In an industry where few speak their mind with anything approaching candor, television producer Barney Rosenzweig is an anomaly.
Not only does he speak his mind, but most recently he spent $50,000 to vent it in The New York Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times.What he wants is to save his CBS series, "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill." What he has gotten is a temporary reprieve.
"Had we done nothing, we would have been canceled," he says, resolutely. "This is a small victory and I take them as I get them."
Rosenzweig's diminutive triumph came in the form of a November purchase by CBS for three additional episodes of "Rosie O'Neill." That number, though, is far from the usual "back nine" that networks give series to complete a full season order of 22 installments.
CBS refused comment on Rosenzweig.
That the producer was able to finagle any pickup order at all for a beleaguered series that even he calls "good, but not great" is more a testament to his will than to the quality of his show.
It has been an uphill battle for "Rosie" since its rushed debut in September 1990. When Connie Chung abruptly announced she was dumping her upcoming prime-time series to "aggressively pursue" conceiving a child, CBS was left with an hourlong programming hole in its 1990 fall schedule.
Rosenzweig and "Rosie," which were supposed to be ready for a spring debut, walked onstage about four months early.
Things went more or less downhill from there.
Critics liked the series' scripts and acting performances. Audiences watched in small, but loyal, numbers.
Both critics and viewers had a hard time liking the character of Rosie O'Neill, who faced some of the most contemporary issues of our time (such as sexism and racism) but was often not very nice about it.
The show stars Sharon Gless as a hard-edged public defender from a rich family.
In the second season, Rosenzweig softened Gless' character (Gless also is his real-life wife), brought in Ed Asner in guest roles and hired Robert Wagner to play Rosie's love interest for three episodes.
Problem was, even if larger numbers of viewers wanted to watch the program, they had a hard time finding it. CBS consistently pre-empted the series for special programming and changed its time period five times.
The three episodes featuring Wagner have yet to air. The program also has been yanked for the entire month of January (because of a feared clobbering from the highly popular "Columbo" TV movies specially broadcast during that period by ABC).
It most likely will not return at least until March, after February's Winter Olympics.
So for right now, Rosenzweig does know not when his series will return or if the network will broadcast all of the remaining six episodes from the 1991-92 season.
On Jan. 17, the producer will shut his office. "Then we sit and wait for something to happen," he said.
That wait will probably last until May, when the networks announce their 1992 fall schedules.
Whether "Rosie" is on the fall schedule or not, Rosenzweig said he does not regret publicly goading CBS.
His recent newspaper ads, which implored viewers to tune in to "The Trials of Rosie O'neill" to save it from network cancellation, were admittedly a gamble.
"When you do this sort of thing, you never know how far you can push them," Rosenzweig said. "I think they got their noses a little out of joint, but not so far that they don't want to do business with me."
CBS has been through this before with Rosenzweig. He launched a massive letter-writing campaign when CBS canceled "Cagney & Lacey" - also starring Gless - in 1984. In that case, CBS resurrected the series, which also featured Tyne Daly, and continued it four more years.
Rosenzweig finds himself begging for longevity again.
"Some of the best work we did in `Cagney & Lacey' didn't come along 'til the fourth or fifth season," Rosenzweig said. "Shows become great shows. They don't always start out that way."
And, he says, "Rosie" is still evolving.
"There are flaws in the design of our show," he said. "We were trying so desperately not to have (Rosie) be Christine Cagney. We made her so far opposite from Christine that she wasn't as interesting. Rosie's not sexy - Christine was sexy, she was funny. Rosie is more serious about what she does."