Susan Futterman

Susan Futterman
Role:	Director of Standards and Practices
BSG Universe:	Original Series and Galactica 1980
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Nationality:	USA
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[[IMDB:nm{{{imdb}}}|IMDb profile]]

Susan Futterman was a broadcast standards executive at ABC from December 1976 to 2006, overseeing content compliance for the network throughout the runs of the Original Series and Galactica 1980. She joined the network as manager of children's programs in the broadcast standards and practices department, a newly created position, and eventually rose to director of broadcast Standards and Practices, a title she held for the remainder of her career at ABC. Her tenure brought her into conflict with Galactica 1980 executive producer Glen A. Larson, as well as with story editors Allan Cole and Chris Bunch.

Career

Background and early career

Futterman earned a bachelor's degree in early childhood from Mills College of Education, taught for the Head Start program in Harlem and Newark, New Jersey, then received a master's degree in education from Harvard University and worked for the Center for Research in Children's Television. She also took courses in film-making and animation, and held a faculty position at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena at the time she joined ABC. Before moving to the network, she had served as a consultant to Action for Children's Television (ACT).

Peggy Charren, ACT's president, told the Los Angeles Times in 1977 that Futterman's role within the organization had been that of an expert resource on child development rather than an advocate:

I never thought of Susan as an activist. She was a consultant to ACT. If we had questions about early-childhood development and how television relates to it, we asked her. Her credentials are excellent.

Futterman told the Los Angeles Times she believed she could exert more influence from inside a network than from outside it: "I agree [I spent] 13 years talking to people, being on panels, that kind of thing. Some of those people are more well-intentioned than others but even so, they never have an internal force to say, 'Change that or you're not going on the air.'" She stated her belief that she was the only person with formal training in early childhood development to have been hired by one of the broadcast networks.

ABC (1976–2006)

Among Futterman's early content decisions were the rejection of Tom and Jerry cartoons on grounds of excessive violence and the removal of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons from ABC's schedule, even as both continued to air on competing networks at high ratings. Futterman also required that crowd scenes in children's programming reflect minority representation: "They know I'm seat-belt happy and that I'm absolutely a stickler about minorities — even crowd scenes have to be mixed."

Illusionist and author Jim Steinmeyer, who encountered Futterman through ABC's variety programming, described her as "stern and schoolmarm-ish, with her hair parted severely in the center and owlish horned-rimmed glasses," and recalled her close scrutiny of a Doug Henning special during the 1980s.

In May 1987, Futterman oversaw the content of the first American Comedy Awards broadcast, airing live from the Hollywood Palladium. Producer George Schlatter noted that she would "be sitting in master control with a bleep button in her lap," given a lineup that included Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, and "Bad" Bob Goldthwait.

In February 2005, as director of broadcast standards and practices, Futterman managed the five-second delay on ABC's broadcast of the 77th annual Academy Awards, which featured Chris Rock as host. At a production meeting for the telecast, producer Gil Cates polled approximately 200 staff on their tenure at the network; Futterman withdrew from the count at the 28-year mark, which Cates informally designated as the "Class of 77." She told the Associated Press she had already used tapes of Rock's cable material to train junior editors on delay-button protocol: "You never trust comedians. The second people you don't trust are musicians."

Galactica 1980

Futterman's tenure coincided with the production of Galactica 1980, and she clashed with executive producer Glen A. Larson over acceptable broadcast content. Larson peppered multiple references to Arnie's meatballs into the two-part episode "The Night the Cylons Landed" in direct response to her ruling that such references were lewd.

Story editors Allan Cole and Chris Bunch both held critical views of her involvement. Cole, the more measured of the two, described suggesting that the series open each episode with an on-air "educational" tag:

Why aren't you little bug snipes watching 60 Minutes?

Cole noted that Futterman agreed with the idea.

Home (1994)

In March 1994, Futterman's department censored comments by Dr. Jay Gordon on the daytime talk show Home in which Gordon warned about drugs and alcohol being marketed to children. The comments were scheduled for the March 9 broadcast. Gordon attributed the decision to Futterman directly, while Home executive producer Woody Fraser initially overrode her — one of several confrontations between the two during the series' run.

Fraser told the Los Angeles Times that her decisions followed commercial rather than editorial logic:

Susan Futterman never says to you directly it has anything to do with potential sponsor problems, but the Home show is considered to be an advertiser-friendly show. So we sell a lot of spots. We make a lot of money for the network.

Personal life

A marriage announcement for Futterman appeared in the Mount Vernon, New York area press in July 1977. Her stepfather, Frank Perls, was a Beverly Hills art dealer with a client base that included the work of printmaker Gustave Baumann; Perls' brother operated a separate gallery in New York. Whoopi Goldberg noted that she and Futterman became friends during Goldberg's tenures hosting the Academy Awards.

Futterman retired from ABC in 2006 and took up art curation, a pursuit she attributed to the influence of her stepfather's career as an art dealer.

References