NEWS, NOTES AND TRENDS ON L.A.’S ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY
Given the success of “Judge Judy,” it’s no surprise that syndicated TV court shows have become a hot item for next fall. One that has TV stations around the country scrambling is “Power of Attorney,” which features Gloria Allred, Christopher Darden and F. Lee Bailey.
To date, Twentieth Television has cleared the show in nearly 90 percent of the country, including the 22 Fox-owned stations (one of which is KTTV-TV Channel 11 in Los Angeles).
“It’s one of our recommendations,” said Bill Carroll, a programming executive at Katz Television, a TV rep company that recommends syndicated shows to TV stations nationwide. “It’s going to take court shows to the next level.”
Each half-hour episode features attorneys like Allred and Bailey arguing civil cases against each other, but unlike a real courtroom battle, these lawyers will not be limited to the strict rules of evidence. Plaintiffs and defendants will agree ahead of time that the decision of the judge will be binding.
“The other shows have clients arguing their cases,” Allred said. “Here, we will be cross-examining and arguing our case before a judge. It could become emotionally explosive.”
Allred said she got a call “out of the blue” from Fox to be part of the show. Joining her in front of the camera will be her daughter, Lisa Bloom, an attorney at Allred’s Los Angeles firm.
Allred, who publicly bashed Bailey and the rest of the O.J. Simpson defense team during the murder trial, anticipates that she and Boston-based Bailey will be highly competitive when they face each other.
“All of us feel competitive,” she said. “This is going to be very adversarial.”
Carroll believes that big-name lawyers like Allred, Darden and Bailey “will get people into the tent,” but eventually many of the younger lawyers will emerge as genuine media stars.
“What this show has done is take the basics of the old court shows and taken it to the next level,” Carroll said. “They will be arguing cases the way they can’t in a courtroom.”
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Not everybody is thrilled with the remakes of 1950s game shows that are exploding onto the airwaves.
Geoffrey Cowan, dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, doubts that his father, Lewis G. Cowan, who created “The $64,000 Question” as an independent producer for CBS before becoming the head of programming for the network, would approve of its return. CBS has rushed a remake of the show into development.
“The $64,000 Question” was the top-rated show of the 1955-56 TV season, and a consistently strong show until the network canceled it when the quiz show scandals tainted the genre.
“My father hoped that it would never come back,” said Cowan, an attorney and Emmy-winning producer. “It had such a bad memory. It was a wonderful idea that became a corrupted idea. Its aim was to celebrate the intelligence and learning of the average person and that had been corrupted.”
Cowan’s father was never implicated in any aspect of the quiz show scandal.
