fins and snapping mouths competing for the food. At this point, the
fishermen save time and money by dropping unbaited lines into the
water, since the crazed fish will bite ferociously at anything now, includ-
ing bare metal hooks.
There is a noticeable parallel between the ways that commercial
fishermen and department stores generate a competitive fury in those
they wish to hook. To attract and arouse the catch, fishermen scatter
some loose bait called chum. For similar reasons, department stores
holding a bargain sale toss out a few especially good deals on promin-
ently advertised items called loss leaders. If the bait, of either form, has
done its job, a large and eager crowd forms to snap it up. Soon, in the
rush to score, the group becomes agitated, nearly blinded, by the ad-
versarial nature of the situation. Humans and fish alike lose perspective
on what they want and begin striking at whatever is being contested.
One wonders whether the tuna flapping on a dry deck with only a bare
hook in its mouth shares the what-hit-me bewilderment of the shopper
arriving home with only a load of department-store bilge.
Lest we believe that the competition-for-limited-resources-fever occurs
only in such unsophisticated forms of life as tuna and bargain-basement
shoppers, we should examine the story behind a remarkable purchase
decision made in 1973 by Barry Diller, who was then vice president for
prime-time programming at the American Broadcasting Company, but
who has since been labeled the “miracle mogul” by Time magazine in
reference to his remarkable successes as head of Paramount Pictures
and the Fox Television Network. He agreed to pay $3.3 million for a
single television showing of the movie The Poseidon Adventure. The figure
is noteworthy in that it greatly exceeded the highest price ever previ-
ously paid for a one-time movie showing: $2 million for Patton. In fact,
the payment was so excessive that ABC figured to lose $1 million on
the Poseidon showing. As NBC vice president for special programs Bill
Storke declared at the time, “There’s no way they can get their money
back, no way at all.”
How could an astute and experienced businessman like Diller go for
a deal that would produce an expected loss of a million dollars? The
answer may lie in a second noteworthy aspect of the sale: It was the
first time that a motion picture had been offered to the networks in an
open-bid auction. Never before had the three major commercial net-
works been forced to battle for a scarce resource in quite this way. The
novel idea of a competitive auction was the brainchild of the movie’s
flamboyant showman-producer, Irwin Allen, and a 20th Century Fox
vice president, William Self, who must have been ecstatic about the
outcome. But how can we be sure that it was the auction format that
198 / Influence