If you're just joining this discussion, you might want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before you proceed.
Now then: I have a slew of e-mails from folks who wrote about the creator credits on The A-Team…a show I must admit was never on my radar or my TiVo. Most are telling me that the basic idea for the show came from NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff. Many of these folks quoted the following from Wikipedia or similar statements from other sources…
Brandon Tartikoff pitched the series to Cannell as a combination of The Dirty Dozen, Mission: Impossible, The Magnificent Seven, Mad Max, and Hill Street Blues, with "Mr. T driving the car."
If that's so — and I don't see anyone claiming it isn't — then Stan Lee was even wronger when he told Roy Thomas, me and probably other people that Stephen Cannell is considered the creator of the show because he had the basic idea.
I wish I'd known about Tartikoff's input when Stan said what he said to me. I would have explained to him that Tartikoff didn't claim a creator credit or any part of a creator credit for starting the process. He understood that doing something like that fell into the job description for the title he held and the salary he was paid. He also doubtlessly knew that if he had insisted on a creator credit on the resultant show, the Writers Guild would have blocked it and NBC probably would have fired him. Network execs have been sacked for things like that.
Other folks wrote me to ask about credits on other shows…and I'm afraid I'm not an expert on every show and whatever credits were negotiated or arbitrated. I believe I heard that H. Richard Hornberger, who wrote the books on which the M*A*S*H movie and TV show were based, declined a "Based on characters created by…" or somesuch credit on the TV series. Being offered that might have been a contractual matter relating to the books and not a Guild matter.
I also wouldn't doubt that the arbitrators sometimes get things wrong just as juries do. My main point — my only one, really — is that in TV and movies, there's a process via which creator credits are determined. You don't just deserve them because you came up with a vague, two-sentence premise that will still require a lot of work. The show or movie isn't really created at that point. At most, you've started the process…and that might be among the duties for which you're being paid.
This may or may not be the last installment of this series of articles. It depends on if further questions or issues are raised.