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Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot

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This 1992 book (which appears to have been republished in 2000) tells the story of how a failed show from the St. Elsewhere producers goes from idea to pilot to rejection. It's nice that the author had access to some of the major Hollywood TV players, but the picture that he paints is one of elitists who think the American viewing public is stupid. In some ways the author also mirrors those attitudes, and the book ends up slamming middle America as much as it condemns the entire network pilot process.

The main characters include the late Bruce Paltrow, who was the St. Elsewhere producer that the author claims created "one of the most critically acclaimed programs in TV history," that is of course now long forgotten and not anywhere near as good as critics then claimed it was. (Even the creators of St. Elsewhere slam Paltrow in the book.) Also there is John Tinker, son of former NBC head Grand Tinker, and Oz creator Tom Fantana.

These creative types moan that television for the masses is idiotic so they attempt to come up with classy "realistic" material that will win them Emmy awards. But they actually create absurd shows (like St. Elsewhere, which ranged from a doctor mooning the camera to an autistic child in the final episode dreaming the whole series!) that are often fantasy versions of real life. They think they are writing Shakespeare for the tube--and because of their elitist status they have no connection with the real world of the average viewer.

So pilots they come up with include a high school drama with a "hip, young" cast (wow--that's inventive!), a half hour sitcom about family life that Paltrow based on his own family (including wife Blythe Danner and daughter Gwyneth, who sound like loonies), a "period drama" called 1761 (about London during the pre-revolutionary war!) and a half-hour comedy about a Donald Trump-like character who juggles his wife, his lover, his wife lover's lover, etc.

Don't those sound classy?

The author seems to think these guys can do no wrong, especially Paltrow. So he gives their negative view of the network executives and the idiotic public. The book is filled with nose-in-the-air demeaning comments about the industry and the viewers.

So while it's kind of interesting to hear about how they took the story of White House speechwriters and turned it into a 1991 pilot that never made it to the air, it would have been much more interesting to hear about a show that actually did get picked up as a series (the somewhat similarly themed West Wing?)--and then include comments from other perspectives, such as the condemned executives and the demeaned viewing public. Instead this ends up being a narrow, lop-sided story of a TV show no one ever heard or nor cares about.