In the 1960s, as the head of research at NBC, Paul Klein developed a theory of Least Objectionable Programming (or L.O.P., as it was generally known) to explain the behavior of audiences in the days when three behemoth networks ruled the television landscape. In a world of limited choice, viewers do not watch particular programs, he insisted; they simply watch television. Every day at the same time the number of television sets turned on is remarkably constant-regardless of what is on the air. Viewers do not select favorite programs, but settle for those they dislike the least in order to sustain the general experience of television. Under these conditions, network programmers worry less about creating exceptional programs to attract viewers than about supplying the least objectionable program on the air at any given moment. As a unifying theory of television in the age of program scarcity, Klein's became the most widely quoted statement to emerge from within the television industry when the networks were at the height of their influence. A remarkable number of books and articles written about American television in the 1970s and 1980s felt it necessary to contend with Klein's theory-seeing it as either refreshingly honest or profoundly cynical.

     Contrary to what some of Klein's critics believed, his theory of Least Objectionable Programming was not a call for more programs aimed at the lowest common denominator of mass taste, but an attempt to convince advertisers and his own supervisors at NBC that the time was ripe to overturn the old viewing patterns. The Nielsen ratings system, with its emphasis on bulk ratings-the sheer number of viewers watching a program-ignored demographic distinctions in the viewing audience, and this was a mistake. Nielsen based its ratings on the number of households viewing a given program, but it is individuals, not households, who buy products. As the industry's most vocal advocate of demographic ratings, Klein conducted a nonstop campaign in the 1960s and 1970s, and eventually saw his ideas adopted throughout the television industry.

     That so much is known about Klein's opinions in the 1960s, when he was but a mid-level executive in charge of research at NBC, says much about his character. Seldom does an executive of Klein's rank achieve such wide recognition, particularly outside the industry. In the button-down world of the I960s television business, he cultivated an unconventional image, spuming suits and ties for baggy sweaters, tempering the can-do spirit of the junior executive class with his own perpetually melancholy demeanor. Klein was arrogant and dismissive of those with whom he disagreed, willing to criticize colleagues and competitors at other networks or to send taunting letters when he had won a particular victory. In spite of such intemperate behavior, uncharacteristic of a network executive, he possessed what one reporter at the time described as "the best brain in broadcasting," and for this reason his superiors at NBC valued his advice on crucial programming decisions during the 1960s-including the network's decision to shift its entire schedule to color and, later, to present the ground-breaking situation comedy Julia, with its African-American star, Diahann Carroll.

     Klein graduated from Brooklyn College in 1953 with a degree in mathematics and philosophy and immediately joined a Madison Avenue advertising agency, where he was responsible for research on the Philip Morris cigarette account when Morris was the chief advertiser on television's highest-rated program,

     I Love Lucy. He experienced his first epiphany about the failure of bulk ratings when his research revealed that the program, despite its enormous ratings, appealed primarily to children and older women-not the target market for cigarettes. Klein sharpened his convictions about audience demographics in his next job, as the head of research at the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency for six years, before finding a platform for his ideas when he took charge of the research department at NBC in 1960. When media theorist and critic Marshall McLuhan came to prominence in the I960s, Klein not only read his books, but openly declared himself a "McLuhan thinker." From McLuhan, Klein absorbed the idea that a communications medium has a social meaning of its own, independent of any particular content-an idea that found expression in Klein's theory of Least Objectionable Programming.

      By 1970 Klein was growing restless at NBC, where he had held the same job for a decade, and his career had essentially stalled. He left NBC in 1970 to pursue his own independent interests. He volunteered his audience research skills for the newly created Children's Television Workshop and, for NBC's Saturday morning children's schedule, produced a series of one­ minute educational spots, called Pop-Ups, designed to teach reading to preschoolers. His larger interest was in event programming, selectively targeted viewers, and new technologies-the future of television, as he envisioned it. He founded Computer Cinema, Inc., a visionary company that foresaw the convergence of television and the computer long before anyone had even heard of the Internet. The company pioneered the development of pay-per-view programming in hotels, initially called "Hotelevision," by offering commercial-free, uncut feature films before they had appeared on the broadcast networks, distributed to hotels via satellite master antennas.

     In 1976 Klein was invited to return to NBC and take charge of programming. Regular weekly series had been the staple of network broadcasting since the days of radio, but Klein believed that audiences had grown bored with series, that humdrum programming was eroding the value of the network franchise, driving away discriminating viewers. Klein was an evangelist of special-event programming, which he saw as a way to lure the economically desirable young adult viewers to NBC. Brought in at the last minute to plug holes in NBC's fall 1976 season, Klein created the "Big Event"-a 90-minute block on Sunday nights-in which he placed movies, variety shows, and miniseries. For the 1977 season, he blocked out four entire evenings of the network's schedule for special events, movies, and miniseries. Klein's critics complained that he was not paying enough attention to series development, but he believed that event programming would bond the younger, economically desirable viewers to NBC. He avidly committed NBC to the miniseries format, often scheduling installments on consecutive nights. Under his leadership, NBC developed dozens of these expensive, limited-run series. Many were ba­nal and excessive: bloated melodramas and historical pageants like Captains and Kings, Wheels, 79 Park Avenue, and Centennial, but others were among the most ambitious television productions of the decade: Studs Lanigan, King, Shogun, and Holocaust (which set a record as NBC's highest-rated entertainment program of all time, with 120 million viewers).

     However, Klein's strategy was an utter failure. NBC's ratings plunged steadily downward, reaching a ten-year low in the 1978-79 season. Meanwhile, ABC surged to first place on the strength of exactly the sort of programming that Klein eschewed: familiar, comfortable weekly series. Klein publicly criticized ABC programming chief Fred Silverman. This made for especially cruel irony when in June 1978 NBC named Fred Silverman as its new network president. Although Klein remained in charge of programming, his days at NBC were numbered from the moment Silverman signed the contract. It is an even more unfortunate irony that Klein is remembered not only for leading NBC to its ratings nadir, but also for developing the series, Supertrain, an expensive, ill-conceived answer to ABC's The Love Boat that became virtually synonymous with network folly when it was canceled due to disastrous ratings after just four episodes. In January 1979-less than three years after returning to NBC and only six months after Silverman's arrival-Klein re-signed from NBC for the second time.

     After leaving NBC, Klein returned to cable and satellite television. He spent the next decade developing adult-oriented and X-rated program services. He was a founder of the Playboy Channel in 1982 and served as president until 1984, when he left to create Hi-Life, a programming service designed to go beyond Playboy by offering sexually explicit X-rated films. When cable operators refused to carry the service, he criticized them and shifted his attention to an alternative form of distribution: satellites. In 1987 he founded Home Dish Only Satellite Networks, which supplied "sophisticated adult programming" aimed at hotels and the owners of backyard satellite dishes via such channels as the American Exxxtasy Channel and the Tuxxxedo Network.

     One might ask how a man once considered the "best brain in broadcasting" would find himself a purveyor of pornography, but this was not really such an odd departure for Klein. Unlike most television executives who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, he disagreed that television was solely a mass medium, obliged to provide something for everyone. He imagined a differ­ ent model in which particular viewers would be drawn to programs that appealed to their tastes. In this he clearly anticipated the changes that would restructure the television landscape in the 1990s-including the vast (and largely unnoticed) profits earned by adult­ oriented premium and pay-per-view channels in hotels and on direct broadcast satellite and digital cable services.

     From his position outside the networks, Klein was an astute observer of the broadcast networks' declining ratings in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with his entrepreneurial ventures in cable and satellite, Klein developed movies for the networks during the 1980s and 1990s, including The People vs. Jean Harris (1981). In the years prior to his death in 1998, he had turned hi1- attention to the globalization of television, lending him knowledge and experience as a consultant to emerging television markets in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union.