Scenes From TV’s Sales Frenzy (They Even Tap Dance)

NEW YORK —  It was the biggest show in town this week, but the point wasn’t to sell tickets. It was to sell advertising--more than $7 billion of it--and America’s TV networks hustled for the money in ways that would have made P.T. Barnum blush.

Backstage and in front of ad buyers at locations from Radio City Music Hall to Carnegie Hall at the annual “upfront” presentations here, some of TV’s biggest stars turned into sales reps for their employers, awkwardly parading across stages and, at parties afterward, smiling for pictures.

Network execs offered themselves up for skewering too, proving there wasn’t much they wouldn’t do to make a sale.

Whether it worked won’t be known until deals are clinched. But meanwhile, here are some memorable moments from the big show the viewers never get to see.

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NBC, holding forth at Radio City Music Hall, pressed its stars into service in a home-grown talent show. “West Wing” actor Dule Hill tap-danced, his colleague Allison Janney donned a feather boa and crooned a scathingly reworked version of “Makin’ Whoopee,” and a nervous-looking Tom Cavanagh of “Ed” attempted to sing. (Univision, by contrast, went with the real thing, new singer Daniel Rene, of Univision’s music arm, complete with black-clad backup singers and high energy on the Lincoln Center stage.)

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David Letterman dropped by Carnegie Hall and blew a kiss to the crowd before launching into some grumpy repartee with his boss, CBS President Les Moonves--whose relationship with Letterman had been so strained that the comedian earlier this year considered defecting to ABC. Moonves smiled dutifully throughout. After a barrage of jokes at CBS’ expense, Letterman, who recently signed a new deal paying him more than $30 million a year, said, “Well, you certainly got your money’s worth, didn’t you, Les?” He also promised a list, the Top 10 Ways I Will Make The Late Show Better. It consisted of a single item: “No. 10. After 20 years, it’s too late and I’m too tired to do anything but the same old crap.”

The Letterman bit also included footage of Moonves cleaning the windows of the Letterman set, wearing an “I {heart} Dave” T-shirt, impersonating Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer and bestowing Letterman with CBS Employee of the Month honors.

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Moonves got off easy compared with the drubbing NBC executives got from Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live.” Because NBC Sports lost baseball, football and basketball, the comedians joked, the network will instead stage weekly fights between NBC Chairman Robert Wright and President Andrew Lack, who have been reported not to be getting along.

Wright was ribbed for having a face that never changes expression, NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol for hating sports, and NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker for having no sideburns. Fallon also riffed on the “is he staying or leaving?” rumors about NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa, pleading, “On the way out, give me a Porsche.”

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ABC’s new late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel took on the turnover in ABC’s executive suite, joking that he had enjoyed the interview process with ABC Entertainment Chairman Lloyd Braun and new Entertainment President Susan Lyne, predicting they wouldn’t be in their jobs by the time his show debuts in January. Two months ago, Kimmel noted, ABC looked like it would be hiring Letterman, but instead he got the job. “This is not a step in the right direction,” he cracked.

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ABC never acknowledged directly the bad blood between the network and its news division that followed its recent failed attempt to get Letterman and dump “Nightline.” But the network bent over backward to try to convince advertisers how much ABC News was loved--too much so, according to some restless clients who wanted to go get a drink and not sit through lectures on Middle East politics from the likes of Barbara Walters and Ted Koppel.

Koppel had the last word, though, quipping, “Nightline: More relevant now than ever”--a not-so-subtle rejoinder to the anonymous critic quoted during the Letterman-Koppel flap.

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In the rivalry department, NBC produced a videotaped send-up of its reality show “Fear Factor” with a scene depicting ABC as a driverless, sinking motorboat. (Painted on the hull of the craft: “SS Letterman,” crossed out and replaced by a scrawled “SS Koppel.”) During its presentation, CBS sang about ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” It became the network’s “golden goose,” the lyrics went, but “now the eggs we lay are not golden. And our goose is cooked.”

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ABC and parent Disney may be in show biz, but the network has perennial problems with its presentation to advertisers, and this year was no exception. ABC News President David Westin didn’t miss his cue to go on stage, as he did one year, but advertisers in the back rows of the New Amsterdam theater still had to strain to hear at times over noise from the rowdy stars in the downstairs green room. The network mixed up slides of the new shows, and an announcer introduced the stars of “New York P.D. Blue” (the show’s actual name is “NYPD Blue”), prompting snickers from the crowd that came to be impressed. The bright-green bracelets the stars had to wear for security reasons--even when doing their stage appearances--won’t be on anyone’s fashion list, either.

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Reported by Meg James and Elizabeth Jensen in New York and Brian Lowry and Greg Braxton in Los Angeles.