Marvin Wolf: At first, did most motion picture people fear television?

Leonard Goldenson: Some of them were absolutely fearful that they didn't have a chance with television &emdash; that we were going to take all of their producers, their directors, their writers, and talent and move it over from motion picture to television.

MW: After you acquired ABC, you paid a call to NBC's David Sarnoff. What happened?

LG: [He] said: "Leonard, what are you going to use for programs on ABC?" And I said: "Well, you don't give me much choice. Between you and CBS, you've locked up all the talent, all the producers, writers, directors and you've urged all the motion picture companies not to deal with us. So we're going to have to really bring Hollywood into the picture despite the fact that they say no." And he said: "...This is a live medium. Nobody is going to watch film on television." I said the public could care less whether it was film or live as long as it's entertaining.

MW: When you took over, what was ABC airing?

LG: Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie and Harriet.

MW: Over the years, ABC has created genres that changed the face of programming.

LG: We only had a 35 percent coverage of the country. CBS and NBC each had an 85 percent coverage of the country. The only way we could possibly win, was to come up with the ideas that were completely different from CBS and NBC. So after the western trend [which ABC started with "Cheyenne"], we came up with "77 Sunset Strip," which was the caper type of thing, and that established a trend. Then we came up with "Maverick," with humor and westerns, and that established a trend. Then we came up with "Naked City," which was an action type of show which had not been done up to then, and it proved to be very successful.

MW: You aired the McCarthy hearings gavel-to-gavel. Why?

LG: We had nothing going on in the daytime at all. CBS and NBC were well-programmed in daytime, well-sponsored, and making a lot of money. We felt that this would be a real public service. McCarthy was driving Hollywood producers, directors, actors, everybody crazy, because they were questioned for the slightest thing....We really couldn't afford it. It cost us about 600,000 dollars to run that gavel-to-gavel, but when that was over, it was goodbye Mr. McCarthy. The public turned on him. And properly so.

MW: Talk about ABC's Monday Night Football.

LG: It was offered to CBS and NBC, and they turned it down. And they [NFL] came to us...it worked out well. [Roone Arledge] hit on the idea of having three people on the air instead of one....The public kept talking about Howard Cosell and the repartee between he and Don Meredith....That made that show a thing to watch.

MW: How did you groom the network for your departure?

LG: Broadcasting is a personal business. It's an ability to enlist the aid of people, their energy, their brain power, and their creative ability....When we became number one in the early seventies, I called all our top people in and said: "Gentleman and ladies, we have a real test. We're now number one. In my opinion, we've got to stop thinking we're so important, that we can't do anything wrong. That's a lot of bologna. We've gotta keep hitting it as hard as we possibly can to maintain ourselves."

Compiled by Sunny Parich.