Video Age International October 2016

38 October 2016 V I D E O A G E “H e was a showman at the highest level and the sales experience may have been more dramatic than the programs we purchased.” This quote from veteran TV executive Bill Baker best summarizes Sandy Frank: the man and the myth. From1976 through the earlypart of 1980, Sundel “Sandy” Frank was an imposing figure at MIP-TV markets. Some people still remember the large booth space he rented at the old Palais, and the bus trips he organized during those markets for press and program buyers to visit an orphanage outside Cannes, where he ceremoniously donated a large check each time. Recalled Frank: “The biggest challenge I faced when I began my business in the fall of 1964 was surviving alone. The networks controlled all of primetime and the majors controlled all of the early fringe with their off-network programming, so there was virtually no place for an independent [like me] to find a time period for [my] show. But I managed by selling travel adventures as a strip from independent producers. I also got some programming from a local station, which I managed to sell to a national advertiser who bartered it. The one break I did get was getting Bill Cosby’s first off-network show in 1970, which was on NBC at 8:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. Sundays, and sponsored by Procter & Gamble, but there were only 52 episodes, so it made it impossible to sell as a strip, and difficult to sell as a once-a-week show, [and] I had to guarantee $1 million to get the rights from the William Morris Agency.” As for today, Frank said, “In the international marketplace, it used to be that you could make a deal on the spot with a buyer. Nowadays, a buyer has to go back home and meet with a broadcast committee where they make decisions about which programs to buy among countless offered at MIP or NATPE.” Frank’s career in the entertainment business started in 1949 at Paramount Pictures when, at the age of 20, he served as a part-time booker and sales trainee, keeping records and making contacts with local distributors throughout the New York metropolitan area. That was the same year he arrived from Mt. Kisco, New York to complete a two-year film school course at New York University. In 1952, Frank became a sales executive at Guild Films, and four years later he moved to NBC Network, where he worked as a sales executive for a year before being appointed as senior vice president of Worldwide Sales at Wrather Corp. He remained there until going solo. It was 1964 when Frank ventured out on his own, first as Sandy Frank Program Sales, then in 1975 as Sandy Frank Film Syndication, and most recently as Sandy Frank Entertainment. All of his companies have been based in New York City. Frank’s 67-year career is full of lively anecdotes, some that he likes to recall, and others he would rather forget. But the recurring theme of those anecdotes is rubbing shoulders with program buyers, both U.S. and international. One of such anecdotes took place in the first year of NATPE in 1964 —when the TV association did not yet permit distributors to mingle with the 70 U.S. TV station managers that attended. Frank simply reserved a suite at the New York Hilton, the hotel where the meeting was held, and invited all of them to his room to screen TV shows. It wasn’t until 1979 that NATPE organized its first TV programsalesmarket. Another amusing incident occurred in 1978, when Frank acquired the rights to Egyptian Prime Minister Anwar Sadat’s “In Search of Identity” for $100,000. This was the basis of the production of a two-part miniseries distributed by Columbia Pictures in 1983. It starred Louis Gossett, Jr., whose skin color was darker than Sadat’s. This upset the Egyptian government, which promptly banned the sales of Coca-Cola, which, at that time, was the parent company of Columbia Pictures, Frank recalled. There is yet another anecdote reported by a TV executivewhowanted toremainanonymous: “Iwas in Israel on a mission and we were in the Knesset when in walked [then] Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. [TV Executive] Ave Butensky walked up to him and said: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I have regards for you from Sandy Frank.” To which Begin replied: ‘Please tell Sandy to hurry up and make the movie of my life like he promised me he would do.’” Over lunch with this writer, Frank said that meetingbothSadat andBeginwas the highlight of his career, and as an American Jew, he was proud of being in Sadat’s limousine when he announced he would visit Israel in 1977. However, the movie on Begin (based on his 1951 book “The Revolt,” for which Frank paid $100,000) was never made, and Frank blames a former ABC executive who considered Begin a militant terrorist. Throughout his program distribution life, Frank followed three basic rules: never pitch to someone who can’t give you an order; never pitch a programover the phone, and bewell-researched in the particular market you are pitching. Over the course of his career, Frank sold franchises such as Lassie , Name That Tune and The Dating Game . “I felt very confident that I could sell anything,” Frank said in an interview. Frank’s dedication to the art of selling TV shows, however, has distanced him from other contemporary master sales executives — they tend to be more easygoing, while Frank always keeps a very serious expression. By Dom Serafini Sandy Frank Never Pitched Someone Who Couldn’t Give Him An Order Int’ l TV Distribut ion Hal l of Fame Sandy Frank Sandy Frank with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin (Continued on Page 40)