Lunch at Michael's® with FX' John Landgraf: Master Story Teller and Industry Leader

Although there are hundreds of well-known executives in the television industry, there are few leaders who are notable more for the relevance of their opinions than for the importance of their corporate platform.

John Landgraf, president of Fox's FX Network, maintains a low industry profile but is becoming recognized as one of the most influential - and interesting - people in Hollywood. The son of a preacher man, John has launched a string of successful edgy and graphic series that have made FX popular with viewers and sought-after by producers and talent. With a commitment to airing these series after 10 PM (ET) and the most aggressive use of parental advisories in network TV, John cares deeply about the responsible exercise of freedoms, and boasts a lower percentage of viewers under 18 than HBO's The Sopranos and Real Sex. Regarding the New York State Supreme Court's ruling overturning the FCC's indecency decisions against Fox and CBS for use of language, John comments "Thank God there's a court that believes in freedom of speech. The court found that if the industry makes a sincere effort to provide parents with proper tools, that parents have the right to define viewing for their children. The government does not have the right to step in if parents forego that responsibility."

As we lunched at Michael's, surrounded by a who's who that included Sony's Steve Mosko, new Lifetime CEO Andrea Wong, Michael Kassan, Miss USA Rachel Smith and her namesake Liz Smith, John shared his passion for first amendment rights; his concerns about the looming strikes that could cripple TV production; the importance of network brand identity; his attitudes toward Nielsen ratings, News Corp. management, and creativity; and his focus on the historical importance of sustaining the art of narrative storytelling.

John Landgraf, Ally Walker and family

John comes by his passion naturally, having spent his first few years traveling with his parents, who were gospel musicians and provided backup for Baptist evangelist Mel Dibble until John was five years old. Although his parents settled down as his mom received a masters degree in social work and his dad a doctorate in family counseling, they soon divorced and John was constantly uprooted until spending three high school years in Oakland, CA (attending Skyline High). "It's why I've lived in the same city now for 27 years and am a stay-at-home family oriented dad who travels as little as possible," John laughs. With his wife, actress Ally Walker (Profiler, HBO's upcoming Tell Me You Love Me), John has three sons aged 9, 6 and 3.

On Tuesday, July 24, 10 PM (ET/PT), FX premieres one of its most ambitious series, Damages, starring Glenn Close. The legal thriller is already generating buzz, much of it resulting from the high bar of expectations set by FX's Rescue Me, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, The Riches and Dirt. "We're on the cutting edge of where the new generation of storytellers are," John suggests. "TV writers today are relevant to our age in the same way Shakespeare and Dickens were relevant to theirs. Story telling was once the only way to translate values from generation to generation. There needs to be a place for the sacred magic of storytelling and we try to provide that. FX offers populist entertainment that digs deep into archetypal characters and shows good and evil in a socially responsible way."

To FX's critics, John argues "it's comic to accuse us of 'coarsening' culture. Our fans are as deeply passionate as fans of other forms of literature and entertainment." FX's have resulted in more than 100 percent growth in ratings as the network has jumped from 12th ranked cable network to fourth this season among adults 18 to 49 in primetime. Of the ten drama pilots FX has ordered in its short history, eight have been 'picked up,' and if Damages succeeds, six of the ten will be on the air next season. The two "failed" series were the critically acclaimed Stephen Bochco war series Over There, and Thief, for which Andre Braugher won an EMMY Award. This is a record of success unequaled in recent television history and John believes the winning strategy is to continue to take risks.

"The risk of not taking risks is greater than the risk of failure," he philosophizes. "Concern about failure eliminates the opportunity for great success and you choose to toil in mediocrity. There's a tendency to get conservative and the contention is you shouldn't keep swinging for the fences. But if you don't you might as well pack your bags. You need to put it on the line with every new series. It's too challenging a time in this business to play for singles."

FX's success may also result from John's refusal to place too much emphasis on Nielsen ratings. "Financial analysts who are risk managers and make decisions primarily on a numbers basis have taken over American business. I understand analytics but the notion you can understand the world through linear analysis simply doesn't apply to world affairs or to story telling. People respond emotionally to television. In narrative story telling you need to strike out in the wilderness and hope you hit a responsive chord and survive." John believes the management team at Fox, including Rupert Murdoch, Peter Chernin and Tony Vinciquerra are "singularly skilled at running a media business. They're tough on delivering financially," he says, "but they leave an extra measure of freedom to managers. They let people make gut level decisions and sink or swim on the results." In turn, John and his programming team believe in providing creative freedom and "non cynical emotional support" to series writers and producers.

John, who's also a classical flutist and sang in a barbershop quartet in college, was rejected from Harvard, Stanford and Swarthmore, scrambling to gain entry to Pitzer College, a young school in the 1980s (a member of Claremont Colleges) that has since gained an excellent reputation. He became Convener of Students (the equivalent of Student Council president) and was a California Rhodes Scholarship finalist, but accepted a Coro Foundation Fellowship, which included internships at the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, the California Association of Realtors and the California State Legislature. But he was more attracted to a comparatively low profile internship at J-Nex Media, a video production company specializing in corporate videos. "I started as a salesman and convinced them to let me write and produce segments. I gave myself one year to find a job in TV or I'd go to graduate school," John recalls. Just a few months later, in 1987, he became Director of Development for Sarabande Productions where he stayed for six years before being invited to join NBC-TV. As Vice President of Primetime Series he developed The West Wing, Profiler and Suddenly Susan. He then joined Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher as the Managing Partner of Jersey Television, where they developed more than 50 primetime cable and broadcast series and put five series on the air in four years.

John acknowledges it's "a difficult time to be a leader in business. When large scale industries go through stress, like the airline and auto business, they try to hold onto their scale. New businesses spring up with lower cost structures, and they think outside the box." He is concerned there could be a drain of talent from television if the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America (WGA) decide to strike against the TV studios next year. "The baseball strikes (in the early 1980s) led to baseball becoming America's number three sport. You couldn't perceive its place was threatened pre-strike." Videogames and other first person narrative forms like Second Life and social media, he believes, could take a large chunk of market share from third person narrative forms like television and film. "The story telling business has been cyclical but growing for many years, but you can't always extrapolate from the past, predict the future. I think the job of our current leaders is to keep us from looking backward at our glorious past and instead get us engaged in preparing for the radically different digital future that is now upon us."

To contact John Landgraf, write contact@mediavillage.com

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