Trump: How to Get Rich

Learn the Value of Saying No

I purchased the Miss Universe Organization in 1996 and immediately sold half of the company to CBS; so not only were they our broadcaster, they were a co-owner as well. This kind of arrangement, where the network actually owns the end product, was a fairly new concept and should have been a win-win situation, since CBS would actually be able to eliminate the middleman and pay a lower license fee while, in theory, the network, as an owner, would look to maximize all promotional opportunities.

The partnership was a great concept, but after five years, it had not gone as planned. CBS was not willing to promote the shows to my satisfaction. As more and more cable competition ate into the network’s market share, on-air promotion became all the more important to sustain viewership, but it just wasn’t happening. To make matters worse, CBS tried to change the shows drastically by making them MTV-style music specials and dramatically cutting the time allotted to show the women competing. I am not a network programmer, but it seemed to me that people might be tuning in to a beauty competition to see beautiful women.

I am not saying a television musical performance is a bad thing; there have been some great ones over the years. A perfect example was the 1999 Miss Teen USA pageant: A year earlier, the teen show had introduced a little-known boy band called ’N Sync. By 1999 they were the biggest band around. As a sign of appreciation, they agreed to appear on the Miss Teen USA pageant again. In the middle of their summer tour, ’N Sync rented a jet and flew in for eight hours the day of the show, performing two songs. They were terrific. Unfortunately, no one knew about it because CBS had chosen not to run a single promotion for the show.

So in February 2002 we were all reevaluating how we wanted to approach the network license renewal. Citing the current ratings, which were caused by the lack of promotion and the fact that CBS would always air the pageant against the toughest competition, Les Moonves, the head of the network, said he was not willing to begin negotiations until the end of the season. Obviously, with the season ending in August, the network schedules would be set and there would be absolutely no room for negotiation with any other network.

I sent a letter to Les telling him I wanted an option to buy CBS out of the partnership, exercisable up until a week after the broadcast of the Miss Universe pageant in May. I feigned disinterest in continuing with the pageants and told him if I did not exercise the option, we would commence with selling or dismantling the company. A few days later, I believed we had a deal.

I immediately signed with Jim Griffin of the William Morris Agency to begin shopping the pageants to other broadcasters. I also called my good friend Bob Wright, chairman and CEO of NBC, to tell him the pageants might become available. I knew that NBC had recently acquired Telemundo, and the pageants are huge in Latin markets. It looked like a great opportunity for cross-promotion.

In the meantime, CBS had given up and allowed us free rein to get back to the basics on the production and put more emphasis on what had worked in the past: beautiful women. We also convinced them to schedule the pageant for a night outside of the all-important ratings sweeps, which would ensure more on-air promotions.

As a result, our 2002 Miss Universe pageant hit ratings gold. Overall, it was number seven for the week and number one in demographics. The pageant even trounced the NBA playoffs on NBC. The Miss Universe pageant quickly became a very hot property.

I immediately sent a letter to Les Moonves telling him I was exercising my option to buy out CBS. To my shock, Les took the position that we had never agreed on an option. NBC was waiting in the wings, and after a weeklong bidding war I bought out CBS and created a new partnership with NBC.

At the first meeting of the new board, I asked the Miss Universe staff to dust off some of the cross-promotional ideas they had pitched to CBS over the years. Within minutes, Jeff Gaspin of NBC approved the production of a Miss USA Fear Factor to lead into the Miss USA telecast. In addition, the Today show agreed to do five-minute live shots from each pageant location. The results were amazing. For years the pageants had tried to get a plug on the third-rated CBS Morning Show and couldn’t get as much as a returned phone call. Now they were getting major promotion on the nation’s number one morning program and an Internet tie-in through NBC.com.

The Miss USA Fear Factor was the highest rated in the series and the 2003 Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants received the highest ratings since I had bought the company. Additionally, the Telemundo simulcast of the pageant was one of the highest-rated programs in the network’s history.

The cross-promotional concept I visualized in 1996 was finally realized in 2003, and it never would have happened if I hadn’t been willing to walk away from CBS, say no, and pursue a better opportunity elsewhere.

The art of the hair.