The serious-minded men of Fox apparently did not appreciate the joke Sunday night when Emmy awards host Ellen DeGeneres kidded that she'd keep her CBS audience posted on the score of World Series Game 7, being broadcast over on the Fox network.
After hearing DeGeneres' opening monologue from Hollywood, Fox made a quick decision to slap the names of Emmy winners on top of its coverage of the game as payback.
And when Fox revealed the winners to Game 7's TV audience of nearly 40 million nationwide -- the biggest baseball crowd in a decade -- as the awards were being announced, it scooped the actual Emmy telecast in Mountain and Pacific time zones, where the ceremony aired on a tape-delayed basis. Those two zones account for more than 20 percent of the American viewing public.
"It was a pretty no-class thing to do," CBS Executive Vice President Gil Schwartz told the Associated Press. "This is an event that celebrates all of television. To attempt to play the role of national party pooper is sort of disappointing."
Fox Sports Television Group Chairman and CEO David Hill told The TV Column that he made the decision to post winners during Series play after learning that CBS "put up baseball scores, or said they were going to put up baseball scores." The call was "just more kind of like a knee-jerk reaction," he said.
Actually, CBS did not "post" baseball scores during its Emmycast, nor did DeGeneres say it would. What she did, during her opening monologue, is thank viewers who had chosen the twice-postponed Emmy ceremony over Game 7 of the World Series, which was airing at the same time in the Eastern and Central time zones on Fox. "This is the place to be," joshed the comic, who promised to keep her audience updated on the baseball scores. "I don't think they're gonna break in and let you know who just won for best supporting actress," she added.
In fact, that is exactly what Fox went and did, even though DeGeneres was clearly jesting and, as it turned out, mentioned the score only once during the three-hour trophy broadcast.
Hill's comment makes it obvious that he didn't actually see the Emmycast. He's not saying where he got his information, only that the decision to post Emmy wins was his.
CBS execs were officially taking the high road yesterday but privately wondering whether any of the Fox executives attending the Emmy show at the Shubert Theatre in Century City had stepped out and called Hill after DeGeneres' comments.
No way of telling exactly what impact the bean-spilling had on viewership for the 53rd annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Nationwide, the broadcast nabbed only about 17 million viewers -- the second-least watched Emmy broadcast in more than 20 years.
Of course, it was CBS's decision to reschedule the long-delayed Emmy show during the fiercely competitive November sweeps and possibly against a World Series game.
CBS Television President and CEO "Les Moonves got one of the biggest passes anyone has ever gotten," said one Fox exec who didn't want his name used. "He got to decide what night the Emmys would go on. Usually the Emmys are . . . before the season starts and everybody kind of lays down and lets whoever has it get the biggest number for the night. They should live with their decision and not cry foul because they made a bad decision."
CBS had bet that the World Series would not go to a seventh game; only eight of the past 25 have, after all.
CBS lost that bet, and the Emmys lost 22 percent of its audience compared with last year, though the final figures were better than CBS had forecast.
Putting aside that DeGeneres was obviously joking, did Hill actually believe that the Emmys could do serious damage to viewership of the final game of the most competitive World Series in years?
"I'm so paranoid about my numbers I believe sun flares can have a negative impact," Hill said.
He also said he never stopped to think that the winners would be revealed to Mountain and Pacific time zones before the Emmy show aired there.
"I didn't even think about that at all," he said.
Bryce Zabel, chairman of the TV Academy, which puts on the annual Primetime Emmys, called Fox's decision "the TV equivalent of telling results before the polls close."
But, he said, philosophically, "ultimately, what goes around comes around.
"The Emmys are telecast on a different network every year; someday it will be someone else doing it to Fox."
"Someday" is September 2003.
Hill said he hadn't given that any thought either when he decided to stick it to CBS. "I live very much day by day," he explained.
For the second time this year, PBS is cutting its staff, this time by 59 jobs. About half are open positions that will not be filled. Combined with cuts announced in March, PBS has eliminated about 20 percent of its staff this year.
As part of the reorganization, PBS appointed Wayne Godwin as chief operating officer and announced the elimination of its syndication operation, PBS Select. Godwin, who had been head of the broadcasting service's member affairs division -- which also bit the dust -- will oversee all day-to-day operations, including online operations and member station relations, but not programming.
Godwin will report to PBS chief executive Pat Mitchell, who continues to oversee programming directly.
A monitor at the Emmy Awards show broadcasts the World Series during a commercial break.