Rivals mercilessly insulted Fox. Now it’s a lesson in how to launch a TV network

Thirty-five years ago this month — after a complicated set of legal maneuvers that involved News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch renouncing his Australian citizenship and becoming a U.S. citizen so he could buy independent TV station group Metromedia, then paying oil tycoon Marvin Davis $325 million for half the equity in one of Hollywood’s most legendary film studios — a fourth television network premiered in the United States. “The Simpsons” was first introduced to TV audiences on “The Tracey Ullman Show.” Producer and media executive Garth Ancier, who was Fox’s first entertainment president, says that “Barry’s thought process, which I think is correct, is that if you put on the same kind of fare that the big guys put on, you wouldn’t make any progress, because why wouldn’t they just to CBS?” Shows like “Married … With Children,” “The Simpsons,” “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “In Living Color” would eventually set the network apart from its competitors. In her memoir “Still Talking,” Rivers wrote that “‘The Tonight Show’ was like going to somebody else’s party in a great dress, and now at Fox I had to throw the party myself, night after night, and worry whether everybody had a good time.” But Morgan Gendel, a television writer-producer and former Times journalist who covered the Fox launch, acknowledges just how forward-thinking it was to put a woman in charge of the network’s first programming. In April 1987, the network officially launched, introducing programs like “The Tracey Ullman Show,” a sketch series built around the British-American comedian’s thick Rolodex of characters. “And that’s where you felt like, ‘If I’m getting this show it’s because other people have passed.’” “The people who were behind ‘Married … With Children’ were probably much lesser known than Jim Brooks or Gary Goldberg and Stephen Cannell, but they were some of the best comedy writers out there,” says Ancier, adding that “they just never had had their moment to shine because they were making shows like ‘The Jeffersons.’” Outfoxing the Status Quo It wasn’t just the programming choices that set Fox apart from its rivals.