A unique business deal for Dick Ebersol helped turn “Friday Night Videos” into a cultural hit.
As creator and producer for a late-night show dedicated to music videos from 1983 until 1989, Ebersol went against the industry norm and started paying for the videos — around $2,500 to $3,000 a pop. Ebersol said he decided to pay for the videos instead of just taking them for free because of the lack of union contracts between the dancers and directors of the videos at the time.
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Bob Costas and Ebersol struck up a friendship during a “Friday Night Videos” taping, leading to the creation of “Later with Bob Costas.”
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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“I wasn’t going to wake up five years later and find myself in all kinds of lawsuits,” he said.
Ebersol’s strategy essentially was to pay a fee to get world premiere videos from musicians like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. Artists who accepted the fee had to sign a contract saying they would deal with anything having to do with union rights in the future.
“They assumed that since no one had ever taken a position on these things from a union standpoint, they would never be holding the bag,” Ebersol said. “And they were right, but no one knew that at the time.”
Ebersol said he was not surprised by the success of “Friday Night Videos” because he leaned on the unofficial focus group made up of his teenage stepchildren, Harmony and Sunshine.
“The first full summer that I was married to their mother, we went to visit her parents, who were then in Rockford, Ill.,” Ebersol said. “Rockford was one of the few markets that had MTV at the time. I had seen the earlier efforts in videos. There were some being done, but they weren’t mass produced. I just thought it was a lay-down, and the show could be produced inexpensively.”
Ironically, “Friday Night Videos” helped spawn another Ebersol-created show: “Later with Bob Costas.”
Costas hosted “Friday Night Videos” in 1986 with baseball stars George Brett and Ozzie Smith. Ebersol knew of Costas because he used to listen to his national radio show, “Costas Coast to Coast.” They struck up a friendship during the “Friday Night Videos” taping, Costas said.
“We discovered similar frames of reference,” Costas said.
Ebersol’s original idea for Costas’ show was to have three very different people come to New York for a week and talk about the issues of the day with Costas. Instead, the show ended up having a single guest throughout the half-hour.
The show debuted in August 1988 and was the last show Ebersol worked on before he took over the reins at NBC Sports in 1989. Costas continued hosting “Later” until 1994. It ran until 2002.
— John Ourand
