Call it the marriage of TV's new kid on the block with TV's comeback kid.
New World Communications, which grabbed the spotlight recently with a far-reaching deal with Fox, has signed up former NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff as chairman of New World Entertainment to oversee development of TV programming.
The deal puts Tartikoff, who engineered NBC hits like The Cosby Show, Cheers and Hill Street Blues, at the helm of a company that's looking to be a major supplier of network and syndicated fare. Recently, New World agreed to make several new shows for Fox and switch 12 of its stations to Rupert Murdoch's network.
Tartikoff, who's been living in New Orleans and peddling shows as an independent producer for the past 18 months, will also sell his production company, Moving Target, to New World for $ 9 million. He says he'll keep his home in the Big Easy and do a lot of shuttling between coasts.
"I was sort of struck by the many, many things that I wasn't getting to do" as an independent producer, Tartikoff said at a press conference Tuesday. "I certainly have the drive, the ambition and the appetite to do many more things in television."
While New World will make shows for all the networks, Tartikoff says he'll first focus on creating shows for Fox, as part of the recent $ 500 million Fox-New World deal. Among them:
-- A late-night show, which, if it bombs, will be replaced by another New World show.
-- A 2-hour daytime block, jointly produced by Fox and New World.
-- A half-hour show in the "access" (usually 7 p.m. ET/PT) time slot for Fox-owned stations.
-- A minimum of two prime-time pilots and two TV movies a year.
Tartikoff's current pilots become New World properties, including two projects for NBC (a Tom Clancy miniseries and an anthology series from an executive producer of Hill Street), an ABC miniseries with Ann-Margret, and XXX's and OOO's, a country-music based pilot to air next week on CBS.
His only project unaffected by the deal is Last Call, a late-night syndicated show slated for fall. Ironically, it could compete with the Fox late-nighter he'll start to develop.
