As you might have heard — and as I only heard after writing the preceding — ABC's Standards and Practices folks have vetoed the material that Robin Williams wanted to do at tonight's statue-presenting festival. Here's an article about it, and here's an e-mail from Pat O'Neill…
What do you think the chances are that ABC/Disney's real objections to the song Robin Williams was planning for his gig as presenter of the animation Oscar was that too many of the references were to characters they own and which represent significant marketing revenue…revenue they wouldn't want tainted in any way, including a comedic one? Or am I just a skeptic who looks for hypocrisy everywhere these days?
Well, it's not like there isn't a lot to find. In this case though, I would guess the concern at ABC goes beyond the sanctity of Mickey Mouse. The mindset there is probably that they'd love the Oscars to become an orgy of scandalous remarks and wardrobe malfunctions, just so long as the network could effectively say, "It wasn't our fault. We took all reasonable precautions." The whole Janet Jackson incident did a lot to shake up the television industry, not because anyone was shocked at the quick flash of a breast but because they felt CBS was held unduly and excessively responsible.
There's a little game that is sometimes played at TV networks where you have the Programming Department pressing for more salacious, exploitable content…but the Standards and Practices folks are telling you to tone it down. As a writer or producer, you find yourself trapped in the middle and at first, you want to tell them, "Hey…you guys hammer it out and let me know what the decision is." But what you eventually come to realize is that they want it both ways. They want the steamy stuff because it gets ratings but they also want to be able to say they acted responsibly, cut out the more egregious offenses, etc. A lot of the success stories in television are a matter of being able to navigate that contradiction and satisfy the two opposing concerns at the same time. The networks aren't used to being actually slapped if someone doesn't like something that gets on the airwaves.
A certain amount of the Oscar telecast is simply outside ABC's control. If the Best Supporting Actress gets up there and says George W. Bush should be impeached, it will upset a certain portion of America but they won't be mad at the network; won't even be able to say ABC could have prevented that. The piece Robin Williams was planning to do was prepared material, written in advance. Since it was a piece of music, it would have to be rehearsed before the telecast, which would therefore put ABC on the spot. They couldn't say, "We didn't know what he was going to do" and of course, they couldn't bleep a two-minute bit that had come as no surprise. So they've prohibited it, just out of fear and probably because it's good p.r. with a faction they figure could give them trouble. If Mr. Williams comes out tonight and does something equally provocative as a seeming ad-lib, ABC will be less responsible for it than if they'd allowed the scripted bit.
By the way: In that article, you'll note that one of the Standards and Practices folks at ABC who covers the Oscars is a lady named Susan Futterman. I had a long series of battles with Ms. Futterman (or "Futterperson," as everyone but me called her) when I was writing shows for ABC. At one point, she was in charge of a bunch of Saturday morning shows (one of which I story-edited) and one prime-time show (which I was also writing). So we'd get together several times a week and argue, and in a few cases, I traded off cutting something on one show if she'd allow something else on the other. Most of the Standards and Practices folks with whom I dealt in television came to the post with an attitude of, "Hey, don't blame me if the rules are silly. I'm just in charge of enforcing them." Futterman was the only one I encountered who seemed to fervently believe in the rules and in saving America from her concepts of subversion. Others could be talked out of this or that if you gave them a credible argument which they could repeat to their superiors to explain why they'd let the questionable joke in. Susan never seemed to care what her bosses said. She had her personal sense of morality and was determined to apply it.
At one point in the eighties, a package of classic Warner Brothers cartoons passed from CBS to ABC. CBS had chopped them up a lot, omitting much material that now airs routinely on Cartoon Network and Boomerang without turning America's children into werewolves. When ABC got them back then, they cut everything CBS had cut, plus a lot that CBS had deemed acceptable. That was Futterman at work. She certainly could have justified airing the same prints CBS had been running for years, but she felt some of what the other network had broadcast was unacceptable and that a show on ABC had to conform to her views. I thought she was mistaken about that, and about a lot of the things she cut in other shows, but I had a strange respect for her efforts. At times in show business, it's almost refreshing to see someone making the wrong decision out of principle, as opposed to the right one out of expediency. I haven't dealt with her in decades but I doubt she cares much about the health of Disney licensing. Unless she's changed a lot, she's making her determinations — right, wrong and maddeningly inconsistent — because she really believes something does not belong on network television.