Credit goes to Sandy Grushow for lifting Fox to a Big Four network from the No. 4 network after the Big Three. Now it’s Gail Berman’s turn to push Fox to the status of full equal.  
  Grushow’s surprising resignation yesterday as Fox Television Entertainment Group Chairman, coming months before his contact expired this summer, means the first challenge facing Berman is to make a strong spring lineup to pull Fox out of a fall slump.
   Her second job will be to build some muscle around Fox's skeletal lineup of hits, going beyond "American Idol" and "Joe Millionaire" to reach a consistency that Fox, despite great gains over the past three years, still lacks. Right now, it is a network of hits and bombs and little in between.
   She must show Fox can move beyond the stunting that carried it to sweeps victories last year to year-round competitiveness so that it doesn't keep playing catch-up each spring. And she'll do it alone.
   Fox won’t replace Grushow. Instead, Berman and Twentieth Century Fox Television co-presidents Gary Newman and Dana Walden will report directly to Fox Group chairman Peter Chernin, essentially eliminating the middle-man position created specifically for Grushow five years ago.
   When he took over, after holding a similar post five years earlier at Fox and being ousted for disappointing ratings, Fox was the upstart.
   During 1998-’99, the network finished first among adults 18-34 and teens for the first time, but then imploded under the direction of former Comedy Central suit Doug Herzog. 
   In 1999-2000, Fox finished third among the Big Four among its target of adults 18-49, averaging a 4.2 rating to ABC’s 5.5, NBC’s 5.0, and CBS’s 3.7.
   After that season, with the “Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire” fiasco, Grushow canned Herzog for Berman. Fox has been a very different network, more organized and less trashy, though still willing to play to the lowest common denominator, since the former Regency Television president took over programming responsibilities in 2000.
   "We have to stay ahead of the trends, not behind them, and we have to get the audience to come along for the ride,” Berman told Media Life shortly after she was hired.
   With reality fare like “American Idol” and “Joe Millionaire,” which lifted Fox to its first-ever February and May 18-49 sweeps crowns last year, Fox has done just that while also mixing in higher-brow shows such as “24,” which three years ago would not have fit the network’s schedule.
   Berman has helped Fox build a more organized identity beyond “When Animals Attack,” giving the network its first mega-hits in “Idol” and the first “Joe.” 
   But her challenge with Grushow exiting is even bigger. Now she must stock a stable beyond the mega-hits that saved Fox last season, going beyond “Idol” to shore up the schedule every night of the week.
   Though Fox always has difficulty rebounding from its late season start because of baseball – it managed a close second behind NBC last season despite ending December 2002 No. 4 among 18-49s – this year has been particularly disappointing because of high expectations after last spring.
   Baseball actually did well, but Berman’s Monday schedule of “Skin” and “Joe Millionaire” bombed, as did her Friday comedy block. Fox is third season-to-date among 18-49s with a 3.7 average and finished a very distant fourth in the November sweeps.
   “Idol’s” return in two weeks will boost Fox, but that alone won’t be enough to save the season. She and programming guru Preston Beckman, a former NBCer also credited with Fox’s turnaround, have to find at least one more big hit. 
   Though Grushow gets much of the credit for Fox’s three-year turnaround, and he was the one to bring Berman and Beckman in, his exit shouldn’t set the network back too much.
   It seems to be a voluntary one, as he had the clause in his contract to form a production company. The 43-year-old’s Phase Two productions will be based at Twentieth Century.
   But one interesting note is that by declining to sign another contract, Grushow is now free to join another network. That would not have been the case had he signed the expected four-year contract this summer.