"Creating Television" is more than inspirational.

Some 40 major TV players are among the subjects of Creating Television, Conversations with the People Behind 50 Years of American TV (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 480), by Robert Kubey. Over the last 20 years, Kubey, director of Rutgers University's Center for Media Studies, interviewed 11 people he deemed pioneers, six writer-producers, four writers, four producers, two directors, six actors, four agents and three executives. He sat down with many of them twice, with almost a decade between sessions in some cases.

Many of those Kubey interviewed specialize mainly in sitcoms, though he also covered the likes of "queen of soaps" Agnes Nixon (All My Children, One Life To Live), black-listed soap writer and writers' rights advocate Jean Rouverol and child actors' rights advocate and former child actor Paul Petersen (The Donna Reed Show), all of whom contributed to the early years of television.

Kubey reached out to more internatonally recognizable faces as well, such as actress Aida Turturro (The Sopranos), Betty White of The Golden Girls, Seinfeld co-creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David, and "The Fonz"--Happy Days' Henry Winkler. He spoke to The Tonight Show producer Fred DeCordova, The Addams Family television series co-creator David Levy, Lee Rich of Lorimar, Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises' Grant Tinker, The Golden Girls and Soap creator Susan Harris, laugh-track runner Carroll Pratt, former ABC exec Bruce Sallan and Frank Dawson, a glass-ceiling-breaking African American network executive.

The interviews cast a wide net: funny anecdotes are included; career choices are justified; creative, writing and acting processes are explained; network, salary and funding are described. The range of topics ensures that there is truly something for every reader's taste.

In 1996, the Democrat-controlled FCC repealed the financial-syndication ("fin-syn") anti-trust laws that a Republican FCC had established in 1961, which prohibited the networks from owning their programs. This threw the business' whole financial model through the wringer. Many of those Kubey interviewed were successful before the "fin-syn" change and, thus, were able to shed real "been-there-done-that" light on the implications of the networks' newfound ability to fully or partially own their successes (and failures).

Kubey presented the late 1980s as a golden age for independents. Speaking in the late '80s, producer Bruce Sallan noted, "I can name eight to 10 ABC alumni off the top of my head [who left the network and went on to enormous success on their own]: Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Leonard Goldberg, Dan Melnick, Len Hills, Stu Samuels, Bruce Sallan, Jerry Isenberg, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner."

Sallan went on to explain the financial benefits of becoming an independent in the 1980s, using The Cosby Show as a model: Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner owned "25 percent or some such number" of the series, which Sallan estimated as being worth "$500 to $800 million." He continued, "After distribution fees and everything else, there's $300 million left over. [Carsey-Werner is] going to get $75 million of that." He compared Carsey-Werner's $75 million to the NBC executive who "said to [Brandon] Tartikoff, 'Let's buy that show,'" and was "making $140,000 the year they did that," but was probably only "making $150,000 the next year, because there was only a six percent ceiling on raises allowed [at the network]".

Writer Aria Sorkin Manson noted that since the "fin-syn" change, "networks like NBC ... have an ownership position in everything they're airing." Sallan said that after 1996, "The networks [began saying], 'We want to make a movie, but we also want to own it. You are just gonna work for a fee.' So instead of having the upside of making $1 million or more [for one movie, as we would have before the "fin-syn" change], we might now make from $150,000 to $300-350,000 per movie."

According to Manson, the "fin-syn" change meant even the "very successful writer is making less." She continued: "the experienced working writers who were on shows and might have gotten another overall deal from a studio or something--those people are out on the street."

Veteran writer T.S. Cook said that the "fin-syn" rules were both a good and a bad thing. "It did move [a lot of independent producers] out of the business ... On the other hand, it's good for writers because [it] used to be that writers could not go into networks directly to pitch stories, they had to [already] have a producer attached."

Kubey introduced each chapter with personal profiles, commenting on each person as an individual and as part of a group, clearly trying to remain objective. He explained that he left the material in question-and-answer, magazine-interview format in order to avoid influencing it too much. Yet, he seemed to have bonded with some people, disliked others and greatly admired most of them, and some subjectivity understandably slipped in.

For example, writer Susan Harris (The Golden Girls, Soap) admitted that, despite a successful career creating and writing sitcoms, she wasn't a funny person, and, in his commentary, Kubey wrote, "Spending time with her, I would have to agree." She described her entry into television writing as a breeze. But, when she referred to a New Yorker cartoon in an attempt to criticize the world for thinking writing is easy, Kubey pointed to the fact that the cartoon was actually criticizing people for erroneously thinking that writing is a breeze; Harris had completely missed the subtle point embedded within the cartoon.

Kubey also allowed Harris to come offa tad arrogant: he described her opulent home with Graceland-like security gates (the only time he includes a description of a subject's lifestyle) and quoted her as saying: "I still think poor. I have to ask my business manager once a month if I can still fly first class. That's really a euphemism for, 'Am I still OK?'" The very next interview was with The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening, who answered the question of whether money makes one happy by saying, "There is no good answer to give. Any answer that somebody who has money gives just makes me want to punch them in the mouth." It was quite clear whom Kubey preferred on a personal level.

Kubey has completed an enormous task, which included not only securing interviews with numerous interesting, accredited, recognizable and stimulating people, but also tracking most of them down years later to complement their first sessions. The result is not a detailed book on the ins and outs of the television industry, nor a skeletons-in-the-closet book, nor a book that deals solely with business, development or production.

This book is exactly what it claims to be--a book of conversations with some of television's most influential people, many of whom operate best behind the scenes and under the radar, as mere credits at the end of our favorite television programs. AM