Comments on: TV Urban Legends Revealed #13

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:22:18 +0000

- I think “Remington Steele” is the nucleus of my male feminism. Laura Holt was a strong character and I supported her. Because of this I was annoyed that as time went on on the show, it seemed to me that Steele became a great detective with Holt became a love stuck teenager. I should rewatch the series to confirm.

Great story, RTC. I mentioned it to my wife and she was particularly impressed.

By: BTC

BTC — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:20:50 +0000

Thanks for this urban legend. I was a massive fan of Remington Steele from the first airing of the first episode. A few points…

- I was 15 years old when the show started and I had a crush on Zimbalist and wanted to look like Brosnan. I recall there being an overabundance of blondish male TV leads, on the shows I was watching at least, at the time and, having dark hair myself, Brosnan/Steele became a role model.

- I am amazed at Robert Butler’s involvement in the many shows I’ve liked.

- I’m happy my DVD set of season one has the Stephanie Zimbalist sticker. She was great on the show and credit is very due.

- Because of Steele’s movie references, I became familiar with older films and film stars that were well beyond my years.

- I think “Remington Steele” is the nucleus of my male feminism. Laura Holt was a strong character and I supported her. Because of this I was annoyed that as time went on on the show, it seemed to me that Steele became a great detective with Holt became a love stuck teenager. I should rewatch the series to confirm.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:11:08 +0000

Re: The Ted Cassidy/Richard Kiel thing… I think that sounds like a good legend to investigate. I’ve always heard Kiel, but if there are credible sources that only mention Cassidy, there might be a good story there.

It was Kiel. He is actually IN the pilot.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:25:28 +0000

Fine, Ted, instead of ignoring you, I am just done with you commenting at this site, as well.

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:59:36 +0000

Like it or not, Brian, there was NO resale. When the cancellation of a series is announced by the network carrying it, technically (usually) said net is, legally, not fully committed to that status right away. When a show’s ratings AND reviews have both dropped the way “Steele”‘s had, the studio is not shopping it around, and everybody concerned has no doubt whatsoever that the program is absolutely defunct. Consequently, they go looking for new work and all parties involved–every ****ing one of them, including the network executives–don’t care that legally the contracts aren’t quite out of the way yet. Several shows of this era moved to new carriers when cancelled. MGM took “Fame” into first-run syndication (their own distribution arm) when NBC dropped it for terribly low ratings, because the huge successes overseas easily offset the losses here, but not for the network as it didn’t own a piece of the show (same situation with “Baywatch” a decade later). “Taxi” had such high praise from the critics (as it always had) that Paramount had no trouble selling it to NBC after ABC cancelled. But “Steele” had none of that going for it. When a network buys a TV series from an outside studio, there is a contract (sometimes referred to as a license) almost always for five years. The network retains the right to cancel earlier than that, but if they do they do NOT have whatever is left of the five years to reverse themselves. When NBC cancelled “Remington Steele” after FOUR years, they then had under the contract a limited amount of time within which they could reverse that decision. As with most series cancellations, nobody had any thought whatsoever that they might actually do it. When the “TV’s Remington Steele to be the next James Bond” publicity broke, NBC still had a little time left, and they did indeed “uncancel” the series. Thanks to you I now know that they actually thought Brosnan would be able to do both projects, but they would NOT have been willing to negotiate a brand new fee with MTM, given how the Bond deal increased the value there. That brings us to this: Your header for this item should have read something to the following effect:

NBC sought to profit from the “TV’s Remington Steele to be next James Bond” publicity by uncancelling the series, incredibly failing to realize that they were killing the deal.

The status would have been some form of a qualified “False” because while that reflects the events, NBC had thought things through better than that and believed Brosnan would be allowed to do both. Again, thank you for explaining away THAT.

Let me put it another way. When NBC’s original set of options were gone, while MTM would have had the right to shop the show around, just as NBC would have to enter into a new arrangement with the studio, so would the latter with the talent. That’s why this sort of thing either happens very quickly (the three examples given above, plus “Too Close for Comfort” and “Silver Spoons”), or there are significant cast changes when the new venue eventually gets it on the air (“Charles in Charge,” “Nine to Five,” “Mama’s Family,” and the sitcom about the waitresses with “Living” in its various titles). To repeat my opening here: Like it or not, NBC did NOT buy the “Remington Steele” series a second time (and ignoring all my postings won’t make them not true or not existing).

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:10:29 +0000

Fair enough, Sean.

I still think that it’s reasonable for an actor (and his people) to overlook MTM’s right to “resell” the show once NBC had canceled it, simply because how often does a show get re-sold after a network cancels it and X amount of time passes? When shows get re-sold to other networks once canceled, they tend to be working on the deal right away (heck, sometimes before the network has even officially canceled them), so when X amount of time passed after NBC canceled the show and MTM had not even appeared slightly interested in re-selling the show, I think it’s reasonable for Brosnan (and his people) to forget about MTM’s re-sale option, but you’re most likely correct that I undersold the possibility of the re-sale, and Brosnan (especially his people) should have been more aware of it.

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:25:29 +0000

Exactly. When I said, “…with everybody signed to the usual five-year deals….” I meant that the talent was under contract to MTM that way. The network’s deal leaves them with the option to cancel at any point; NBC’s three-year total committment to Sheldon Leonard’s “I Spy” and two-year ditto to Steven
Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” are extremely rare exceptions. Only the production company had contracts with the actors, and they were not with the studio in general (as was the practice at Warner Bros. and elsewhere in the “77 Sunset Strip” days) but strictly for that series. Whenever a network cancels a series at some point other than at the end of the (from the involved entities’ perspective) current agreement, the potential for this situation ALWAYS exists; the network legally has the option of reversing themselves, but they almost never do it and the talent, with their contracts with the studio just as dead–no more, no less–as the studio’s with the network, start looking for work immediately instead of waiting out the network’s new, shorter time limit brought into play by the cancellation announcement. NBC did not rebuy “Star Trek” from Paramount in 1968, but simply “uncancelled” it in response to viewer protests. In that case NBC placed “Trek” back on the fall schedule, but as you explained, on this occasion the network wanted Brosnan to have the time to do the Bond movie as well, so they made only a very limited pick-up.

By: sean

sean — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:33:36 +0000

“It’s reasonable to expect a guy to know that the network has an option to hold him over for X amount of years, but I don’t know if it is as reasonable for him to know that once the network cancels the show, that the production company could ALSO bind him over to the rest of his contract.”

Brian, what you’re saying doesn’t make a lick of sense. (I say that with much love for the site.)

The production company makes the show and employs the actors. The networks buy the show and distribute it. They certainly have all sorts of input, and they likely have specific contracts with certain actors (almost certainly including Brosnan, as the star of one of their shows), but MTM is the one who employs Brosnan and pays him. So that would be the primary contract that his agent, manager, and lawyers would’ve been concerned with.

That said, I think it makes sense that nobody would’ve allowed that clause to stop them from finding other work, since the clause was essentially worthless until Brosnan happened to find the one job that would make it worth something.

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:49:49 +0000

I just read Brian’s July 10th response to John in depth. Let me make this clear. NBC, with everybody signed to the usual five-year deals, cancelled “Remington Steele” after its fourth season. Big announcement of the new fall season’s schedule, and the usual lists of cancellations alongside. Nobody else was showing any interest in picking it up, so ALL involved saw the program as dead, the options left in the contracts–with cancellation announced, the five-year aspect of the contracts was reduced to the true end of the current season–as merely technicalities that were going to be allowed to expire. This was the status of every series cancelled at that time that was not at the end of its original five-year contract or a subsequent one if it had passed five years (and at any other season’s end). Everybody started looking for alternative work. Zimbalist got connected to “Robocop” and Brosnan signed to be the new James Bond. As usual with that franchise, this was big news, and the coverage repeatedly referred to the TV series that Brosnan had JUST done. The publicity was so great that NBC decided there was life left in the show and, with their ORIGINAL license with MTM for it not quite expired, they reversed themselves and revived it for a mid-season run while they STILL had the option to do so. I don’t dispute your claim that NBC wanted Brosnan to do both projects and the film producers did not, but there was NO second sale to NBC. The fact that some sources reported that NBC had a very few hours left to be able to “uncancel” proves that they were not simply assuming the simplest scenario, because making up such a detail was not only completely unnecessary, it would have been a gross violation of journalistic ethics.

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:11:53 +0000

Re: The Ted Cassidy/Richard Kiel thing… I think that sounds like a good legend to investigate. I’ve always heard Kiel, but if there are credible sources that only mention Cassidy, there might be a good story there.