Tony Krantz


Title:

Co-Chairman and CEO

Organization:

Imagine Television

Born:

New York, 1959

Education:

B.A., U. C. Berkeley

Career Turning Points:

Joining the mailroom at CAA; leaving CAA to become a producer

Most Admired Person:

Mahatma Gandhi

Hobbies:

Yoga, art collecting, reading

Personal:

Married; no children

Strikes by writers and actors could be disastrous for companies like Imagine Television, but CEO Tony Krantz, who founded the company with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, believes cooler heads will prevail

For most new college graduates, landing a job in a corporate mailroom is not exactly something to write home about. But in 1981, Tony Krantz wasn’t your typical college graduate and pushing packages at the Creative Artists Agency wasn’t your typical mailroom job.

Krantz, whose father, Steve, was a television and film producer and whose mother, Judith, is a best-selling novelist, majored in business at U.C. Berkeley, but derived his most valuable collegiate lessons as the campus’ student concert promoter. That experience working with the Talking Heads, Grateful Dead and Miles Davis, among others, put Krantz on track for a career in what he says is the only business he ever considered, entertainment.

Krantz quickly left the mailroom behind for a career as an agent. He was at CAA for 15 years before leaving in the late 1990s to take a stab at being an independent producer. Only he didn’t stay independent for long. After leaving CAA, Krantz hooked up with Imagine Entertainment partners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and the three founded Imagine Television. So far, the production company, which originally operated under a partnership with Disney’s Touchstone Television and now has a close association with Twentieth Century Fox, has done well, landing numerous programs on the prime-time schedules of several networks, including the critically acclaimed “Felicity” and “Sports Night.” Not all of Imagine’s shows have been hits, but the studio has developed a reputation for producing quality programs with a social edginess that sets them apart from typical television fare.

With storm clouds gathering for possible strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, Krantz, in an interview at his Beverly Hills office, discussed the labor negotiations, Imagine Television and the state of prime-time television.

Question:

Everybody’s talking about the inevitability of strikes by actors and writers. Are strikes inevitable at this point?

Answer: My instinct is that there won’t be strikes, and there are a number of reasons for that. Maybe part of my thinking is wishful thinking, but given the economic downturn in the country, I think a strike at this point would make not as much sense as it might have prior to the economic slowdown. Secondly, the networks and the studios have prepared not completely, but rather extensively for a strike. As a result, a certain amount of leverage has been taken away from the writers. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, John Wells, the president of the Writers Guild, is one of the smartest and most capable executives and creators that I know. If there is a person who can bridge the gap between those particular poles, it’s John.

Q: Both parties have said they are open to compromise, but both have also said they are not willing to meet in the middle on the substantial dollar amounts that separate them. Who is likely to blink first?

A: I think both sides are going to have to compromise, but I’m afraid the writers are going to have compromise more. I hope the writers haven’t painted themselves into too much of corner as it relates to their bottom-line demands. The producers are going to have to give up something and the writers are going to have to be prepared to accept something less than they feel like they’re prepared to accept.

Q: How damaging would a strike be for Imagine Television?

A: Without question, a strike would be problematic for our company because the partners are financially on the line for the overhead. If there is a strike, Fox can discontinue funding us. In that respect, the strike would be very difficult on a personal level. We’re prepared for it and we hope that it doesn’t happen, but we recognize that that’s part of the game we are playing.

Q: How did you go from Creative Artists Agency to Imagine?

A: I was at CAA for 15 years, where I ended up running the prime-time television operation. Being a packaging agent, I represented projects and I represented ideas and I put together series, which is a skills set that is not that different than what a producer and an independent production company might do. I found the transition to be relatively seamless. I had known Brain (Grazer) for years. It was my wife who actually said to me ‘What about Imagine?’ I hadn’t even thought about it because Imagine at the time didn’t have a television operation. It made perfect sense to create a television company using their equity, using their goodwill and also whatever I could bring to the party to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Q: How does Imagine Television try to distinguish itself from other production companies?

A: We definitely do things that are a little more, I think, avant garde than the mainstream blockbuster movies that Imagine Entertainment produces. A show like “Wonderland,” which was set in a psychiatric hospital and which we are extremely proud of, which was unsuccessful for ABC, represents that.

Q: When a show such as “Wonderland,” that you are proud of creatively, doesn’t do well commercially, does that discourage you from taking chances the next time around?

A: It doesn’t discourage us, but I wouldn’t say necessarily that it (increases) our resolve as it relates to doing shows like that. We are driven by an idea of what we think that future might look like. We don’t make decisions about what shows to develop and what shows to produce based on the hits that have existed in the past, or the failures that have existed in the past. We are committed to doing television we think is provocative, exciting, fresh and different and new and has the potential to be a hit. Babe Ruth was king of the homeruns, but he was also king of the strikeouts. You’re never going to hit a homerun unless you swing for a homerun. In every one of our television shows, we are absolutely swinging for a homerun. And a homerun is a commercial and creative success, not just a commercial success.

Q: What’s your feeling about the current state of prime-time television?

A: I think that television is actually in a very good place. When you look at the kinds of pilots that are being produced this season across the networks, I am extremely impressed by the level of quality, the level of artistry, the level of acting and writing. I am not somebody who thinks that television by any stretch is the poor stepchild of the entertainment business. If there is a criticism, it’s that there is still a little bit of reluctance if not a lot of reluctance by network executives to take the kind of chances that they might take on new shows. We had one experience with a network that I won’t name where we were developing a hip-hop soap opera drama. It was one of my biggest disappointments this year in terms of not getting it picked up for pilot. I felt for this network in particular this opportunity to develop a show with this kind of subject matter would absolutely be a hit television show for them. But I couldn’t convince the chairman of the company to make that particular pilot. I think there is a bit of reluctance on behalf of network programmers to take risks they might if they didn’t have the large economic requirements.

Q: Is conglomeration and vertical integration leading to more creative conservatism in television?

A: I think that’s, in part, true but it’s also true that these are multimillion-dollar decisions where the rise and fall of a network is very much tied to the success in many cases of a single show. The decisions have such a gigantic economic impact that people are cautious. And their caution is not necessarily (conducive to) artistic risk taking, so some of the creative choices get watered down from time to time.

Q: The next Imagine show to debut will be “The Beast,” which takes aim at the news media. What is the show about?

A: We call it “The Beast” because this fictional cable news network is voracious in its appetite for programming. What’s different about this show is that the cameras are not just turned outward toward the stories themselves, but by the creator of this network turned inward on the people who report the news. The process of news gathering is front and center, and the choices that are made by the people who gather the news as to what stories to tell and as to how to tell those stories is as much a part of the story as the news stories themselves. It’s very much an analogy of what is going on in pop culture today.