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Slate: WNET/THIRTEEN. The 11th Hour, (stereo/non-dolby), #241, Bloomies & Saks; 25:08; 10/19/89

Blank

Charitable funding for the program by announcer overlay the Eleventh Hour graphic.

Host Robert Lipsyte welcomes viewers, announces show and introduces himself.

Lipsyte announces two Retail Consultants as guests coming up and cuts to an off site look at New York's downtown department stores.

Pretty woman, red lipstick, dark hair, black coat, holding newspaper in crook of her arm walking down street in Manhattan toward camera.

Extreme angle tilt up on Trump Tower

Peds in New York City walking past street vendor, goods on display

Dollar bills changing hands.

Man leaning over picking through costume jewelry and trinkets laid out on blankets on the sidewalk.

Large "faux" price tag draped in purple velvet reads: -For Sale- Saks Fifth Avenue. Host Lipsyte narrates about the sale of the store for $1.5 Billion.

Large faux price tag -For Sale- Bloomingdales.

"Bonwit Teller" in gold letters on glass door

Exterior wide shot - Bloomingdale's Department Store in Manhattan

Tilt down on New York Stock Exchange trading floor.

Man wearing sandwich board sign walks amidst a heavy crowd of peds. His sign reads: "A Real New York Bargain Women's Sportswear 10. Every Item Every Day Herald Center."

Front exterior of upscale department store B. Altman's in mid-town Manhattan. Wide shot with traffic going by, American flags flying across entire front of store, peds.

Fake sign written in bold black letters on wooden stand hanging over the country of Australia: "Hooker Corp. -Land- N.Y. Landmarks, Bonwit Teller, B. Altman & Co."
Lypsyte narrates. Hooker, an over-extended real estate developer which tried to build a retail empire in America by borrowing heavily then went broke.

Same faux "price tags" with Bonwit Teller and B. Altman & co.. The word "Bankrupt" in red letters overlay

White haired doorman shot from behind watching as female holding shopping bags walking out of department store

Side shot cute mid-twenties young woman with neat black hair, heavily made up with red lipstick, pink blush and black eyeliner

Lancome display in Bloomingdale's window. Large sign reads Lancome salutes Bloomingdale's Vive La France.

Interior (now defunct) upscale department store, Abraham & Straus. Large A&S sign is seen hanging high above people gathered at formal event in the store.

Photo of Robert Campeau, Canadian Land Developer. Lipsyte narrates he put Bloomies on the "block" and is about $10 Billion in debt

Exterior - Awning over Bloomingdale's front entrance. Some peds walking by.

Exterior Macy's Herald Square store with gigantic iconic sign "The World's biggest store * Macy's".

Exterior Saks & Company entry, ivy hanging above.

Female shopper exiting brass trimmed glass doors of Saks Fifth Avenue to busy street, peds walking by carrying shopping bags, businessmen, etc.

B.A.T Industries sign - (owner of Saks Fifth Avenu)

Logos companies owned by B.A.T Industries - Marshall Field's, Ivey's, Farmers Insurance, B&W, Breuners

Shot from behind front window of department store, peds on the street, busses and traffic going by.

"Saks & Company" on the stone wall of the building

New York Times - October 14 1989 headline reads: The Dow Plunges 190 Points, About 7%, in a Late Selloff;l Takeover Stocks Hit Hard, Is it 1987 Again?

"B. Altman's"

pan out on the gigantic iconic Macy's sign taking up the entire corner of the building, "the world's largest store * Macy's"

Bloomingdale's Department Store, wide shot from across street

Robert Lipsyte in the studio, raises the question, will these "downtown dinosaurs survive"?

INTERVIEW

Robert Lipsyte:

Kurt, you gave me a new word Dino-Stores, are they indeed dinosaurs, the perception some years back was that the downtown department store would soon disappear to the suburbs. But these takeovers give us the impression that that's not going to happen. Somebody thinks they're valuable.

Kurt Bernard 7:11
They're very valuable. I don't believe that they are dino-stores are dinosaurs. As a matter of fact, department stores are gradually coming back into their own after having suffered deep dents imposed on them by specialty stores over the last few years. But we are seeing at the present time really here in New York particularly does not have very much to do with the fact that some people think that stores department stores are on the way down to the countrary. I think all the properties that are up for sale with the exception of B Altman and Bonwit Teller, I think, a very fine properties.

Robert Lipsyte 7:47
And that's why they're darlings of takeover artists.

kurt 7:53
I think that the glamour that is there, and that that of course surrounds Bloomingdale's, and all the other stores that belong to Federated Department Stores and Li department stores, motivated a man with a tremendous ego and very, very great optimism to plunge headlong heedlessly into $10 billion of debt.

Robert Lipsyte 8:12
It's amazing because in a sense, what these guys are doing is not unlike people who buy major league ball clubs. Part of it is not to make profit part of it is to enter into this glitzy world of fashion and high visibility in New York

Kurt Bernard 8:27
If they can afford it, they can play this game. Wonderful. But here we have a man who is a very successful builder, Mr. Robert Campo, who very simply decided to take a plunge into retailing, thinking that all he had to do was acquire some malls in the United States and then roll out all those various stores that he has acquired and put them into those malls without regard of whether those areas where those malls exist, need those

Robert Lipsyte 8:54
stores? In a sense, you're saying he didn't know what he was doing?

Kurt Bernard 8:56
Absolutely right. He should have very simply continued to do what he was doing so well, namely the real estate business, but he didn't stick to his knitting.

Robert Lipsyte 9:07
Ruth Ann, we share some New York history your your family owned S Klein's on the square and my family shopped in S Kleins on the square. The effect of all of this the effect of these leveraged buyouts the effect of this money coming in, what has this done to retailing in New York to the stores themselves, and to the people who shop there?

Ruth Ann Britten 9:28
Well, I think the perception of the consumer is that nothing really has changed. I don't think the consumer is aware that a British company has been owning Saks Fifth Avenue for a great deal of time, that that EC tan just bought an interest in Barney's that all of the the gyrations in mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in the last eight or 10 years have made any real difference in the perception to the consumer. The consumers perception has to do with how the store is merchandise how the merchandise is presented, whether it's an exciting store, whether it's a destination store, by that I mean a store that people want to go to because there's excitement, there's entertainment there there, there's merchandise that they want to buy,

or has any of that changed in this period of takeover, buy and sell, does that really matter?

Unknown Speaker 10:23
No, I think Altmans was going downhill because they did not change with the times. And it as it was taken over just went further downhill, Bloomingdale's has remained pretty much the same, perhaps their customer service has suffered a bit. And perhaps there's a little more private label merchandise in there for extra profit margin. But basically, Bloomingdale's has the same image that they had to the consumer, to the consumer to and to an educated person who is a consultant, I see many changes, but they are not perceptible to the consumer at all.

Robert Lipsyte 10:57
Okay, so with all this action that has happened, the bottom line is that there have not been really perceptible changes within the stores themselves. And people whose names I had never heard of before, like Campo and Hooker and BAT industries, as I had, as I had never heard of George Steinbrenner until he bought the Yankees are now names that I've heard of. But what's going to happen to New York in terms of tax revenues, impact on the city, perhaps the billion dollar deficit that the next mayor is going to have to face

Kurt Bernard 11:33
OK I don't believe that it is going to have a big impact on the economy of the city of New York. Again, as Ruth pointed out a moment ago, nobody really cares who owns Bloomingdale's, or who owns Saks, what we really are interested in far more than anything else, that the overall American economy is good enough for people to go out and do their shopping and all these stores. If there is a restrained consumer, a consumer who does not have great latitude in terms of the amount of money that can be spent, then we are going to find retail sales to be, if not slow, but certainly not as good as retailers would like to see that that of course has an impact on sales.

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Ruth Ann Britten 16:15
worst case scenarios we might see some manufacturers go out of work, we might see some people laid off.

Robert Lipsyte 16:20
And how would that affect whoever is going to be mayor next year.

Kurt Bernard 16:25
If the scenario that Ruth has painted is going to come to pass, the mayor is going to have a very tough time balancing the budget here in New York City. Undoubtedly, frankly, I don't believe it is going to come to that pass. I really don't think so first of all, the problems that I'll be setting, certainly one store here in New York at the mall, which is Bloomingdale's, a problems that have a transitory nature, they will they won't last forever, eventually, Bloomingdale's is going to be sold and whoever is going to acquire Bloomingdale's will have enough finances to pay for all the merchandise meet the payroll

Robert Lipsyte 17:00
In this long view that that both of you take ultimately, I shouldn't really care whether hooker or Campo or bad or Marvin trab or either view owns any of these stores

Kurt Bernard 17:11
That's correct. Absolutely.

Robert Lipsyte 17:13
What should is not really something to be worried about.

Kurt Bernard 17:17
What you need to be worried about is just to go out to make sure that you get the best possible price by the best possible merchandise available, get the best possible service. And that is not always easy when it comes to department stores. I thought I should add one other thing, and that is the so called problems. The problems that Ruth referred to before at the present time affect only Bloomingdale's not Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue is in an outstanding financial position. Only Bloomingdale's is affected that way, not Saks the problem. And this could affect consumers, possibly in a very favorable way. In the short run. The possibility exists that Bloomingdale's because of Campos machinations may be compelled as we get closer to Christmas, to raise money to pay for the merchandise which it now has an it stores and to meet payroll. And that means that they may have to blow the merchandise out of the stores at reduced prices, which if this comes to pass would compel all the other stores the competing stores Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, I mean, Mason and all the others to do likewise.

Robert Lipsyte 18:29
Now that short term, good for us, short term in the long term, it could be disastrous,

Kurt Bernard 18:34
not disastrous, really, it wouldn't be disastrous for the stores. But certainly it would kill that Christmas season.

Robert Lipsyte 18:41
And this is the critical time right now.

Kurt Bernard 18:44
It is the homestretch for every retailer. And if you don't, if you don't cases, retailers right now will begin the period in which they do perhaps as much as 40% of their business.

Ruth Ann Britten 18:55
As far is being Kurt saying about that we may see a very promotional Christmas, I agree. I think we will see a promotional Christmas. What has happened is the discounters in New York thought that this would be a marvelous time for them to come in and buy the merchandise from the manufacturers that were not going to ship Bloomingdale's, and they would get a wonderful price. And then they would, but Bloomingdale's has made it very clear that the people that don't ship them are not going to be their friends in the future.

Robert Lipsyte 19:26
Ruth Ann Britten, Kurth Bernard Thank you very much. I feel much better. Now. It doesn't matter who owns Bloomingdale's as long as we're able to afford to shop there.

White played piano and sang for the carriage trade at special Sales at the flagship department stores in New York City - Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, etc.

"Talkback" graphics

Lipsyte cuts to a segment from an earlier program about Cops and their training.

Host Lipsyte reads a letter from a former NYC cop.

Paragraph from the letter written in by a former New York City cop overlay letters from viewers and Talkback graphics.
Unseen Lipsyte reads:
"New York City is a weird place to be a cop and a smart one just does what he's told, and that's not an arrogant or bitter attitude...It is no fault of the police that it is a playground for misfits. Just improve the lot of the cops that are here, working now. You won't have to worry about attracting better ones, but you do have to worry about keeping the ones you have, the good ones...like me."
Signed "in all sincerity, P.O. Thomas J. Costello
So well said!!

Elderly man sitting at a table alone in his apartment speaking with unseen interviewer about how hard it is to get by on Medicaid and Social Security.

Lipsyte in studio cuts to a letter from a viewer.

Host Lipsyte in studio talking about the angry feedback from Italian American viewers regarding an excerpt from a play about an Italian American who was brutalized as a kid by thugs in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Letter by Dinkins continues:
"It then became incumbent upon the participants of the program...to refute this false characterization. Their time could perhaps have been better spent discussing why the events occurred and what constructive actions could be taken to ease the tensions. Sincerely yours, David N. Dinkins."

Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. Show ends.

Charitable funding by announcer and overlay the Eleventh Hour graphic.