround him or her with unknowns. This can be good for budgets and headache quotients, but sometimes is bad for a series, especially if the big-name star really is as fine an actor as his/her reputation promises. The risk is that viewers might lose interest in a series when the star is off screen and the less-than-talented nobodies are getting screen time.

C. Hybrid Strategy 2: Use less costly aging stars (see Hallmark Channel original movies) or stars whose days have come and gone (see the bevy of reality series on MTV and especially the Dr Drew rehab series on VH1). Heck, at Bravo the entire premise of Kathy Griffin’s popular series is that she’s on the D list.

D. Hybrid Strategy 3: Employ stars from foreign lands and hope their star power translates to American screens. Ironically, Starz is the chief exponent of this strategy. Its new take on Spartacus is chocked full of good-looking unknowns (on these shores at least). Of course one of the creators of Spartacus claims he cast actors with English and Australian accents because that’s how Americans think of ancient Romans talking. So far it’s working well for Starz, whose Spartacus has garnered better than average reviews.

While viewers and the press inevitably are drawn to star power, when an actor, star or not, has excellent material to work with, the chances of success are higher. The Sopranos, Mad Men and countless other series prove that.