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The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television
by Daniel M. Kimmel
"Equally disappointing to FOX during the 1990–1991 season, and just as stressful on affiliate relations, was the network’s growing insistence that FOX stations should carry a 10 P.M. (EST) newscast. It was, again, a counterstrategy to the Big Three, which ran prime-time programming until 11 P.M. and then had local news. Except on the weekends, FOX ended its prime time at 10 P.M. FOX executives felt that going to local news at that point would capitalize on the network audiences and build up the identity of the local station, since newscasts are often the local face of a TV station. The news anchors and weather forecasters and sports reporters often become local personalities, and simply by covering local news the station becomes a presence in the community" (Excerpt and Chapter courtesy of I.R. Dee).
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Daniel M. Kimmel was the recipient of the 2005 John and Joan Goddard Cable Center Book Award for his book The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television. The publisher I.R. Dee said of the book, "This book is a lively account of how Rupert Murdock, Barry Diller, and many executives who worked at the FOX network over the years created innovations in prime-time shows, sports, children's entertainment, news and new business models that challenged the assumptions of how the industry operated."
Kimmel is a Boston-area film reviewer and past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He has been reviewing since 1983. His work currently appears in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and at rottentomatoes.com. He also serves as the Boston correspondent for Variety, the "Bible of Show Business." Kimmel's byline has appeared in numerous publications including the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Film Comment, and Cinefantastique.
He has been contributing editor to the Boston Business Journal and did the "Inside Boston Television" column for the Boston Herald. He is a frequent guest on New England Cable News, serving as substitute film critic during the summer of 2002. He is the co-author of the play The Waldorf Conference, about the birth of the Hollywood blacklist, and of the book of essays Love Stories: Hollywood's Most Romantic Movies (Longmeadow Press, 1992). His book on FOX television, The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television, was published by Ivan R. Dee, Publisher in June 2004 (Read a Sample Chapter). He is currently working on a history of DreamWorks.
As a speaker, Kimmel draws on his experience of seeing more than 300 movies each year, as well as his time teaching college. Since 1985 he has taught film-related courses at Emerson College, Boston University, and, since 1998, at Suffolk University. It was at Emerson that he received what he considers one of the highest compliments of his professional career when a student evaluation noted, "He makes an eight o'clock class worth getting up for." |
