The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television

by Daniel M. Kimmel

When Garth Ancier left NBC for the start-up FOX network, NBC head Grant Tinker told Ancier he was making a terrible mistake. "I will never put a fourth column on my schedule board," Ancier recalls Tinker telling him. "There will only be three." Today, fewer than twenty years later, FOX is routinely referred to as one of the "Big Four" television networks while more recent arrivals like UPN, PAX, and the WB strive to be number five. The Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, and the many executives who have worked at the FOX network over the years changed the rules of the game. They showed it was possible to build and sustain a fourth American television network through innovations in prime-time shows, sports, children's entertainment, news, and new business models that challenged the assumptions of how the industry operated. Daniel Kimmel's lively account of the FOX story carries the reader from the launch of the ill-fated Joan Rivers Show in 1986 to the challenging media environment of the twenty-first century―an environment FOX helped create. The Fourth Network is filled with behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, outsized personalities, improbable risk-takers, and the triumphs and disasters that led to such signature television series as The Simpsons, Beverly Hills 90210, The X Files, and America's Most Wanted. For better or worse―or perhaps a bit of both―the story of the rise of FOX is the story of contemporary American television.

Genres: Tv, Business, Nonfiction

340 pages, Hardcover

First published August 13, 1957

About the author

Daniel M. Kimmel is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award presented by the New England Science Fiction Association. He is past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics and founding co-chair of the Boston Online Film Critics Association. His reviews appeared in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and can now be found at NorthShoreMovies.net. He is also in demand as a speaker for various groups and writes on classic SF films for Space and Time. From 2014-2015 he was editor of The Jewish Advocate, America's oldest English language newspaper serving the Jewish community.

His book on the history of FOX TV, The Fourth Network (2004), received the Cable Center Book Award. He is also author of The Dream Team -- The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks: Lessons from the New Hollywood (2006) and I'll Have What She's Having -- Behind the Scenes of the Great Romantic Comedies (2008). His book Jar Jar Binks Must Die... and other observations about science fiction movies(2011)was a finalist for the Hugo Award for best related work. His first novel, Shh! It's a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender's Guide, which was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society for best first novel. His other novels are Time on My Hands: My Misadventures in Time Travel, Father of the Bride of Frankenstein, and Banned in Boston. He has also had several short stories published at HollywoodDementia.com as well as in AMAZING Stories, Three Crows magazine, and a number of anthologies including Transcendent, Science Fiction for the Throne, and Release the Virgins!.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

IT was a very interesting read. It was cool to see how Fox was instrumental in so many of the changes to the TV industry while also seeing why so many Fox shows are cancelled quickly. With leadership changing so often it's almost a surprise they had any hits to speak of. The book illustrates which shows the network believed in (24, Party of Five, Not covered in the book but Fringe),which shows they had no real faith in (Firefly, Profit, Family Guy before it's revival), and which shows they had no clue why they were successful and kept trying to change (primarily the Bernie Mac Show). I'd recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the behind the scenes dealings of TV.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up watching FOX so this was really interesting to me. The author goes back and forth between the TV shows and the business side of FOX. I found the TV stuff really fun especially early on. And the business side of things was kind of interesting since I did not know about how any of that worked.

[Andrew Fechner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dry and boring, and with a few obvious mistakes that should have been caught, but very comprehensive and easy to read.

[Daejun Chung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and interesting.