Airwolf: New York Times July 1986

Episode Guide

Briefings

Theme Music

Discuss

The Wolf's Lair

Special Projects

Fun & Games

Web Archive

Forum

Home

<< back

>> forward

Airwolf article from the New york Times July 1986
Producers Cut Costs of Action Shows

By Peter J. Boyer


	Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnlne in "Airwolf, " which ran on CBS before It was canceled last spring. New episodes, without the two stars. will be made for sale to Independent television stations.

HOLLYWOOD, July 28 — As the action-adventure television show "Airwolf" goes into its third full season, it is subject to certain imperatives that promise to make production itself something of an adventure. For one thing, the show, which is about the exploits of a futuristic attack helicopter, will have to be shot virtually without the helicopter.
The chopper is too expensive.
"Airwolf" is now being produced on a severe austerity budget, part of an effort by MCA Universal, the studio that produced the series for CBS, to recover its roughly $12 million loss on the series's first 58 episodes broadcast before the network canceled the show last spring. Universal now hopes to produce enough new episodes of the program as cheaply as possible to sell the series in syndication to independent television stations.
So, Universal entered into a partnership with a Los Angeles producer named Arthur Annecharico to make at least another season's worth of "Airwoif" for the cable USA Network at a drastically reduced coat. Where each episode of the program, filled with complicated (and expensive) stunt scenes, cost about $I.2 million when the show was on CBS, the new version of the program will have a budget of about $400,000 per episode. It will go without its stars of the past two and a half seasons, Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine, and will probably be shot in Canada to avoid the high labor costs associated with big Hollywood studios, bound by agreements with the various trade unions.
And the helicopter? Most of the action scenes involving the aircraft will be lifted from past episodes of the show. "A whole different set of economics is going to be attempted," said Sidney J. Sheinberg, president of MCA Inc.
The new scaled-down "Airwolf" is a consequence of the fierce economic pressures afflicting the television business, which, producers and networks maintain, has reached the crisis stage. With network advertising revenues stalled, ABC, NBC and CBS Insist they are unable to pay increased program costs. The program producers such as the studios, who make network shows at a deficit in the hope of cashing in with a big syndication sale after the network run, are looking for new ways to control costs and minimize risk, as with "Air-wolf" (Universal is also continuing to produce another canceled network series, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," for USA on cable).

Producers Choose Small Studios

One result has been a realignment In the Hollywood production community, with some successful producers of the expensive action shows leaving the big studios for smaller independent production houses where, without big studio overhead, they can produce their shows for less.
Don Bellisario is a notable example. Mr. Bellisario, who has produced such big-action programs as "Magnum P.I." for Universal and and was the producer of "Airwolf" for the studio, recently left Universal for the smaller Tri-Star Pictures, where, he says, he can produce an action-adventure television show at a saving of $150,000 to $200,000 per episode. The difference between a major studio and an independent company, he says, "is like the difference between ordering dinner a la carte and ordering the full course."
"What it enables you to do is not bypass the guilds and unions, but to make individual deals," he said. "You say, 'I need this.' The unions say, 'No. you need this,' and you negotiate. A studio, on the other hand, has a locked contract. You go to shoot and you need whatever the contract says that you need.
"The studio has enormous overhead. They have wonderful facilities, "many small and sometimes large things to give you that the independents can't," he said. "But they are not things that are necessary to bringing off a quality TV series.'
The studios, meanwhile, are scrambling to adjust. Harvey Shepherd, new head of television for Warner Brothers, came to the studio last spring from CBS, and knows both sides of television's financial crunch. When he got to the studio, he held a staff meeting and announced that Warner Brothers would only make shows that it could afford to make, mostly situation comedies, which cost about half as much as action series and are selling most briskly in the syndication marketplace. Other studios are following suit.
However, for some, such as Universal, the adjustment is more difficult. Universal had been heavily into hour-long action adventures, and with reason. "Magnum" sold in reruns for an estimated $200 million, making the risk of deficit financing on other ex-pensive action series seem worth-while. But a softening of the hourlong market in syndication along with the network refusal to increase licensing fees has forced Universal to get serious about comedy. The studio has beefed up its comedy development department and is trying to woo another proven comedy producer to its lot.
An ironic consequence of the switch to comedy is that comedy writers — now a hot commodity — are becoming hugely expensive. One production company recently negotiated a contract with a comedy writer at triple his previous asking price. "The numbers now are bizarre," said one studio executive. "One writer is now getting a million bucks a year. It's crazy."
Universal, at least, is also toying with methods of producing shows at lower cost, hoping to apply some of the methods being used with "Airwolf" to shows made for the three major networks. A major obstacle, though, will be the Hollywood trade unions, whose contracts with the studios can make major cutting nettlesome. The Writers Guild of America, for example, recently put the Arthur Company, which is producing "Airwolf" for Universal, on its strike list over the issue of residual payment to writers. As a result, no guild writers can work on the show without violating their guild standing. The industry is also wary of a pending strike by the actors unions, which could shut down production altogether.
Mr. Sheinberg of Universal insists that the unions will have to bend. "Everybody believes that they should be getting more," he said. "You can't always be getting more in a world where less is available."
With the coming glut of sitcoms, though, the networks will have a need for hourlong dramas, including action shows. Mr. Shepherd said that Warner Brothers will produce such programs, but "with the elimination of elaborate action."
"The emphasis will be more on character than on hardware," he said. "We'll still tell a mystery story and have suspense, but there will be no elaborate car chases and no helicopters."