HRTS EXECUTIVE MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ANDY FRIENDLY ON ‘WILLING TO BE LUCKY’

Andy Friendly is a past HRTS Board of Directors President and current Board member and an Emmy-nominated producer. He started out in the Bronx, the son of television pioneer Fred Friendly, his life and career have spanned groundbreaking programs and companies and he is married to Golden Globe-winning actress Pat Crowley. I recently had a chance to speak with Andy to discuss his new book Willing To Be Lucky: Adventures in Life and TV, as well as Vin Scully, Entertainment Tonight, Tom Snyder, David Letterman and the importance of the free press. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

What is the role of the free press in the modern world and how has it changed over the years?

To hold government accountable, that’s what Tim Russert said at an HRTS event that I produced with him in 2004. It’s a perfect description of the role of the press, especially the television press. It is called the Fourth Estate and it is as much as part of a successful democracy as are the other three branches.

Russert was prescient in his speech by saying that to HRTS, as was Ted Koppel a couple of years later when he said that protecting press freedoms is all of our jobs. It is more important than ever as we see press freedoms shrinking around the world and we have a President of the United States who says that the press is the enemy of the people. We need to protect press freedoms at all costs and talk about these issues and hold our leaders accountable.

I’m proud of our wonderful new leaders HRTS Board President Marc Korman and HRTS CEO Melissa Grego and everyone at HRTS for last month’s powerful Luncheon interview by one of the great journalists working today, Pulitzer Prize winner Ronan Farrow of the brilliant and courageous Ryan Murphy. HRTS is still getting it done after 70 years. I’m proud to be longest running Board member.

Disclosure: HRTS CEO Melissa Grego served as an editor and consultant on Willing To Be Lucky.

What might be the risks of airing See It Now today?

One of the big problems we have is that there’s a dearth of longform programming documentaries on the networks now, there are none in primetime on the major networks. That’s a problem because as my dad used to say, you can’t explain complicated stories and issues on the nightly news or in a segment or two on CNN. That’s why the documentary is so important, and there’s really nobody doing it.

The country would benefit greatly from a weekly documentary series on a major network. It’s not going to happen, because they don’t deliver ratings and because the business has changed dramatically since Dad and Murrow did See It Now in the age of three networks. The role of television news was brand new but it was in a way much more powerful because you had 100 percent of the audience watching those three channels then instead of a thousand channels now. And so the voice of CBS News or NBC News or ABC News was much more powerful. Things are more fragmented now and so it’s harder to get a clear message across.

The risks for the networks, and the corporations that own the networks, of doing a See It Now is that you’re not going to get any ratings, you’re not going to sell any advertising and so in their minds they think that they can’t afford to do it. It’s a shame that television news has lost a lot of its power because of that. The need for another See It Now, another Ed Murrow, another Walter Cronkite, is for a powerful voice that the nation could rally around and listen to the way they did when Murrow took on Joe McCarthy or Cronkite took on the Vietnam War. Cronkite literally changed the course of the war and of our history because he had such credibility with viewers in the 1960s. As did Murrow with viewers in the 1950s, and his McCarthy program which formed the basis of Good Night and Good Luck, the movie George Clooney did where he played my dad and was nominated and won some Oscars for it. That was the true power of the medium back then, and I’m not sure that we’ll ever have that kind of influence and power again in a program like See It Now. Perhaps someday some new form of media will come along or some voice of credibility will emerge but right now that person doesn’t exist.

We are not descended from fearful men?

That was one of Ed Murrow’s closing lines in their famous See It Now McCarthy broadcast. He and my dad had a lot of courage. My book has a whole chapter devoted to their program, and in his summation he said that decent men must not remain quiet but must speak up since when we examine our history we see that we are not descended from fearful men. It’s an important message today, we look back and search through the history of our great country and we realize that we are descended from courageous men who were not afraid to associate and fight for just causes against strong forces that could kill them, we see that they stood their ground. We must show that same courage today to defend our democracy while we are being attacked from abroad and here at home.

We need to make sure that we have a strong and vibrant free press because we’re being squeezed and we’re being oppressed by the current administration in ways that are authoritarian and quite frightening. I watch reporters trying to do their jobs covering political rallies and the speaker incites the crowd to violence towards the press. Calling them the “fake news” and saying they should be punched in the mouth, then the people turn around and threaten the reporters. It’s a real problem when you have a leader trying to silence the free press and destroy the Fourth Estate.

If See It Now aired today how do you think the country would react?

We have become very tribal as a nation and we tune in to hear our own opinions reinforced on the networks we like to listen to, whether it’s NBC or CNN or Fox News, it’s become a big echo chamber and we’ve become a tribal culture. It’s hard to change opinions and to rally the country around important issues but there is great journalism being done.

Serious issues are being covered by PBS with their Frontline series and occasionally CNN or MSNBC will do an hour on one topic; people like Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow are doing good work. Whether it’s the kids in Florida and reporting on their efforts to change gun laws, or it’s the reporters at Axios or Politico or any of the other outlets that are reporting on the important issues such as separating children from their parents at the border. The one thing that television in particular has over any other medium is the power of pictures because when you see those kids in those prison camps, the power of the images can affect people in a way that no words or pundits can.

What lessons did you learn from Tom Snyder?

I went to work for him when I was just 22 and Tom taught me so many things. At Channel 4 in New York, he was the anchorman and I was a junior researcher and later became a writer. He taught me how to write much more succinctly, how to use fewer words and get right to the heart of the story. He was great at condensing, at taking complex stories from the wire services. Tom could read three pages of wire copy and then in his mind condense them down to the most succinct 20 or 30 seconds of reporting.

He taught me to do that and it was the basis for everything else I did.

Tom taught me to cut through the BS and not complicate the story but make it more understandable for the viewer. He also taught me that great television is not for the network or for the owners of the network, it’s for the viewers. When he first came to New York, Tom told his audience that he didn’t work for NBC or the owners at RCA, he worked for the viewers.

Tom taught me to speak truth to power, he wasn’t always politically correct and sometimes got himself in trouble with the powers-that-be for telling it like it is but that was Tom, and that’s what made his programs work. Viewers knew that he was for them, and so when he’d walk down the street the cab drivers and the waiters and the construction guys would shout “hey Tom, we love ya!” He knew how to relate to real people and I tried to emulate that in my writing and producing and everything I did.

In 1976 you worked with the master of the standing nap?

That was David Letterman’s affectionate tribute to his dear friend and manager and my good friend Buddy Morra; I just went to his 87^th birthday party, he’s one of my best friends. Buddy managed Robin Williams, David Letterman, Billy Crystal, Robert Klein, he was the dean of the comedy managers. I first met him at a Robert Klein concert I was covering for Channel 4 and he took me under his wing, he was my first bigtime showbiz executive friend. He retired a few years ago and everybody showed up and toasted and roasted him at his retirement party.

Buddy always gave me good advice, I wanted to do a show about young comedians coming up and so I asked Buddy who I should have on. He recommended Billy Crystal, David Letterman and Robin Williams; at that time, no one had heard of Robin or Dave. I booked Letterman on the Tomorrow Show, it was his first network television appearance and he did great.

Tom Snyder had a rule, you had to be great in the pre-interview since it was a good indication that you’d be good on the air. Letterman was fine in the pre-interview phone call and so I booked him for his first network appearance….but I passed on Robin Williams. Robin was monosyllabic on the phone, as many comedians are. He was new to the business and hadn’t done many pre-interviews and so I didn’t book him, which was a mistake, but that’s the way we did it. Tom would forgive you if things went sideways and there were production problems but if you booked someone who wasn’t a good talker on the Tomorrow Show he was not happy about that.

So I can claim credit for booking Letterman on his first network show but at the same time I passed on Robin Williams. Years later when I was at King World we had a week of Hollywood Squares celebrating Comic Relief and we booked Robin along with Whoopi and Billy. I told Robin that story and he laughed; I’m glad that I did get to work with him.

Who today is following in the footsteps of David Letterman and Johnny Carson?

The closest we have now in my view is Kimmel. Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers and James Corden are also very good, I think they have potential to grow into what Carson and Letterman did but I find that they’re not quite there yet. Kimmel is not there yet either, it takes a long time to get to that level. I think that Kimmel comes the closest because he has the most humanity, which he displayed when he talked about his son being born with some health problems. He talked about how he was able to take care of things financially and get his son treated, whereas many American families can’t afford to do that. He talked about his own son’s healthcare in the context of the healthcare debate and he related it to the audience. He showed that he can go way beyond just comedy and monologue and sketches and setpieces and really communicate with his audience in a way that Johnny could and Dave could.

Dave was the first to come back after 9/11, he did a show a few days after and he got up there with no band and no audience and just talked to the viewer at home. He said it’s time to get back to life and that “there is only one requirement for any of us, and that is to be courageous, because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior.” With that, we all felt that it was okay to get back to our lives. Dave had that ability and Johnny had that ability and I think Kimmel has that ability.

What was it like in the early days of Entertainment Tonight?

Madness. I came in after the pilot had already been done. I was hired by Paramount in June 1981, three months before the show went on the air. I came from NBC News, and I just assumed that because they’d done a pilot and because it was Paramount, a major studio, that they had a big infrastructure in place and the show was ready to go. I thought I was coming in to work on a well-oiled machine. The day I got there, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner called me into their office and said that the Executive Producer, Jack Haley Jr., someone I admired greatly and had interviewed with, was no longer going to be doing the show. They told me that I was going to be running the show and reporting to them directly.

When I got to my office I realized that it was just me and my assistant, and that was it. There was no infrastructure, no staff, no bureaus around the country to do a nightly news program. There was a budget to hire people but no one had been hired and no edit bays had been constructed, no graphics, no production team or reporting team, we were starting from scratch and we had three months to build everything. I had come from NBC News with all of the bureaus around the world and edit bays and crews, teams of people for lighting and art and graphics, and we had to quickly build all of that for a program that had never been done before, day-and-date six days a week.

It was a tough assignment but I was 29 and had a lot of energy and I put together a team of people and we somehow got it done and on the air. We worked 18 hours a day, 7 days a week – literally, I’m not exaggerating – and slept about 4 hours a day. It was a great experience, though it was also difficult because there were competing visions about what the show was to be. The studio had one vision of the show while other partners had another, much more tabloid vision of the show, so we were fighting a lot about the direction.

After about 60 shows or so, I had had enough. I was about to turn 30 and I told Diller and Eisner that they’d be fine without me, we had built a great team and infrastructure and the show was working well. It just wasn’t for me, it wasn’t the show I wanted to do, originally it was going to be a much more journalistic, in-depth look at the industry and the issues facing the industry. It was going to be a 60 Minutes-style program about the entertainment industry but as it turned out, they wanted it to be much more tabloid and who’s to say they weren’t right? Thirty-seven years on the air and I’m proud to have been involved with it, I got my first Emmy nomination the year it went on the air, it was a great thing for me and I got to work with a fantastic team of people who I’m still very close with. It was quite an experience, I wasn’t really prepared to handle all the politics and pace myself properly, it was a bit enervating but it was a lot of fun, I’m very proud of it.

All your dreams came true on October 3, 1982?

That was my first date with Pat Crowley, the beautiful actress who has been my wife for the last 33 years. She’s the love of my life and the matriarch of our wonderful family and you talk about “willing to be lucky,” best thing that ever happened to me.

She was someone I admired from afar when she was on all of her television series and movies. She had a fabulous career, she was on the covers of all the big magazines and starred in many of the top shows and movies, and as a teenager growing up she was my ideal woman and crush. I got to actually meet her and work with her and we fell in love and got married, we’ve been together 36 years now. She’s a great talent and an even better person.

How did you first get involved with HRTS? What have been some of your favorite events?

It was 1996, I was running production at King World and Sam Haskell, head of television packaging at William Morris, was President of the Board. I had worked closely with him on many projects and he asked me to join the Board and I was honored to do that. I was always a big fan of HRTS and went to all the events.

I later became President of the Board, and my favorite events were the Network Presidents Luncheons because they were the big event in town every year. Those were great events, they were hugely important and well attended, and we later did marquee events with Tim Russert, Ted Koppel, Norman Lear and Steven Bochco.

My favorite event of all the ones I produced was the one we did with Vin Scully, the legendary sportscaster, who is a friend of mine and someone I’ve admired since I was a kid. I’ve listened to him over the course of his incredible 65 year career as the voice of the Dodgers. That was my favorite, it was sold out and had the most media coverage of any event I can remember and Vin just regaled the audience of major executives. HRTS events are always well-attended but for this one you just couldn’t get a seat, couldn’t get a ticket, everybody showed up. Ron Shelton, the director of Bull Durham, interviewed Vin and did a great job, it was just a magical luncheon.

You’re working with the Shoah Foundation to shine a light on the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps?

We have a tremendous vault full of video testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides around the world that the Shoah Foundation has recorded over the past 25 years, including 300 testimonies of the liberators of the concentration camps. My dad wrote a letter about his experience covering the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Spring 1945, a letter he wrote home to his mother. His letter inspired me and my family and we read it every year at the Jewish Holidays, it’s a very personal story to me.

We want to tell the stories of these young kids, 21 and 22, soldiers who thought they had seen everything at D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and all the other horrific events of World War II, who hadn’t really seen anything until they saw the camps. They were totally unprepared but they had the courage to liberate those camps and bring the survivors home. These are their brave stories, amazing when you think about these young kids having to do that, their courage and the life-changing impact it had on them.

These are stories that are truly important to retell as we see a rise in anti-Semitism and hate around the world, in populism and lack of tolerance around the world, in Holocaust deniers and more and more need to retell these stories. We’re hoping to get this made and we’re in talks with the network right now and we’ll see what happens.

What advice would you give a young person just starting in the business?

The most important advice I can give is to find the thing you are most passionate about, whether it’s news or entertainment or new media or writing plays or films. Work hard at it, study it, get a job doing anything to get in the door of an organization or a show that you admire. Be the runner, be the gopher, do whatever it takes. Be the first one in, the last one out, no job too small or too big. Go get the coffee, go pick up the producer’s dry cleaning, make yourself invaluable. Some people who have worked hard at their college degree or their apprenticeship think that they’re above that. They don’t want to do that kind of stuff but my advice is to get into a place that you respect and work harder than everybody else and if you do that, you’ll become an important member of the team and people will depend on you and trust you and they’ll give you an opportunity to do other things to learn and grow.

Andy’s book is available through Amazon (here’s the direct link) and all other major booksellers, in hard copy or digital download format or as an audiobook through Audible.