Kevin Reilly

Kevin Reilly, the former network exec behind shows like Saved by the Bell, The Sopranos, The Shield, The Office, and more talks about falling in love with television and the palm tree silhouettes of Los Angeles, drinking Evian on Brandon Tartikoff’s sofa, and his perspective on the strike from a network insider.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I will say for me, anything I've ever been involved
in I thought was good. I've never said the words
this is a hit. You know, you look at it
and you go, this is first like this is a thing.
There's something here, and if we keep doing this, it's
going to be good, and if we get a little lucky,
it actually will be something significant. And that's just the
way I've always looked at it. I've never been surprised, like,

(00:22):
oh my god, I had no idea that was good.
But I've certainly been surprised on the downside times. But
I've definitely been surprised when finally not pleasantly, like oh
my god, they're catching on to what we've known for
a while. Kevin Riley was a president OFBC Entertainment through

(00:45):
the entire first chapter of the Office, from when the
show was pitched, all the way up through the development
and the first couple of seasons of the show, the
modest and humble beginnings of a tremendous television show.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Hello, everybody, so glad that you could join me today
for this very special episode of Off the Beat. I
am but your humble host Brian Baumgartner. Today we have
a fascinating guest. I know you're gonna love it. Kevin
Riley joins the program once again. For those of you
who don't know, Kevin is a goliath in the television world,

(01:26):
a legend who makes television work from the inside out.
More on that in a bit. It's hard to believe
that he started out as a production assistant, running coffee
orders and making copies for music videos, and he worked
his way all the way up to being network president

(01:48):
at multiple networks. By the way, his resume looks like
alphabet soup. That's a business term. He's worked for just
about every television acronym there is, NBC, FX, TNT, TBS, HBO, Fox,
Turner Media, and many many more. He's advocated for some
of your favorite shows, including The Office, which we have

(02:11):
talked to him about before, even when other execs wanted
to shut those shows down. And he has been a
visionary for television programming and streaming innovations for over thirty years.
That's right, Kevin has his hand in so many shows,
including The Sopranos, The Shield, Nip Tuck, Thirty Rock, The Office,

(02:34):
and so many more. I'm excited for you to hear
his story, his career path, and also his take on
the writers an actors strike that's going on right now.
Of course I stand with my guild, but I know
for a fact that unless both sides talk to and
understand each other, we're not going to get anywhere. So
it's really special and important to me that Kevin and

(02:57):
I got to have this conversation at this particular point
in time. I learned a lot, and I think you
will too. So how listen. Here he is my old
and dear friend, Kevin Riley.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Bubble and squeak. I love it, Bubble and squeak. I know,
bubble and squeak. I cook get every month, lift over
from the.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Ninetyfore, what's up, Kevin?

Speaker 1 (03:37):
There's the man. How's it going outstanding? Good to see you, buddy.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's great to see you. We still haven't golfed.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I know I'm gonna We're gonna will very soon.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yes, my golf game is in shambles right now. So
if perfect your perfect part, yeah exactly, you're uh yeah.
If if you like to play for money, now's a
good time to get me. How well, I would say,
how's it going?

Speaker 1 (04:04):
I can't believe it's been three years since. Uh, that's
a little scary.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Actually, I know. Well, time stops during COVID for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Oh wow, it was Oh that was like the timing. Yeah,
that was the timing. You know. I don't have one
of those brains that can do chronology, you know how
some people can just go, oh and in two thousand
and eight, I did this and do that. I can't
do that to begin with. But once you threw COVID
into the mix I have, I'm like, wheels off. People go, hey,
when did you start that thing? I go, I can't

(04:37):
do it.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
I know, I was just I was just doing it myself.
Think anytime it's like, you know, oh I went somewhere,
I was in a city, I did this thing. How
long ago was that? Oh that was like two years ago. Oh,
in the middle of COVID. No, I guess it was
seven years ago. That's that's that's what happens. But yeah,

(05:00):
it's been three years. We had such a great conversation,
but you know, we were really focused on the office
during that time. And you have such an interesting it's crazy, like,
of all of my shows, like my favorite shows since
two thousand, almost all of them you had your you

(05:21):
had you were involved in one way or the other,
and truly like change, the face of television changed in
some ways, how people consumed. We'll talk a little bit
about that during your time in blocks or used to consume. Yeah, well,
but even so, you know how people consume and and
and what they were consuming on different networks. So I'm

(05:43):
I'm really excited to talk to you and then talk
a little bit about what's going on in the industry
right now. But going back for you, you grew up in
Long Island, right in New York. Were you a New
York kid? Like, were you taking advantage of this city?

Speaker 1 (06:00):
And yeah, but you know when you you know, when
you grow up outside New York City, if you're not
in New York City, there's just a hard line differentiator
between a city kid and a Long Island kid, you know.
I mean, especially if you're a condescending New York kid,
You're like, you're from where you know? So yeah, it

(06:20):
was twenty minutes without traffic, two hours with traffic, So no,
I kind of would go into the city. I mean,
I had I had my best friend growing up as
his father managed the New York Athletic Club, which was
like a just an institution, and he was a kid
who was just like he was the fourth child, and

(06:41):
at that point the parents were like, you know, wheels off.
They were great family, but he just got so I
just I would go in with him and we would
have these crazy adventures where we'd ended up being extras
in a movie. We'd go under the stanchion at a
crime scene. I mean, we had some crazy adventures in
New York City, but no, I was not a city, right.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
What were your favorite television shows as a kid. What
do you remember watching?

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh shit, I had a wild swath of things. I
mean when I was a little kid, lost in space somehow,
I just like I was in syndication. I mean, I
hate to say it, but I'm so fucking old that
it was like the still the three channel universe. And
I would just sit there, changing the channel and staring
at this before dinner.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Every night.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
My mother would be like.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Turn that thing off, right right?

Speaker 1 (07:27):
But I like watch you know, I watched I Love
Lucy reruns with my mother, you know, I mean I
got laugh in. I got to stay up and watch
Goldie Hawn in a bikini, and I was like, Wow,
this this thing is cool. I didn't even like something
there's something going on with this show. Like generationally, that
was a whole different kind of thing. And then when
I got into sort of the Monty Python kind of age,

(07:50):
I just found those guys were seminal influence to me.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Did you watch Saturday Night Live as a kid?

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yes, And that was probably one of the coolest things
when I finally when I I went back to be
the president of NBC, and I became friends with Lauren
and I still am and like an actual friend of Lauren's.
We kind of bonded over thirty Rock in particular, which
was you know, Tina Fey was really one of Lauren's favorites,
and she was not only the head writer, but you know,

(08:17):
it became a really significant thing. So when I actually
got to sit in the booth with Louren down in
studio at eight h and I was like, man, if
you told me when I was a kid, because I was, look,
I was right at that age where it was just
a groundbreaking thing. And I would have to remember running
home to watch Saturday Live at eleven thirty, you know,
at just that prime age of whatever the hell I

(08:39):
was in my teens, and I was like, this is it?
So sort of on some level. Those were kind of
where I decided I have no idea what this is.
I don't know even know how you get into that business.
I don't have a clue. But that's I really knew
back then that's what I wanted to do somehow.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
You wanted to be involved in television.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Just entertainment, Yeah, I mean television, but know it was
just like I wanted, I want in on whatever that is.
And I came out to California to visit Disneyland with
my parents when I was in sixth grade, and I
was like, I guess this is where they make movies
and things, and there's palm trees here. I just was like,
note to self, I'm doing this and coming here and
I it was a long, windy, twisty road and I

(09:20):
didn't and I was clueless on that road, but I
figured it out.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
It's funny because similar and then for me it really
happened later. But you know, when I was traveling around
the country doing theater, I remember visiting for the and
I had, you know, a friend of a friend who
was friends with Callista Flockhart, and I got invited to

(09:45):
come out for a Midsummer Night's dream. I guess was
the movie Calista Flockhart was. And I came out and
I was staying near Westwood, and there was this thing
called Coffee Bean where everyone sat outside so exotic in
the sun. Yeah, drank freezy drinks and fade donald when

(10:07):
you learned.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Then that in La somehow there's a lot of people
that seem to have no cares in the world, and
they're sitting around in the middle of the day drinking coffee.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
They're sing around.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I don't know who these people are, but.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
You know, well, I thought it would just happened once
you got there. Yeah, and yeah, it was like exactly, like,
no to self, I don't need to be freezing myself
in Minnesota. Yeah for that much longer. Let's move out here. Yeah,
you went to Cornell, I did.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Speaking of freezing your ass off.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, so when you were at Cornell, were you thinking
about being involved in entertainment.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yes, I still had no clue what it was. I mean, look,
I became a communications major thinking that was somehow gonna impact.
I took classes. I took screenwriting classes at if A College,
which actually had sort of a legit program, And uh,
I think about it now because it's pre Google, you know.
I mean, I don't even know how anybody figured out anything.

(11:05):
I mean, it does make you be crafty, but you'd
have to go get a few of the books that
were written, or you'd maybe some magazines would be stuff.
So I'm gleaning whatever I could. But the one couple
things I did well, which is I just I had
a lot of pressure. I mean, everyone I grew up
with ended up in somehow Wall Street, if you will,
whether they were a trader or if they had bigger brains,

(11:29):
they became an investment banker. And everybody kind of did that.
And a lot of guys that you graduated had job
offers and their acceptance letters on the wall. I didn't.
I I tended bar. I was like, I better go
pay the bills because my father, who did not support
this career choice to begin with, was definitely not going
to support it and support me. So I just tended bar.

(11:53):
That's what I went to do. Well. I went to
some programs at NYU and just ran around New York
City from one my parents house in Long Island, trying
to figure out who would give me a break.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
You talked about taking a screenwriting class. Did you ever
see yourself as a writer or as an actor.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yes, I didn't really understand. I just knew I loved
it all, and there were moments of kind of having
my toe in each kind of pond a little bit,
you know. Acting I moved away from pretty quickly because
I just was like, I had actor friends. I loved it,
but I was like, boy, I don't I don't think
I can do this, you know, the job of being

(12:32):
the actor, you know, not the craft, the job part
of it. I just like, man, I just don't think
I have that kind of personality. And it scared me.
It probably scared me too much, you know, because my
parents just were not Look there were great people, they
just didn't get that at all. And the writing I
had more discipline on. But then I kind of went
the same route. I was like, man, I just spent

(12:53):
two and a half years years in New York. I
don't think I ever slept. I was on the I
was carrying coffee on the sets of commercials, music videos.
I did like one hundred and fifty of them. I
mean literally didn't sleep. There were times I would get
home at two in the morning and be like, Okay,
I need to be back on set at five, I've
got to catch the train. I would set a clock

(13:15):
and literally put it on my chest and sleep for
forty five minutes and wake up and throw coffee in
my face and go back to work. So it was
all kind of a blur. But I did some writing,
but I was by the time I got to California,
where I just packed my car and winged it and
drove across country with no month, like literally eight hundred

(13:35):
dollars to my name, which I spent very quickly. I
just think I didn't have the guts, frankly, to say,
all right, I'm going to be a writer. I was like,
I'll I need something that's gonna if I get a job,
will pay me in the short run. And I had
regret about that for a number of years, where I
kept beating myself up for being a sellout, you know.
And then I finally was like, well, if there's then

(13:55):
go right, you know. And then I was like, gave that.
I was like, move on.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
I did not know you drove. You just packed up
the car and went to LA I know that fairly quickly, right.
You ended up at Universal As on the public.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Side, And when I was driving across country. I drove
the southern route and I stayed with some a bunch
of college friends along the way and in Atlanta, actually,
I stayed with a guy who was in the hotel
business and his roommate was in the hotel business, and
he gave me a name of a guy. He's like, look,
I don't I don't know what this guy does if
he's at Universal Pictures, and he puts actors in my hotel,

(14:33):
in our hotel when he comes to town. He's a
nice guy. And then I like him, you should you know,
here's his name. And I was like, oh, I have contacts,
you know, I know Flockharts, second friends, Nanny, and I'm
going to you know, yeah, exactly, so my contacts I
like through that thing in my suitcase. And when I
got to LA and all the people who said call
me when you get here didn't return my phone calls,

(14:56):
and I was in a cold panic and like seriously
running out of money, and then out of money, I
like dug out that number and I called this guy Universal,
who was a nice guy, and I had a meeting.
He didn't hire me, but a few months later, when
I was really starting a panic out of the Blue.
He just called me up and just was like, hey,

(15:17):
I don't know what you're doing, but we got this job.
He was in marketing, and I didn't ever really want
to be in marketing, but he said, look, it's in
publicity and promotion on you kind of a you know,
number two person on the West Coast overseeing that part
of it for us in the in the you know,
feature film business, you know, would you be interested? And
I was like, oh, yeah, let me just check with
my people. Sure, yeah, I think I could squeeze that in.

(15:41):
So that was just like a huge breakout of the blue,
which was really me driving stopping in Atlanta to go
to Hooters with my idiot friend from Cornell and in Atlanta.
So that's how I got it.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
And then one year later, I mean I did that.
I really was. It was a very interesting experience, but like, yeah,
I don't want to be in marketing. I want to
be in the creative ent. And then I had just,
through a bunch of weird connections, kind of wangled my
way into a dialogue at NBC. And I remember I was,
you know, I was young at that time. I was
still going out at night during midweek and I remember

(16:16):
we'd have these long, boring meetings, like three hour staff meetings,
and I kept falling asleep in them. And one day
the head of the department of the marketing department like
threw a ball of paper at me while I was asleep,
and I woke up and she goes after the meeting,
she goes, can I see you? And she said, look,
you're really bright, and I have no doubt that if

(16:36):
you stuck with this, you would run this department someday.
But if you don't get your head into it, I'm
going to fire you. And the problem was I was
interviewing crazily to get out of this job and then
kind of phoning it in and sort of lost interest
in it even though thank god I had it. And
literally two days later I got offered a job at NBC,
and I went in and just told her, like, you

(16:57):
know what, we're on the same page. I'm quitting.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
So and that was that walking into NBC for the
first time. Yeah, was there a feeling like was it
like I've made it, mom?

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, you know, you just I think, like anything in life,
I mean, for me, those seminal moments when their actual happened,
even down to like having children, like you're just sort
of like somewhere between overwhelmed in the moment or just like, oh,
I guess I'm doing this now, you know, I'm right,
I guess this is happening. But then you do have

(17:32):
this moment, and quite often it would be to me
be you know, when you were busy during the day
or look I was, you know, half panicked. You're a
young person, You're slightly into your head. You can't believe
you even have this job, your busiest shit. A lot
of times it was like at the end of the day,
you know, one of the still things about la when
the sun's setting and it's just temperature's really nice. I'd

(17:53):
walk out and you're driving off the lot and you're like, huh.
You know, I remember watching like for me on the
NBC lot. It was usually guests leaving as I was
like driving off the lot, guests leaving from their taping
of the Tonight Show. So you know, Jay Leno would
do the Tonight Show. It's still Johnny Carson in those days,
and they you know, would tape from five to seven

(18:16):
or whatever it was, and when the guests you see
the limos and you sometimes you'd see them loading up
in their car and we're driving out together, and those
are the moments where I was like, cool, I guess
all right, I'm actually in the real deal here.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It is.
There is that like evening time sun is going down,
like the air it does, it feels different, and if
you sort of transport yourself to your younger self thinking
about it, and there's like you know, and then you
get stuck in traffic on you know, yeah that's Burbank

(18:52):
Boulevard or whatever for an hour and.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
A half, streaching halt. Literally, Oh, you're like.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
But there there are those moments where you're like, oh, yeah,
this is what this is what I think I.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Have a memory of, specifically early on on my thing,
driving down Sunset Boulevard. I had put all of the
money I had on the East Coast saved up into
this used BMW with one hundred and ten thousand miles
on it, because I was like, I need a car
that's not going to I mean, even though it was
all those things were built like you know, they could
go forever if you took care of them, and it
was in such awesome shape, and this was the only

(19:23):
thing I had. I remember driving down Sunset Boulevard with
the Palm Tree silhouetted and going like, oh man, here
it is the Disneyland thing that I envisioned, you know,
still sort of alive and well, I guess.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, So you get hired well by Brandon Tartakoff, first
manager of Creative Affairs, then the VP of Drama Development.
Talk to me a little bit about your relationship with Tartakoff. Close.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Good, Yeah, I mean this is a guy like I
don't you know, I don't know who would be listening
this out there, but it's some either. You know, this
was a guy at a time when guys who ultimately
held the button of like there were you know, three
doors to access the television world and then only maybe
four meaningful ways to act, you know, to truly access

(20:17):
the film world. So if you had one of those
chairs that kind of opened one of those doors, it
was a really influential position. And this guy, at a
very young age was thought of as a genius in television.
He had been promoted to the head of it when
he was a very young guy, and he was both
intimidating just by virtue of how great he was, but

(20:41):
I loved him. I mean, like he passed away at
a really young age. He had fought cancer a number
of times and eventually gave into it and in his forties,
I think, so it kind of gave him that James
Dean sort of status in the business. But he he
was just a witty guy who loved loved the medium.
He loved great TV. He loved cheesy, fun entertainment. I

(21:05):
remember one time I was on a plane and of
course he was sitting in first class and I went
past him, and I remember like he sent a little
like goofy note back to me. He had ripped something
out of Variety and made like a joke in the
column and had like twenty people pass it back to me.
And I was like, holy shit, like this is like
my boss's boss boss is sending me back his gofy note.

(21:27):
And I love that about him. So it was a
cool experience, and you know, cut to it was his
actual There was times when I would sit in his
office on the couch, like the fifth one on the
Someone said to me early on when I was like,
how do you get into one of his jobs? He
was a producer, He said, look when I go into
pitch and I'm pitching tartak cough. There's like six other

(21:47):
people on the couch drinking evy on. I don't know
what they all do, but you want to be one
of those people. And so I was like the sixth
one down on the couch drinking Evyon. And I remember
being in his office and going, I don't know, maybe
someday I would do this, This would be cool to
do this. And when I finally did, many years later,
get that actual job in his actual office, that hadn't

(22:09):
really changed much at all. Even with the Bank of
there were like eight televisions in a row. It used
to be three, and then they added to the Minimore
Networks right right, And I always thought that was cool.
It's like, oh man, he's got all day long, three
things running all at once so we can watch what's
happening with the competition. And then when I got there,

(22:29):
that was a you know, cool moment too.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, I don't think I realized. I mean, I know
that I knew at some point that he died that young.
But it's like, if you talk about NBC in the past,
you talk about Tartakoff like his name exists, Like yeah,
I don't know if it's James Dean or Kennedy or
any of those sort of leaders that unfortunately leave us

(22:53):
too soon. And and yeah, has that sort of lore
yet forty eight?

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I just go to a forty.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Forty eight Wow. Yeah, while you were there during this time,

(23:22):
you developed, I mean cult legendary Saved by the Bell.
Talk to me about that. Talk to me about how
Saved by the Bell came about.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Well, I worked with at the studio. So this idea
that used to be illegal. There were anti trust laws
that prevented the networks from also producing their own things,
so we would just commission from outside studios like Universal
Television would produce the show for NBC. Those things were
starting to evolve, and I was on the very first

(23:55):
iteration of NBC Studios that became sort of their in house.
So that is how I really got to know Brandon
because there were only three employees at NBC Studios my
second year at the company, which was Brandon, my boss,
Leslie Lurie, and me. So I really did get to
work with him even closer at a young age. And

(24:15):
we were producing this show called Good Morning, Miss Bliss,
about a group of kids in school with Haley Mills,
who was a famous actress from back in the day,
and she was I don't know, in their late sixties
at this point. Inter thing. It was for the Disney Channel.
We weren't even producing it for NBC. They canceled it.
It was not good, and Brandon was like, take that,

(24:38):
the cocky blonde kid, these other two girls and the
funny nerdy kid, figure out what it is, and we're
going to do it ourselves and make it ahead and
shove it down their throats. So that was like Brandon's competitiveness,
Like they canceled his thing, and now he was going
to turn into a hit. And Peter Engel, who I'm
going to text right now, who God bless him is

(24:59):
still going and strong in his eighties, who created it
is a one of just a great inspired nut. It
was my show. I was given this thing. We even
cooked up the title on a phone call one day
of like, I was like, what is this thing about?
What is it? And Peter's head writer at the time,
I was like, look, this shouldn't be about school when
you're in school. It's about what happens when you're out

(25:21):
of school. And this guy Tom Tender, who had said, yeah,
you know, like say by the Bell, and Peter was like,
that's a great title, and U and that that was
the and so on my first year I worked on
this thing, and I was sort of depressed, to be
honest with you, because I was like, I spending all
of my time doing this thing, and all the primetime
people are putting up all these really you know, we're

(25:41):
working on like Seinfeld and things that became like institutions,
and I'm doing this Saturday morning live action kids thing
that no one gives a crap about. Cut to like
five hundred episodes later, the thing became an institution, and
it was intended for like, at the time, tweens watching

(26:02):
Saturday morning TV, which is like one of the only
things you had. It was like very few choices when
you woke up. And when what we never realized was
like a whole generation of college kids, you know, of
that age would wake up and kind of you know,
shake off their Friday night by vegging out watching this show.
And it became kind of a cult thing. And I

(26:23):
cannot tell you to this day how strong that thing is.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
I mean, God still alive and well, well yeah, I
mean it's it's as you say, cult, but yeah, it
became an institution. I did they really do five hundred episodes?
Is that?

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well? They did a couple of spin offs then of right, okay,
California Dreaming, Dreamings or whatever they called. They did a
fusee iterations, but it was it was in the hundreds,
all in in the franchise.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
You also during that time developed Er Network, and you
supervised the first season of Law and Order. I mean
these are legendary primetime television shows, both going over twenty seasons.
So I guess they let you off of the Saturday
morning event.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
They did they did, yeah, yeah, then I kind of
came back and did that again. Crazy. You know, the
success squeaks its three through in weird ways, you know,
like we went through in the Office, where you know,
a super impactful generational show barely squeaked its way through life.
I mean that was my experience more often than not.

(27:33):
I mean Law and Order, which is now thought of
as like this insane institution. You know, for a lot
of listeners are probably like, yeah, my mother's watched it forever,
But at the time it was this very novel thing.
Dramas were not selling into syndication because nobody wanted to
buy one hour shows, so Dick Wolf literally designed it
as two half hour shows originally that we're going to

(27:55):
do the Law and the Order, but then they could
be joined on the first run on television, but then
they would be syndicated separately. NBC bought this show not
because they wanted this. This was Dick's like big show,
but they wanted his hit show, which was going to
be a thing called Nasty Boys, which was these guys
with a souped up boat and they were a squad

(28:17):
that came in in masks and they seized your property
for drug raids and things, and when they did, they
got to keep it. So they had super cool motorcycles
and boats. And it was not a good show. And
I'm working on I'm, you know, now, only a couple
of years into my career, and they kind of gave
them to me in this and I oversaw them and

(28:38):
everybody's like, how's Nasty Boys going. I was like, you
know this thing, Law and Order is like really, oh yeah,
that's talk about Nasty Boys. So Nasty Boys aired, I
think it like came and went in less than one season,
and Law and Order was not a huge hit of
the gate, but was always a very kind of groundbreaking
show at the time in terms of its rhythms and

(28:59):
the kind of the hour. It was one of the
early shows that talked took policing as police was kind
of talking about a job, you know, like guys would
be there like you know, talking about their donuts and
sort of stepping over the body, not like the old
cops who were like, we just solve this case, you know,
which was like the old school way, like they're like, yeah, look,
we see a lot of this stuff. And you know,

(29:20):
witnesses weren't cooperative and lawyers had to make deals, and
it was those were like kind of a step forward.
And then you know, that was an institution. And then
Er was a similar kind of thing where it was
when it was screened, it was in the screening room
from the powers. It'd be were like, we don't get it.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Right. Talk to me a little bit. Because those two
shows I consider at least differently what people refer to
as procedurals. Yeah, and then there's what's the opposite.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Of that, Well, there were serialized shows, so two different things.
So the procedural means a closed ended thing, you know,
and That's one of the reasons that Law and Order
had such incredible staying power. You didn't need to see
season one, you didn't need to bing season five to
catch up. You just you could drop into any episode
a body dropped in the beginning, and the crime was solved.
At the end, case closed, and they've done I don't

(30:14):
know at this point, between the franchise of all the
different iterations, I don't know how many hundreds of episodes,
thousands maybe at this point. But a serial show, which
Er was, and many other great shows and many of
the biggest shows today are you know, it's an ongoing storyline. Now.
You had procedural elements in Er, which is, you know,

(30:35):
the the medical cases would close, you know, come on,
stat get on the thing coming away with somebody's gonna
lose She's gonna.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Lose the baby.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
You know, oh great, at the end of the thing
they saved the baby, like so all right, so that's closed.
But the ongoing soap opera part of it, if you will,
would go on sometimes the whole season, right, and then
you had to kind of catch up, and you know,
it was really weird. You know, it was a very
sticky way of watching television. But you think about it now,
there was no catchup or binge device. You had to

(31:03):
just kind of watch to stay.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
You had to watch for you on the network side,
how do you make those decisions if you're going to
pick up, are you looking for a balance of both
that you might be able to sell later on or
how are those decisions made?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
You know, the business is just so radically different now.
I mean, obviously with the ability to bringe something and
watch at your own pace and start from the beginning
with streaming. You know, when you had a one way
situation where it was a day and date, like it's
on Tuesday at nine and you have to watch it

(31:42):
Tuesday at nine and it may repeat somewhere down the road,
but that it would be your only opportunity to watch.
I think generationally you explain that to people, and it's
like trying to explain the telegraph. You know, you're like,
what why would you do that? Like this and buggy
thing like that sounds ridiculous. And what was crazy is

(32:04):
the statistic of viewers somebody who viewed them. I used
to hear the statistic all the time, even somebody considered
this self a viewer. Statistically would watch one out of
six episodes, So I don't know how anybody followed anything,
but it was a lot of things went into it
of like you know, still serialized shows did not repeat
well at all because you just were it was just

(32:27):
really hard to jump in and randomly see an episode
and we're like, wait, when did they split up? You know,
I missed that episode. I don't even know what's going on.
Really dent shows, you know, like I mean, look the
early seminal shows like A Hill Street Blues that really
started multiple storylines going at the same time over the

(32:49):
course of a season really made them big impact. But
for a day and date experience, it was always a
little harder to program those things.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
So yeah, now that tends to be the norm because
it's highly addictive. As you know, when you're when you're
into a storyline, it feels like you just got to
keep watching, watching, to the point of a binge.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Today, why did you leave NBC and go to Borlstein Gray?

Speaker 1 (33:18):
I had just sort of gotten the network had gone
through a roller coaster of being the top and then
kind of getting beat up and having some management changes,
and it just felt like time to make a change.
I you know, the Tartakoff had left at that point.
He hadn't passed on, but he had left. It was

(33:39):
it was not being that much fun. I was getting frustrated.
I mean, look, as a young guy, I to the
extent I've made any reputations in the business, I always
felt like I wanted to reach forward, like you were saying,
curious about what people were watching and what they wanted
to watch differently than what was on. You know, there's
a tendency in general for people to want to do

(34:03):
what they've seen before, and in television it wasn't that
much desire. You know, the old Guard to a large
degree kind of wanted to just serve up the same
aversion of the same thing they'd done a million times before.
I was always like, what's next, What's new? And I
could feel generationally that this thing was really changing. I
mean that's how some of these shows like Er that

(34:25):
were like what do you mean the patient dies and
the doctor's making what do you mean the doctors are
making jokes while they've got somebody's chest open, the bullet
with a bullet wound, Like that's you know, that's not
what the heroes do. What do you mean, a bad
guy is the center of a show. These were rules
you didn't break, and I was always like, well, why
wouldn't you like that's kind of what the my generation

(34:48):
I could see the next one wanted, and so I
was just getting kind of frustrated that this wasn't changing enough.
So then brill Sen Gray was just this management company
that had big clients that wanted to go into producing,
and it seemed like a cool move, and so that's
what I did.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
While you were there, you worked on many shows, to
name a few, just shoot Me News Radio, Steve Harvey Show,
and you also worked on the pilot of this little
show called The Sopranos. As The Sopranos is happening, are
you aware of how good it is or what it
has the potential to be?

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Not initially, because again it was another failure. I mean,
it was so fascinating to be throughout my career is
that most of the things that have ended up in
my resume and my bio were failures that became the successes.
You know. I mean David Chase, who created it, I

(35:46):
knew him through you know, David was in his fifties
at this point, and he had been a one of
the really fine television writers. He was a rule breaker.
You know. David's a guy who's always frustrated with this system.
He wanted to do something more artistic than the formula,
and he did it to pay the bills, but he
was always grumbling about it. He's like, I'm doing this

(36:06):
goddamn thing. So we ended up giving him an overall deal.
He was always like a new one of the better writers,
pure writers. And we developed the sopranos for we sold
it to Fox, and Fox was the upstart network that
was doing quote unquote edgy stuff, and it went into
development and it got all the way down the loan

(36:28):
line and we LaPaglia for a minute was attached as
Conny's soprano, and we had at least interest from his
camp and we were going to get it made, and
then Fox passed on it, and then David was depressed,
and it kicked around for like two years just as
a passed on project, and eventually found its way over

(36:51):
to HBO, who sort of picked it up to redevelop it,
but pretty much had the same script that we had
at Fox. It wasn't really written and just took the
Fox out of it. You know, we took all the
stuff that you couldn't air on broadcasts and then just
put it back in right and did a little bit
more development, and then then they agreed to shoot the

(37:15):
pilot and went through this casting process of the really
inspired choice to cast Gandelfini, who was really the opposite
of a leading man, but you can't conceive of anybody
else doing that role.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, after you shoot the pilot and you see what
you have, do you see it? Like, are you able
to see that it's going to change HBO and paid television.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Our company had done the Larry was doing the Larry
Sanders Show for it. Okay, so this is early early
HBO where they did two shows and we produced two
of them. We did Deaf Comedy Jam, which was actually
a very big show for them, and then at the
opposite end of that spectrum the Larry's Sanders Show, which
was kind of, you know, a coastal show, really smart comedy.

(38:06):
It was it was a fraction of the audience of
Death Comedy Jam.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
But so they were HbA always trying to find their
footing too, and collectively, I think everyone was just sort
of wading into this thing. So it was clearly the
pilot was clearly something special. But I will say for me,
anything I've ever been involved in I thought was good.
You never go I've never said the words this is

(38:32):
a hit. You know, you look at it and you go,
this is first like, this is a thing. There's something here,
and if we keep doing this, it's gonna be good,
and if we get a little lucky, it actually will
be something significant. And that's just the way I've always
looked at it. I've never been surprised, like, oh my god,
I had no idea that was good. But I've certainly

(38:53):
been surprised on the downside times. But I've definitely been
surprised when fine, not pleasantly, like oh my god, they're
catching on to what we've known for a while. So, yeah,
the pilot was and Chris Albrick at the time, and
I've told him this story. I went over to screen
the pilot and he screened it with Carolyn Strausho has

(39:13):
gone on to produce many great things, most recently The
Last of Us for HBO, which was incredible and at
the end, and I told Chris's story, he doesn't even
recall doing it, but the lights came up and Chris
literally put his head in his hands and was rubbing
his eyes and it felt like it felt like five
minutes of silence, and then he looked up and he

(39:35):
was like, it's good. It's really good. And I think
he had to just wrap his hands around like this
weird thing of where this guy burns down his best
friend's restaurant and he's wading in a pool with ducks.
I think he just had to be like, okay, like
I think we'll do this, and weirdly, the moment where

(39:56):
you really really felt like it's been written about, but
there was, I believe the fourth episode because prior to
that point, Tony had never directly he had circumstantially ordered
hits or had talked about You knew he had his
hands and stuff, but you never saw it directly or
you never you never saw him directly go go kill
that fucking guy and then somebody's It was indirect a

(40:17):
lot of times, and that was part of the art
of it, you know. There was like the presumption like, eh,
we did what we had to do in the fourth
I believe it was a fourth episode of that season,
that seminal episode where he's taken his daughter on a
college trip and he sees a guy who's right is wrong,
and he chokes the guy to death with his bare hands.
And that was that was a you know now where

(40:39):
everything that's transpired since feels like, well, yeah, what's the
big deal. But at the time you're like, wait, this
is the quote unquote hero of our show. It's one
thing to know he's a bad guy, but he's a
bad guy who we kind of like, and he likes
ducks and his mom doesn't treat him well. So we
were like, but now he is choking someone to death
with his bare hands. That's a whole different ballgame. Like

(41:00):
people going to just go I'm out, Like I'm out,
I can't get behind this guy. And it was a
huge debate, and HBO, to their credit, this was the
early days of them forming their DNA, basically said okay,
well back you. I mean they first were freaking out,
but they agreed to back it, and at that moment
was when I think a lot of people involved were

(41:22):
sort of like, Wow, now this thing is really in
a category of it's and I think many for them
just galvanize this thing of like you got to see
the show.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Right, do you think your experience working on that and
the success that it had. How much do you think
that that influenced choices that you made in your career
once you became the boss later on?

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Hugely influential. I mean it had been building all the
way up with the number of things you've even just
referenced of what my playbook and things my reference points
were were not anything that the same old, same old
that I now was accumulating touchstones of things where I go, oh,
here's where we stuck the finger in the eye of
what you were supposed to do and it worked out great,

(42:09):
right so creatively in terms of the work, Yes, that
became a huge north starter.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
You become president of Entertainment at FX at the time
you transform that network. I mean that network you know
before you arrived, doing a lot of syndication, shitty, just
terrible reruns and one of my other favorite shows of
all time that changed television. It's one thing to have

(42:56):
a mobster strangle somebody. When you start talking about the
shield you've you've now got cops who are doing very
very naughty things. Was your decision and your confidence in
green lighting that and having that show go? Does that
come from the Sopranos and the success.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
I just the business of it was that, for all
of its impact, HBO's audience penetration at the time, there
was about one hundred and ten million viewing households in
the country that could get television of some sort. Even
cable was getting pretty highly penetrated at that point, you know,

(43:40):
basic cable, but HBO's subscription cable, they were only in
about twenty eight million homes, so only a fraction of
the whole country had even gotten to see They may
have heard of the Sopranos. But I was like Peter
Legori and I who kind of were in the seats
at the time. Peter had been at HBO as a
marketing executive. His history was not as creative. I came

(44:04):
over there and we basically said, let's get as close
as we can to HBO on basic cable. You know,
we can't do everything they do, but we're going to
try to be as sort of finger in your eye
as possible. And this was written as a spec script,
as a writing sample. It was given to me by

(44:24):
and somebody said you should read this. This guy, Sean Ryan,
is a good writer. And I read it, and I
met with him, and I said, well, we're going to
make this, and he goes, what do you mean, And
I go, we'll make this. He goes like that. I go, yeah,
we'll make this, and he still he couldn't believe it.
He was a young guy, had never run a show.
And it was truly one of the great experiences of
my career, just the whole thing it went down. We

(44:45):
were it was such a ragtag shitty I took a
pay cut to go to that job. I went from
these beautiful offices in Beverly Hills with magnificent literally recognizable
art on the wall and the designer would have to
approve your furniture choice to the this shithole on Suppulvita Boulevard.
Literally there was it was shag carpeting from like the eighties.

(45:08):
There was a giant stain in the middle of it.
There was a hole. Someone had punched a hole in
the wall of my office and just hung a picture
over it, but not it didn't fully cover the hole.
And so it was just felt like, what this really
ragtag operation? And we kind of made this thing and

(45:28):
under the radar, I remember, you know, technically it was
an ADS supported network. We screened this for advertisers in
New York, and like dozens of them bolted for the
door after the lights came up. They like didn't even
want to look us in the eye. They're like, we're
not putting. And I remember Donna Speciali, who became I
worked with for years at Turner, was the head of
ad sales who I really loved. At the time, she

(45:50):
was at some I forget what agency was. She was
a big buyer, and she came up She's like, I
really like this and I'm gonna watch you guys, and
I'm gonna see how this goes. I'm not putting a
nickel into this show. And the only the only thing
that the only advertiser we had was Mike's Hard Lemonade
on FX. They literally nobody else would touch it but
Mike's Hard Lemonade. And then we just filled it with
Mattress King commercials and a bunch of shitty local stuff,

(46:13):
right nobody, you know, that stuff was too too edgy
for them to put any advertising in. But that was
like the foundational DNA for the network. And I recently
caught up and Binge the Bear. I don't know if
you saw it. I loved it. Blew me away. I
thought it was brilliant, and I was like, man, there
it is some of that same DNA still in that place.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Yeah, in addition to the shield Nip tuck, Rescue Me, Yeah,
a very very different sort. What is Rescue Me a
comedy or a drama?

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yes? I only bought the I bought only bought the
original script, and then I had transitioned over to NBC.
I was already in transition. I had the job, and
I had the in my side pocket, while I in
my right pocket was kind of Rescue Me, and in
my left pocket was this thing called the Office that
I'd be given the tape of that. I was like,
all right, I'm not making that at effects. I'm going

(47:08):
to NBC.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah. We talked a lot about the Office being the
savior of the Office. My name is Earl, which you
know saved the Office as well. So thank you for
that one thirty rock Yeah, Friday Night Lights heroes, I mean,
and then on the unscripted side, Dealer, no deal, America's

(47:29):
got talent, and many many more. This is incredible. The
year that you you will you leave again. In two
thousand and seven, sixty nine Emmy nominations that year across
all of these shows. It's I mean, it's a huge

(47:50):
legacy that you left. You leave to go to Fox.
But talk to me a little bit about that transition
they for you, do you feel like you got treated unfairly?

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Look at the time, I would say, what was so
ironic is the four years NBC had really gotten very
entitled of you know, the landscape was really changing. At
this point. There were you know, bonafide four networks now
for you know, about a decade at that point, since
eighty eight when Fox was founded. Only towards the end

(48:27):
how they launched this little show called American Idol. So
Fox was about to go. You know, they had the
Simpsons and things like that, so it was X files.
Fox was really a bonafide challenger and always sort of
did a lot of pounds for a pound of cool
stuff that I always thought was cool on television. NBC
had been at the top and gotten you know, on
the front the er Friends, Seinfeld trifecta was just a juggernaut.

(48:54):
But it was beginning to you know, Seinfeld had gone off,
it was coming down. Friends was on its last days.
Law and Order was still on, but had you know,
they had all come down to earth and you could
see the writing on the wall that it was about
to really go from hanging on to the top to
being bad, being in trouble. And that's when I joined.

(49:14):
And I was very naive, thinking, well, I'm just going
to be the savior of this place and I'll be
like Brandon Tartakoff, I'll turn it around and everyone will
tell me I'm a genius. But now we're also fighting
a broader environment. You know where it's the beginning the
early early stages of digital consumption generationally. You know this
idea of watching day and day, and I know this

(49:35):
in my gut. I'm like broadcast television in my mind,
is in its last breadths of dominance. It's but I
was like, everybody's got to face the facts that NBC,
the juggernaut, that of what it was of turning on
must see TV Thursday night, those days are not coming back.

(49:55):
And I just felt like it needed to be rebuilt
from the ground up with really cool stuff that the
next generation wanted to watch. Even if Grant Tinker early
in his career, who was Brandon Tartakoff's boss, he at
the time when they rebuilt it way back in a
different era had this expression saying, first, be best, then

(50:18):
be first, And I always love that, and I always
thought it was really meaningful. First, be best, then be first.
When you're a first place network, that means billions of dollars,
that means profits, That means everyone gets big fat bonuses
and bragging rights. Right when your best but not first
and have slipped and you're losing starting to lose a

(50:41):
lot of that money. Not so fun on the business level.
We were owned by General Electric at this and ge
was just used to this little cash machine. Just Seinfeld
comes and sell, you know, tells jokes at our giant
retreat to guys who make locomotives and turbines and tractors
and so cool. And then you know, we were a
small business in the GEO portfolio, but we paid a

(51:03):
lot of cash, so it was a fast cycle business.
You know, when you're making jet engines, that's a big
capital thing that doesn't pay out for long cycles. You know,
in television, you have a season and at the end
of the season, it's like, oh, here's the cash, and
you can just it's available. It's not tied up in
this big thing. So they liked us. We were just

(51:24):
a big cash machine, but all of a sudden when
it started turning really challenging and cash intensive, not so
much fun from Fairfield. And you know, as somebody said
back in the day, they send them guys with the clipboards.
And when they send the guys with the clipboards there
to help, you really don't want the help. Like it's
a bunch of consultants and people going, Brian, how are you?

(51:48):
How are things?

Speaker 5 (51:49):
So?

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Why would you have done that? Why would you have
put on that kind of show? For example? People don't
seem to enjoy and you're trying to tell this like
walk from Fairfield, Like, first of all, you are a
tight ass NBA who has zero You don't even you
have bad loafers on. You certainly don't have a feel
for fucking culture. Go talk to the jet engine guys,

(52:12):
because you are not going to fix this place. And
the building was crawling with those people. So I'm trying
to put on some of these cool shows only other
than Heroes, which was a bit of a hit right
at the gate and kind of a cultural thing, but
not enough like Friends to single handedly turn the network around.
And I thought we were doing really cool work but

(52:34):
to be honest with you, I was getting almost not
only was I not getting credit, I was getting nothing
but second guessing. I was rumored to be fired every
other week. And so again like a really I went
from this incredible FX thing where it was like the
most fun thing, but it was three years and all
of a sudden, I had that dream job. I thought

(52:56):
back at Brandon Tardakoff's desk with the actual thing. And
even the day I did the job, I got an
award called the Brandon Tartakoff Award, which was like kind
of like the best of the best in broadcasting. And
I went down and got the award in Miami, and
I kind of told that story like I had the
day I got it, I had this sinking feeling. I
sat at his desk, I looked up at the Bank

(53:18):
of Televisions and I was like, this is fucking cool,
and I have made a terrible, terrible mistake coming here.
And so what was awesome is that the shows, the
stuff we did I was always really proud of, and
it all then went on to have cultural impact and
then business impact, like the office that is one of

(53:38):
the biggest assets in their whole portfolio today but as
we lived, it didn't start that way, and so you know,
I was pretty much invited to not do that job
after four years. And yeah, I was pretty fucking uh
I was not. I was pretty bent out of shape
over it all.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah, Fox gladly takes you, yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Very quickly. Like I was like, oh my god, that's
what I was doing. I was setting into staff meetings
and going NBC, I mean Fox, Like, I kept like,
I'm like, what am I doing back in one of
these places? They can't believe it?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Go on to have huge success at Fox Brooklyn nine nine,
A lot of office folks by the way that you
you bring over there, Mindy Project, Last New Girl, Glee,
as well as tons of animated hits. Yeah, of all
of the show I have a question of all the

(54:32):
shows that you've done, and don't pander because I'm here,
what are you the most proud of?

Speaker 1 (54:40):
There's there's different things for different different moments, you know,
I mean you were you were talking about the Shield
and that experience of kind of all of a sudden
making a service, like completely repositioning a service that then
went from a money losing, irrelevant thing to a profit

(55:01):
what became kind of a really meaningful brand was and
we had so much fun. I mean, we were just
those shows you mentioned, and you know, we won the
first Primetime Emmy and Golden Globes Awards. I mean when
Michael Chickliss first got up to take the first Emmy,
I literally grabbed his arm like what are you doing,
Like you didn't win, and he was like he looked

(55:22):
at me and he's like, just go with it, because
he did win, and everybody was like, what the hell
is that? So there's experiences like that. I've had, you know,
moments in other shows, but all kidding aside the experience
of the office where it was. Look, at that point,
I had made a decision I'm probably going to get

(55:42):
fired from this job at some point. I'm hanging on
by a thread. I am going to just fall on
my sword for the things I believe in. And somebody
had given me his advice like the worst thing you
could do is sell out and do what the bosses
want you to and then fail. Then you can't even
look yourself in the mirror. So I was like, if
they fire me, at least I want to say even

(56:03):
if they don't work, I want to say, well, I
put on what I believed because I have that power
to fight for some things. And the office was just
I don't know, just from a minute one, I'm like,
this is this is one of those ones. I'm just
not giving up on this thing. And then because it
had like really good people involved and it was such

(56:24):
a moment in time for all of us. You know,
I'm looking at our picture here, Brian, when you know,
at the When we Want Night, we won the Emmy
and they're hoisting me up, and I love looking at
that photo, not just because it's it's pure, you know.
I mean, as we know, show business is a is
a rough and tumble game man, and and everybody's got
scars to do, you know. I just shared some of mine,

(56:46):
you know, And but it's in its pure moment when
the thing happens and it's sort of coming out the
way you dreamed you And look, some talented people are
are very complicated. I had a really amazing experience on
thirty Rock. I adore Tina. She's an incredible talent. Tina

(57:06):
had a star named Alec Baldwin. Enormously talented guy and
obviously publicly enormously complicated. And so you know, there's a
you know, as Lauren said one point after Alec quit
for the fourteenth time, after he had won the Emmy
the night before, his agent calls up to say, I
just have to inform you that Alec is quitting the show,

(57:27):
which is at this point literally was about the seventh
and I remember Lauren at the time saying, Alec will
realize in retrospect it this was a good time, you know,
And but when you're in it, and this moment of
this picture I'm literally looking at of my left eye
over here, is pure joy for people who some of
whom needed a job and had a great one, and

(57:49):
others who just realized they were part of something special
and we got the affirmation. And that just for me,
and the fact really as it is for you, the
fact that then it went on to be one of
those rare shows where like now now you're into like
kids who weren't even born are at the time we're watching, and.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
I really love it.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
You know. That's that those are really rare at this era,
and so that's a pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah, do you consider yourself a creative.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Yes, in my heart, I've always had that temperament. I
think it's why I both succeeded in a certain respect
would and some of those struggles I will say that
I had that I'm outlining with the system and the man.
I just never wanted to be like the bureaucrat suit
that is just in the suite going like sure thing,

(58:41):
let's just do that because that's safe and we'll keep
our jobs. I was always kind of an irritant, and
I think those who appreciated it, and probably at a
younger age, I was too much, you know at times,
you know, they were just they don't want you always
trying to rock the boat. So you know, that's part
of what a creative is, you know. And the entrepreneurs

(59:03):
are a version of that.

Speaker 5 (59:04):
There.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
They want to press up, they want to do what
other people haven't done, and they got to kind of
have a blind belief in their ideas. And so yeah,
that's where I'm the most comfortable, and that's why I'm look,
I'm not ever going back to those jobs again. Those
big executive jobs are behind me.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Bill Lawrence, co creator of Spence City Scrubs, was quoted
as saying, every morning, all the writers start the day
with a cup of coffee talking about what assholes the
network executives are Kevin seems like one of us enough
that you find yourself not hating him.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
That's so funny. You know, I've known Bill a long time.
I haven't seen it was literally my neighbor for a
bunch of years in my house just before this one,
and I really appreciate hearing that. But he's funny.

Speaker 5 (59:56):
That's perfect Bill.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
We're in a historic moment right now. It's clear whatever
happens with the resolution of these strikes, both the WGA
and sag AFTRA, this is going to change entertainment and
television in many ways. Well, first off, do you believe
the strike should be happening? Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
And no. I yes because frankly, they're really legitimate issues
and I really feel for the artist community. But no,
because it's look, at this moment, it's kind of the
only mechanism to try to force some sort of change.
But the landscape of the industry is changed beyond what

(01:01:00):
the strike will be able to affect. So while I'd
like to believe that on the other side of the strike,
the foundations in place where like we've changed the industry
for the better and gotten our think it's I've gotten
divorced I remember my divorce lawyer saying at the time, like,
no one wins, it's just how much are you willing
to compromise, So there's not going to be a win.
It will be a compromise all the way around. And look,

(01:01:23):
the unfortunate thing is I've been asked, like even there's
somebody from New York Times like begging me to come
on their podcast and talk because I'm like a neutral
person who understands all the issues here. And I've avoided
it all because I will shoot my mouth off and
regret it. But what happened here is that a bus
rolled into town called Netflix. That everybody got on that

(01:01:44):
party bus, and everybody when they were firing money all
over the place and had this new model my last
thing as a corporate eriotage, I always felt like, this
is an unbelievable thing they're building, that's an incredible consumer experience,
and don't you think this is going to be a
problem for us? And all the powers that be were like,

(01:02:05):
they don't They're gonna go out of business, and they
kept selling all of our stuff over there. But look,
I also felt like the artist got on that party bus.
The irony part of the writers. You know the series
writers issues right now is it's only ten episodes. You know,
they don't they don't have big grill bust writers rooms.
I mean I used to talk to writers who are like,
why would I come do your network show for twenty two?

(01:02:27):
I only have to do ten? At Netflix? This is great.
You know, they were ordering at like a six to
one ratio from what so everybody was taking the money
and having a great old time with Netflix. And Netflix
uberized the business, you know, they turned it upside down
for better and worse. And the studios they were on
the party bus because they were selling We were selling

(01:02:51):
them all of our stuff really arrogantly misjudging the impact
it was going to have, not really getting out ahead
of like what do we have to do? Should we
take this thing seriously? What should we do? We just
thought we could somehow wait it out or wait till
they die, And yet we were fueling them with our
stuff by giving them our shows. And the studio leadership

(01:03:15):
did almost the worst thing. You know, I said to
someone the other day, like, let's stick with this somehow.
Traffic analogy, like if you're going to go through a
yellow light, you want to kind of go fast enough
to go through safely through that yellow light before it
turns red. The worst thing to do is to slow
down and go slow and then gun it and then

(01:03:36):
go through a red light, which is sort of what
the studios did with streaming. They waited and let this
thing begin to seriously erode and you could see where
it was going to erode their business, and then lurched
into it, further accelerating their problems. And so what we
have now is a business where the legacy companies have

(01:03:59):
underlying issues. Bob Eiger came out a few weeks ago
and said, these guys don't get it. I mean, it
wasn't a great look for Bob it certainly, I'm sure
a moment he regrets having doing it with the Billionaire's
conference behind him, really a bad look. What he's not
wrong about, though, is that these this strike is not
striking against the business we just talked about, this monopolistic

(01:04:21):
business that was born almost one hundred years ago that
we actually got to participate form, Bryan. It's now a
stressed business that is stretched where the legacy players, the WarnerMedia, Discoveries, NBCUS,
Paramount who yesterday sold Simon and Schuster and is they're
gonna start, They're gonna have to strip down the pieces

(01:04:42):
of these companies. They're not going to come rocketing back
in business as usual. And for the most part, the
digital players are not in our business as we knew it.
I mean, Amazon, does you know, I'm Apple's doing in
some really cool shows right now. Last I checked. That's
not their core business. They sell these things and they

(01:05:03):
make trillions of dollars. I mean, they're they're highly profitable
doing that. So the power basis shifted, how the business
work is shifting. And when the actors who are robbed
of their residual payments, which was harder thing that when
you got a good job that could pay your rent

(01:05:23):
for the rest of your life. That I feel for
the hard You know, I love actors, you know, because
I mean it's such a beautiful thing, and actors are
wonderfully naive in terms of like I just want to
do the work and then like, yeah, I'm okay with it,
but just like, let me have my let me have
my checks that come for that work I did. And

(01:05:45):
now they get checks for like thirty five cents. But
in order to report that you have to have transparency
on the actual usage of the service, which Netflix started
the game by never reporting any of that, right, and
they still don't. And unless there becomes more transparency, you're
not going to really be able to measure. So it
was imperfect. But we used to have a thing called

(01:06:08):
rating and in the box and box office, which were
measurements of success. Right, those don't exist. So my point
is it's a much more complicated tapestry. The issues are legit,
but this strike mechanism. Look, do I think everyone should
have held hands and together gone, listen, guys, we're all

(01:06:29):
in this together with different agendas. But this business, we
got to figure out a different path forward. Yeah, but
they didn't, you know, they let it get to the
eleventh hour and then a strike happens. So I think
the double strike, I think the actors really will together
force some step forward. But I'd love to say it's
all going to be fixed. It's not going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
Unfortunately, Well, as someone said to me, it's been fifty
years since the last actors strike. Ronald Reagan was SAG
president at the time, and the issues were much the
same as it has been explained to me, which is
actors sitting around when shows were rerun and saying, why

(01:07:11):
people are still enjoying our work? Why are we not
getting money for that? Yes, and I mean there's other issues,
and I don't mean to belittle all of them, but
that there was a negotiated rate that at least everyone
could except for work that now it doesn't exist. It's interesting,
it does feel like which I think has been the problem,

(01:07:35):
a little bit like trying to put a pin on
something that keeps moving. That the way things are consumed,
the way monetization formula could be made. It's all shifting
so quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Yes, but also let's not if you really even just
back up even further in the Ronald Reagan era, even
up until the Office Area era, where the writing you know,
as we remember The Office was, if not the first show,
one of the very early shows onto the iPod. You know,
when all of a sudden there's a video that could

(01:08:11):
be downloaded and streamed legitimately. So let's just use from that,
you know, the beginning filmed entertainment, whether it was at
the box office or on your television, was the pinnacle
of cultural consumption. Like that was what the kids talked about.

(01:08:32):
That was the write of pasth you went to the
movies with your friends, you sat around the television and
tuned in at eight o'clock at night. Everybody bought Michael
Jackson's thriller. It was a very almost sort of monopolistic
kind of environment. The environment today between the gaming world
and the interactive and all the TikTok and everything pressing

(01:08:52):
in from the sides that is highly demanding of your time,
and then the streaming business that has then upended the
middle of it. You have something that is a much
more complicated landscape to manage. So it's true the issues
are still the same, and at the time, I'm sure
they had really rational reasons why they weren't. You know,

(01:09:13):
you'd be beginning going back to the earlier artist employees
when well, you worked for us, you were contract players,
and you did what we did. So then it get no,
you know what, we're not your employees. We need to
be paid as our independent contractors of sorts with real rights,
which is what the unionization helped bring about. They are
the same fundamental issues, but unfortunately now the ability to

(01:09:37):
is not. It's not the five families at the top
that just say all right, once I waived this wand
it just is fixed. They're public companies under tremendous stress
that their growth engine is highly compromised. That's not clear
what's really driving these companies forward. They're very big, probably
in some regards need to be stripped down and recombined

(01:09:59):
and probably will, and so this makes these things much
more complicated, unfortunately, and the streaming business again a large degree.
They're talking about the fact that you know, I'm in
I read an article recently about Orange is the New
Black cast on how early days of Netflix, they had
this international hit and the actors would go places and

(01:10:21):
be mobbed, but then they literally would get like checks
for dollar ninety five and they're like, wait a minute,
I thought when you had a hit, you were paid
at least enough to pay your rent. And that's heartbreaking.
But it does show that Netflix created a different model,
and they don't report still to this day. Here's how

(01:10:43):
many actual people used and saw your thing. So maybe
there is a way to create these tiers. But the
business is betwixt and between this new player that sort
of took over and then the older players that tried
to transition but just have a lot of they're not
they're not really one and the same.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Yeah, it's very complicated. We talk a lot about the
success of the office and after we were done, and
here's the thing that sticks with me. You have people
who made a lot of money, networks that made a
lot of money off of the office, and then syndication
deals that happened both with Turner and with some small

(01:11:27):
network syndication and NBC Universal decides seven years after the
office is done and all the money that has been
earned and paid and all of that, that it's worth
five hundred and sixty five million dollars to reacquire the office.
It's hard to think that they're not making money.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
On that. Oh yes, I mean that that is a
highly highly, highly profitable They don't. They don't spend that
kind of money for something that is not an earner,
you know, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Right, And so where's how does that trickle down? Like
if you have to me an acknowledgment that there's a
valuable property and it's not just the office, obviously, it's
just more personal for me. I hope she wouldn't be
upset that I shared this, But Jenni Fisher at one
point said, you know what's crazy, And this was when
that figure was out there all the time. Is that

(01:12:28):
you know, a person reads that and thinks, oh, look
how much money the actors got, like look look how
good they're doing. They are they are rich, Yet the
formula remains remains unchanged, and that that to me is
just confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
You know. That is the age old thing like this
is we could talk about this for an hour in
and of itself, but the you know, the studio accounting
which has always been the thing, even going back to
the heyday of Hollywood, crazy people with different pieces of
ownership and underlying financing and weird structures that when it
would go through the accounting system, it was always an

(01:13:09):
old joke of like, oh we did it, and amazing,
you're you're still losing money and because of the.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Right right how many back end deals?

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Actually that does go back, you know, decades and decades
and decades because a lot of cost would get loaded
in and they you know, had acquire big studio lots
and things that were getting loaded into that. And you know,
just as you do in your own personal accounting, where
if you've made some money you try to have right
offs and like oh, okay, well I didn't really make
one hundred grand on that I only made twenty because

(01:13:40):
look at all these costs. So studios have always done
the same thing, and sadly it has taken lawsuits, usually
for being challenged to go in, or audits if they're
not as public, to go in and say, you know what,
this doesn't feel right. We're banding together. We got lawyers
and accountants and we're going to go in and find
And then there was either some giant settlement or a

(01:14:00):
case where finally things would be even doubt And so yeah,
those dynamics that have been around for too long, and
yet there still was the irony is even the office
arguably one of the last of the good ones from
the old days quote unquote, and even that, you can
you can feel your own you know, you're you're you're

(01:14:23):
an upbeat guy, like you're what you've had your moment.
You're like, wow, I really thought that would have had
a little more trickle down here. Okay, but now you
look forward to guys who are doing Look, there is
no streaming equivalent because there is no multi generational two
hundred episode plus, there is no syndication. It's just a
one time air on a streamer that has a moment

(01:14:47):
and then drops to the bottom of an algorithm, So
there's not even even if the precedents were there, Like
the whole system that could create the trickle down is
broken down, and that's it in a nutshell where I
do believe it will ultimately get reconstituted, and I think,
to sort of cut to the bottom line, this strike
will be a brick in the wall of rebuilding a

(01:15:10):
new system on the other side, which will have different players,
because ultimately, I also don't really understand myself how once
you have something that has been a success at the top,
whether if you had a hit movie or a hit show,
you know it would live on where it would be. Oh,

(01:15:31):
you could see it in an airplane, you could watch
it on your before you eat dinner at night on
your local channel. You could sell it overseas and people
in other countries would see it. Now, once that thing
is cycled through, it's at the bottom of the algorithm,
not only not being seen, but not even expressing itself.
You know, the real hits were rides at a theme

(01:15:53):
park and had T shirts made and all these other
revenue streams. I don't understand a one app your business
where everything just has one moment and and it's disposable
because that is still something that costs billions and billions
of dollars to produce. So historically the ones that you know,
the hits, used to pay for all of the failure,

(01:16:16):
and it's I'm not saying it's justified, but it is
one of the reasons why they always claim they weren't
making money because nine of the ten failed, so they
had to pay with the one that worked, so they
were like, we're not making money. But I only giving
this detail because the tapestry now of the business itself
is different and it's going to be a transition that

(01:16:36):
is just not it's still in that transition and it's
going to take years for that to kind of reconstitute.
But this will be a brick in the wall, and
that in a sense, it's good that both unions went out,
Otherwise nothing would.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Happen, right Kevin, you're the best. You stayed way longer
than Oh my god, I.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Didn't even realize we were blown through it. Well hopefully, no,
hopefully hung with it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Yes you are. You are such a delight one of
my favorite people ever, and I wish you all the
best success and for this to resolve itself in some
way soon so everyone can get back to making making
great television.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Yes, it will. I mean there are some quiet talks
going on now. I mean, I don't know. I think
we're looking at the October is my gut. But maybe sooner, hopefully.
And dude, there's a lot of fun. I can't believe
we blew through so long. You're you're so the easiest
guy in the world to talk to, you, great at
what you do, and hitting you on a date for
some mutually bad golf very quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
All right, Okay, I love it, Kevin, Thank you so much.
See you, buddy, Kevin, thank you so much for joining
me today. Yes, on golf soon. But more importantly, I

(01:18:01):
appreciate your perspective on the current state of entertainment. I
hope that our reps can have conversations that are as
honest and enlightening as the one we just had. Listeners.
I'm going to be back next week as well as
I always am. If you need something to do while

(01:18:21):
you wait, you can follow rate review this podcast, or
if you're too busy for all that, just tune in
next week. Either way, have a great one off the
beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,

(01:18:44):
alongside our executive producer Lang Lee. Our senior producer is
Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris and
Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and
our intern is Thomas Olsen. Theme song Bubble and Squeak
performed by the One and Only Creed Breath