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Palisadian TV producer Larry Lyttle in his Rustic Canyon office.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
From courtroom sitcom Night Court to courtroom reality television Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, Larry Lyttle developed viable concepts that have endured on the increasingly fickle television airwaves.
A Pacific Palisades resident since 1997, Lyttle put much thought into moving to the area.
“I live in Rustic Canyon,” the veteran television producer/executive tells the Palisadian-Post. “It brings a sense of Northern California. I like some of the restaurants, especially. As a community, it has a nice feel.”
Lyttle grew up in New York City, the only child of a father in real estate and a speech therapist mother. He attended the University of Wisconsin and Northwestern, where he pursued his master’s in journalism, against his mother’s wishes.
“I went to grad school as a way of avoiding law school,” says the wry-witted Lyttle, now in his 50s. “My theory is: you hire lawyers . . . ”
That said, Lyttle admits that he’s “not a tortured writer, but I had a difficult time getting things out in the timely way. Clearly, I could not write a daily column. I had a local little sports show, an RKO show in Chicago—I made $125 a week. I did a lot of writing for that. I wrote the ads. I could never be a screenwriter. I was a prose writer.”
Following graduate school, Lyttle “eschewed journalism. I was selling TV time to ad agencies for NBC in Chicago.”
KTTV brought Lyttle to Los Angeles at the ripe old age of 26 as its national sales manager “making more than I should’ve made. But I wasn’t happy. Somehow I was able to escape the charms of ad sales, and I became a literary agent at ICM.”
At the powerhouse literary and talent agency, Lyttle packaged St. Elsewhere.
“I had an enormous amount of fun,” he says of his four years at ICM, during which time he lived in a modest house north of Sunset on Beverly Glen. “I didn’t have to go through the mailroom. Then I realized that the artist gets 90 percent, the agent gets 10. I wanted to be in the 90 percent.”
Lyttle spent eight years as vice president of creative affairs for Warner Bros. Television until 1990. While a development executive, he launched such shows as Murphy Brown, Life Goes On and China Beach. But it all began with a sitcom called Night Court.
“It was an idea I had with Jeff Sagansky and Brandon Tartikoff , who had witnessed the proceedings of a night court in Philadelpia. We’d go to see the night court, see a crazy judge,” Lyttle recalls. “So we hired a writer [Reinhold Weege, the man behind Barney Miller].” Launched in 1984, the popular NBC comedy––which made Harry Anderson, John Larroquette and Markie Post household names––ran for eight years.
The next year brought Growing Pains, which also ran till 1992 and was ABC’s answer to NBC’s popular Family Ties when it started.
“Everyone thought it was a total joke,” Lyttle remembers. “Then it became the number-one show on TV.” Growing Pains, of course, made a TV star out of Kirk Cameron, and, in its last season, introduced America to a young actor named Leonardo DiCaprio.
Head of the Class, a vehicle for WKRP in Cincinnati star Howard Hesseman, became another hit under Lyttle’s watch; a highlight of which came in 1988 with a two-part episode shot in Moscow, back when it was still the capital of the Soviet Union.
“We had an amazing run,” Lyttle says. “I learned to be careful what you hope for. After eight years, I convinced the people they had to let me become a producer. So I did it, and I didn’t like it. I missed the action and the multitasking.”
Lyttle became president of Spelling Television, then created Big Ticket Productions in 1994 in a pact with Spelling’s host studio, Paramount. When Big Ticket launched, Lyttle intended to name it Blockbuster Television after the video-rental outlet. But the production company’s new corporate parent, Viacom, opposed the name because of the video chain’s unclear fate within the conglomerate. Inspired by Blockbuster’s logo, Lyttle hatched Big Ticket.
Lyttle was particularly proud of the 96 half-hours of Nightstand with Dick Dietrich that launched his company: “It was our first show that didn’t have a script.”
He remembers discovering Judge Judith Sheindlin, the popular personality of a long-running TV show that recently proved topical after footage from her set, rattled by the July 29 Chino Hills earthquake, hit media outlets.
“She came in my office and immediately took over the room,” Lyttle recalled in an article a few years ago. “By the time she was seated, you could feel her personality. And she hadn’t really said a lot of words other than ‘hello.’”
Lyttle offered the feisty family-court judge, with 25 years of gavel experience and zero showbiz experience, her own TV show, originally dubbed Hot Bench. But cooler heads prevailed, and the rest, as they say, is Judge Judy history. A reinvention of the ‘80s courtroom reality show “The People’s Court,” Judge Judy has been on the air since 1996 and has been nominated for 10 Emmys.
“Judge Judy became an iconic figure, something I was immensely proud of,” Lyttle says. “We had the first imitator––Judge Joe Brown [in 1998]––so we were right in there.”
Lyttle “realized quickly when Blockbuster funded Big Ticket, there was a changing landscape, an erosion of the TV network audience. You could see by the subtle drop in its numbers.”
Lyttle and Big Ticket produced a number of shows, but by the time he developed a talk show for Caroline Rhea (2002-03), the TV marketplace became less interesting to Lyttle, as reality and reality-competition shows elbowed out demand for Lyttle’s original bread-and-butter: scripted programming.
“Reality TV was always in and out,” Lyttle says. “Now, this is the absolute business model. The probability [of launching a scripted sitcom] is exponentially worse now than it was 10 years ago. In a given year, of 30 comedy pilots, seven or eight would make it. I don’t think there are seven or eight on the air now.”
In June 2003, Paramount Network Television and Paramount Domestic Television folded the 40-employee TV production operations of Big Ticket, and its president departed.
From “Judge Joe,” Lyttle turned to “Senator Joe” for yet another career twist, working three years in politics. He served as Joe Lieberman’s media consultant during the Connecticut senator’s 2000 vice presidential campaign, and, for two years, as a media consultant for Phil Angelides, who ran for governor in the 2006 California elections and lost to incumbent Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Recently, Lyttle split from his wife, author Audrey Lavin (profiled in our August 7 story “Children’s Book Tackles ‘Big Scary Divorce’”). Their children, Charlie, 11, and Zoey, 9, reside in the Palisades and attend Westside schools.
Today, Lyttle is developing a docu-drama for HBO about the Walter Reed [Army Medical Center’s 1997 neglect] scandal, based on a series of Washington Post articles that he and his producing partner, David Halperin, acquired. Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner will script.
“There are a lot of things I want to do,” Lyttle concludes. “A few years ago, a few of us tried to buy the [NHL team] Pittsburgh Penguins. I’d like to purchase a hockey team. I have a passion for sports.”
Palisades Penguins, anyone?
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