MOWs exploding on many TV screens.

It used to be that when one thought about producers of MOWs and mini-series for network and cable, a dozen names would keep popping up. Nowadays, it's hard to keep track. The business is changing. Some of the traditional made-for-TV movie producers are having difficulty doing the big expansive event pieces that are increasingly taking over TV screens and living rooms. And while these men and women are struggling to catch up, feature producers and actors are taking their places, diversifying from the volatile motion picture world into what they consider to be a lucrative, quick-turnaround business. While a feature film can take years to develop, it's not unusual for a busy longform supplier to produce two to three TV movies a year.

The argument that "cable makes features" seduces many producers, directors and movie stars who would ordinarily say "no" to television. Meanwhile, in an effort to compete with their cable counterparts, network television execs do what they can to attract

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sible. For example, NBC Studios, the in-house production arm of NBC, is producing 10 of the 24 TV movies the network has scheduled for this season. And the stakes are getting higher: original movies, once budgeted at around $2 million, now cost an average of $4 million to produce (in comparison, motion picture production costs have increased 33 percent in the last four years). HBO spent $14 million on A Bright Shining Lie and another $20 million to market this seasons slate of original films.

In an aggressive move, CBS President and CEO Les Moonyes doubled his order for made-for-TV movies to 50 - more TV movies than any other broadcast or cable network. Mama Flord's Family, an adaptation of the Alex Haley book, and The Monday After The Miracle, the sequel to The Miracle Worker, are two movies-Moonves is particularly proud of.

Warren Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment, is taking a "big event," "big bucks" approach to his TV movie strategy. Upcoming NBC fare includes the literary adaptations Crime and Punishment and Alice In Wonderland and the epic mini-series Noah's Ark and The Bible. "I think it's fair to say that we looked at some of the stuff our cable brethren were doing and said, 'we can do better.' That's a case of competition being very good for us and ultimately for the viewer," Littlefield commented.

Stu Bloomberg, chairman of ABC Entertainment, and Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment, are also going the big event, big budget route. Coming off of the success of Merlin, Tarses said that the company will continue its trend of marquee casting with the upcoming Cleopatra. With its two-hour movies, Bloomberg added, "ABC is going more towards projects that are 'about' something." He believes that this focus will enable them to attract a higher caliber of talent.

Cable's demand for original movies and mini-series is greater than that of broadcast: the cable nets ordered 163 longform projects for this season, while broadcast nets ordered only 97 (see chart at right). HBO has 12 major TV movies slated for this year, a 50 percent increase from 1995. TNT has established itself as a significant presence, while TBS is developing its own movies for the upcoming year.

The downside for producers, however, is that cable often pays less. On the other hand, the increase in in-house network production has cut down on the opportunities for outside production companies in broadcast television.

Julie Weitz, executive vp of Original Programming at TNT, said that her network is spicing up its slate with a "different type of programming." In addition to an increasing number of big epics, historical dramas and Westerns, TNT will air Legalese, a co-venture with New Line Cinema and the first project the network has done with a feature film company.

Jerry Offsay, president of Programming at Showtime Networks, said that "no subject matter is off limits" for his network. With no advertisers to deal with, he said, Showtime can afford to take on more artistic projects.

The universe of MOW production has become more diverse, not only because of the surge in in-house production, but because more and more actors are forming their own production companies. Jodie Foster, head of Egg Pictures, recently made her first foray into television production with Baby Dance, for Showtime.

Burt Reynolds has also come to television, starring in and executive producing his company's three projects for TNT. Fresh off of feature film success in Boogie Nights, Reynolds said: "I promised myself two things after the excitement of finding out that I wasn't dead. One, that I wanted to do a major studio film, which I've now done for Disney [Mystery Alaska]; and two, that I wanted to direct again." TNT fulfilled his wish and gave him support for his trilogy of TV movies. Reynolds sees little difference between the feature film medium and the television medium: "When people say to me, 'You're making a television movie,' I say, 'No, I'm not. I'm making a movie.'"

Peter Fonda, also a producer and actor, is starring in NBC Studios' The Tempest. "This particular project fits right in with what I would want to do in that medium. You know, making people into ravens, changing things in fog hanks and furious storms and catching myself on fire is a great role," Fonda explained. "I don't think of it as doing television at all. I think of it as doing a different version of Shakespeare that gets me seen by 23 million people."

Of course, the traditional suppliers of MOWs are still out there, and they still make their mark. Hallmark Entertainment, run by Robert Halmi Sr. and his son Roberts Halmi Jr., makes some 40 TV movies a year, several of which are epics and mini-series - costume dramas and adaptations of great works of literature. This year, Hallmarks slate will include Crime and Punishment, Alice In Wonderland, Noah's Ark and twelve-parter The Bible for NBC, as well as Cleopatra for ABC.

The Wolper Organization, headed by David Wolper and his son Mark, is another veteran supplier of TV movies and mini-series (Roots, The Thorn Birds, North and South, Queen). While in post-production on A Will Of Their Own, an epic mini-series for NBC, David Wolper was asked if he finds the market tougher these days. "It's two things. It's what people are buying and also how the climate has changed," he replied. "There's not the kind of money available for network movies and mini-series that there used to be. So it becomes a process of trying to get the job done quickly and as best as you can."

As the networks increasingly assume ownership positions in their longform projects, independent producers are finding that their revenues are not what they were before the in-house studio system began. Veteran producer-director Gil Cates of Cates/Doty Productions is in such a position with Netforce, a movie he is producing for ABC Productions. "The bottom line is that in an in-house production deal, the network owns the entire project. This financial arrangement makes it very tough for freelance producers to sell their movies to the networks because they're developing their own projects in house," Cates pointed out.

Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron of Storyline Entertainment, whose credits include Gypsy, Serving In Silence and Cinderella for ABC, take a different approach to the Challenge of selling longform projects. When they find a movie they are passionate about, they pitch it to film stars who want to produce for television and ask them to be producing partners. "At the time we wanted to do Cinderella, we had heard that Whitney Houston wanted to do a musical and was thinking of starting her own production company. So we pitched her Cinderella as a multigenerational musical, and she was in," Zadan explained. "when we were developing Serving In Silence, we pitched it to Barbra Streisand and her partner, Cis Corman, neither of whom had done a television movie. After they came on board, we took it to Glenn Close to produce and star. Suddenly, it's a package. You know, walking in with a star who's your producing partner makes the project much more impressive and harder to say 'no' to."

MOW and Mini-Series                        Average Annual Output
Production Companies                           (Number of Movies
                                                 or Mini-Series)

Alliance                                                      28
Atlantis(*)                                                  6-8
Cates/Doty Productions                                         2
Columbia TriStar Television                         11 (minimum,
                                                    not average)
Craig Anderson Productions                                   3-4
Fremantle(*)                                                  20
Hallmark Entertainment                                        40
Hamdon Entertainment(*)                                       13
Hearst                                                        12
Jaffe/Braunstein Films                                         6
King World                                                     4
Kushner-Locke Company                                          8
The Landsburg Company                                          3
MGM                                                            8
NBC Studios                                                   10
Paramount Television                                          12
Pearson Television                                         16-17
Palone Company                                                 3
PolyGram                                                       2
Rosemont Productions International                             3
Saban                                                         25
Spelling Entertainment                                       2-3
Storyline Entertainment                                      3-5
Universal Television                                          11
Van Zerneck-Sertner Films                                      5
Warner Bros. Television                                      4-5
Wilshire Court                                                 7
The Wolper Organization                                      4-5
World International Network                                   20

* Produces for the international market
Television Movie and Mini-Series
Orders for 1998-1999

ABC                                                           19
CBS                                                           50
Fax                                                            4
NBC                                                           24
PaxNet                                                         0
UPN                                                            0
WB                                                             0

Total                                                         97
Cable Movie and Mini-Series
Orders for 1998-1999

A&E                                                           30
The Disney Channel                                            12
The Fox Family Channel                                         5
FXM: Movies From Fax                                           4
HBO, HBO NYC                                                  12
Lifetime                                                      12
Showtime                                                      30
TMC                                                           24
TNT                                                           14
USA                                                           19
VHI                                                            4
Total                                                        163

It's true, the MOW business is changing, and the competition is growing fiercer. But television by nature is a voracious beast; it needs material to survive. With seven or eight broadcast networks and 70-plus cable channels and more looming on the horizon, most MOWs will find a hungry audience somewhere.