For CBS it has been the best of secrets--and the worst of secrets.
The best kind of secret? That would be the merging of WB and UPN under the new CW network--an announcement made
out-of-the-blue in January on the first day of the NATPE convention.
The worst? That Katie Couric would be taking over the main
anchor chair of "The CBS Evening News." Official news broke yesterday, though the topic has been openly discussed by the consumer and trade press for over a year.
From all this, we can see the TV
business world isn't a perfectly furtive one--that it probably could use CIA-covert training. But, of course, this is silly, as Jerry Springer likes to say. It's only about television.
Both recent CBS deals yielded the same result--major blockbuster news that will immediately affect the financial health of the company. Both decisions were seemingly cheered by financial analysts and
by CBS Corp.'s chief decision-maker, chairman Les Moonves. Both moves stand to improve the company's advertising revenue.
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Secrets are like transformers--they store up knowledge that is
released with certain power. In Hollywood, though, it's typically not just knowledge that comes with secrets but with drippy attitude, guile, and panache.
A worst-kept secret only is
only damaging when, of course, a bad decision is made, and rectifying it takes a long time. Killing that CBS Ronald Reagan movie?--perhaps a bad decision. But the secret that CBS would bail on the
project didn't last long. Moonves made a quick decision that journalistically this made-for TV movie didn't seem on the up and up. (Of course having the movie air on Showtime somehow was another
matter).
CBS has made no secret of its feeling concerning Janet Jackson's unrehearsed appearance of her right breast during the Super Bowl two years ago. It also kept no secret that it
had major problem with the fines the FCC was levying against its stations.
In this regard, TV has no badly kept secrets, only bad--or worst--delayed business decisions.