Speaker 1: I am thinking of joining.
Speaker 2: The AARP.
Speaker 3: Later. You are you old enough?
Speaker 4: You can join the ARP at eighteen. What it just
Speaker 4: focuses on people over fifty, which I'm not there yet,
Speaker 4: But if I can start getting the deals now.
Speaker 2: Nancy, you become a grandpa. You just come.
Speaker 3: Around some of the deals. What are some of the deals?
Speaker 4: I don't know them all perfectly. They're very loud, and
Speaker 4: I want to turn it down. It's every year.
Speaker 3: It's no, no soon I did that.
Speaker 1: I don't know all the ins and outs.
Speaker 4: I just know that I want to get into movies
Speaker 4: for like seventy percent. I want to start yelling at
Speaker 4: kids on the street. And I think I can do
Speaker 4: all of that, but I can do it.
Speaker 2: For cheapers by joining the ARP off my lawn.
Speaker 1: I want to see if you'll both join with me.
Speaker 3: I need to know some better discounts I'm not going
Speaker 3: to get.
Speaker 2: I need to do the calculations because I feel like
Speaker 2: they're going to have the annual fee is probably not going.
Speaker 3: To till they get that.
Speaker 2: So they get you.
Speaker 1: So you're already there.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, do you realize that the actual tagline of
Speaker 4: AARP is ARP.
Speaker 1: That's how they get you. So it's perfect for it.
Speaker 5: Builds into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I joined Triple A like
Speaker 2: a year ago, and Triple A member you go the discounts.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is this is good to have,
Speaker 2: but mostly credit cards. I get scared.
Speaker 6: I'm like, it's just fifteen dollars a year A standard.
Speaker 6: Yeah no, a standard that's a cheroche membership costs twenty
Speaker 6: dollars a year. However, you can get a discount rate
Speaker 6: of fifteen dollars for the first year if you sign
Speaker 6: up right now for five years for seventy five dollars.
Speaker 1: You can sign up and you really can do years
Speaker 1: when you're any.
Speaker 3: And then anyway, what are some of the benefits.
Speaker 1: What do you get, like benefits of joining AARP. Let's
Speaker 1: find out, isn't the point.
Speaker 2: That you're supposed to be old dating rewards because you're
Speaker 2: old Like it's well.
Speaker 4: No, it's like focuses on that. But check out benefits.
Speaker 4: You get ARP rewards. You get discounts at Walmart, you
Speaker 4: get discounts at the Oh, you can book everything through
Speaker 4: the AARP Travel Center.
Speaker 3: Oh do you get like what's the percentage off you
Speaker 3: get on rental cars, hotels, cruises?
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Well I don't have that right at my fingertips right now.
Speaker 4: But you get sixty five to two hundred dollars off
Speaker 4: anything from British airways.
Speaker 3: I mean said, there's an AARP bookstore writer.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, up to thirty five percent off base rates,
Speaker 4: from budget rent to.
Speaker 3: Car, thirty five percent off.
Speaker 4: Oh, fifteen percent off of Denny's, ten percent off of
Speaker 4: Outback Steakhouse.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, it really should become a sponsor
Speaker 2: of our show, because we probably just increased their membership
Speaker 2: by I.
Speaker 3: Don't I still don't believe that you can join though
Speaker 3: at at eighteen it says you can.
Speaker 4: It says how old do you have to be? Age
Speaker 4: and lability to join? While a while ARP is dedicated
Speaker 4: to people over fifty, there is no minimum age to join.
Speaker 4: People of all ages can get an air membership.
Speaker 1: For as low as fifteen dollars for the first lumps
Speaker 1: me out.
Speaker 2: That's like you can join the Magic Castle. You don't
Speaker 2: have to be a magician. Yeah, really, like I know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But at the same time, there's an ARP magazine
Speaker 4: and if I'm not on the cover like this in
Speaker 4: the next six months, going.
Speaker 3: To be on the cover for sure, do you really?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's no way they'd feature in under fifty.
Speaker 1: You never know, maybe they would.
Speaker 4: And the cool thing is, you know you were fifty
Speaker 4: because it's people not looking at the camera. They don't
Speaker 4: know where to look now in the new cameras, so
Speaker 4: it's like actually looking.
Speaker 3: Off to the thing, looking right to the side.
Speaker 6: But I'm joining.
Speaker 1: You should join with me. I think it'll be great.
Speaker 3: Well, we can join the AARP tomorrow on our flight.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god.
Speaker 4: If you can teach me how to work the Wi
Speaker 4: Fi in the plane, we can totally make that work.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: Wel good to fund Meets World Danielle Fischel.
Speaker 1: I'm right or strong, and I'm Wilfredell, the newest member
Speaker 1: of the ARP.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, Pod Meets World is coming to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Speaker 3: We will be there August twenty second at the laws
Speaker 3: In Capital Theater. Tickets are available at Pod meetsworldshow dot com.
Speaker 3: Somebody told me the other day when I said we
Speaker 3: were going to Salt Lake City, they told me we
Speaker 3: had to check out a place called Swig. Have you
Speaker 3: guys heard of Swings?
Speaker 2: I have not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently it's they've got a bunch of different like
Speaker 3: drink options. So anyway we've got we've got a fun
Speaker 3: activity for us, not alcohol. I was gonna say yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: Tara just said dirty soda. It's like flavored different types
Speaker 3: of soda, but probably non caffeinated because you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't do that either.
Speaker 4: But I can tell you if I have a good
Speaker 4: night in Utah, I'm going to be given somebody a
Speaker 4: dirty soda.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, will I'm sure this wonderful. We'll be
Speaker 3: in Salt Lake City. Everyone Pod Meets This World August
Speaker 3: twenty second, come here will make more disgusting jokes.
Speaker 2: Now we don't say that.
Speaker 4: By the way, We have been to Salt Lake before
Speaker 4: for many a comic con and the people there are incredible,
Speaker 4: So I know the Treoud's gonna be amazing.
Speaker 7: Com check out the show Whoo.
Speaker 3: Now six and a half seasons into our rewatch, well
Speaker 3: into its home stretch, it would be difficult to find
Speaker 3: a boy Meets World perspective. We haven't tackled yet stage managers,
Speaker 3: co stars, producers, writers, background actors, the guy who sang
Speaker 3: the theme song. We have covered a lot of ground.
Speaker 3: What's left an inmate from the audience Angel and Vicki Craig,
Speaker 3: the Craft serviceman who played that Stevie Nick song. Sure,
Speaker 3: I guess we still have a ways to go. But
Speaker 3: one point of view we were always dying to include
Speaker 3: was that of an network executive, and this week we
Speaker 3: are able to kill two birds with one stone. He
Speaker 3: started his career writing and producing on our show Most
Speaker 3: Visible during season six and seven, when he wrote four episodes,
Speaker 3: including the recently recapped Hogs and Kisses. But how he
Speaker 3: began on Boy Meets World and the ABC Network is
Speaker 3: a little bit of a mystery that we will hopefully
Speaker 3: get cleared up today. And after our little show, he'd
Speaker 3: complete a very rare evolution, going on to become one
Speaker 3: of the most important TV executives of the two thousands,
Speaker 3: helping craft the unstoppable CBS lineup as senior vice President,
Speaker 3: helping create shows that have dominated the ratings ever since.
Speaker 3: And if that wasn't enough, he'd then take his talents
Speaker 3: to a completely different Hall of Fame TV franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, he'd work hand in hand with Dick Wolf
Speaker 3: at his production company, helping kill off unsuspecting victims then
Speaker 3: investigate their deaths. I mean not literally just on TV. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so now, well, not only do we get to
Speaker 3: hear about that writer's room during season six and seven,
Speaker 3: we also get some details about what being a network
Speaker 3: executive is actually like. They hold the future of your
Speaker 3: favorite show in their hands, Yet we know very little
Speaker 3: about the process that decides these fates. Today we hope
Speaker 3: to learn a little bit more about it. So welcome
Speaker 3: to the podcast a real twofer, writer, producer, and studio executive,
Speaker 3: David Brownfield.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Wow, I haven't even opened my mouth, that's quite
Speaker 5: I'm welcome, all.
Speaker 3: Right, thank you very much, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3: When your name appeared on our show, it brought back
Speaker 3: a wave of memories, albeit very many foggy ones. But
Speaker 3: we are so excited that you agreed to come on
Speaker 3: the podcast. So thank you. Our know, our our producers
Speaker 3: had to do a little deep diving to find you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm not impossible to find,
Speaker 5: but I'm not I don't make myself readily available either.
Speaker 3: You know, we had to do a little bit of
Speaker 3: digging away. So let's start with asking you what got
Speaker 3: you into what got you to Hollywood and into the
Speaker 3: TV business? You are? Were? You were a network executive right.
Speaker 5: I'm born and raised in La Okay. I've been here
Speaker 5: all my life. I started out basically as a sports writer.
Speaker 5: I produced the pregame show for the Lakers for five years,
Speaker 5: so I really was not on the radar screen of
Speaker 5: doing anything in network television. I basically started out with
Speaker 5: the goal of someone paying me to watch sports, which
Speaker 5: my mom said, you're out of your mind. That's not happening.
Speaker 5: And I was able to do it. So I did
Speaker 5: that for five years and I really liked it. It
Speaker 5: was an amazing job, but I kind of got tired
Speaker 5: of athletes are like actors. Professional athletes are like actors
Speaker 5: with one huge exception. They don't have the years of
Speaker 5: rejection behind them that actors do, so they're incredibly coddled people.
Speaker 5: I mean, things have dramatically changed, but even so, at
Speaker 5: its core, an NBA player today is kind of similar
Speaker 5: to the way an NBA player was when I was
Speaker 5: with them. So I got tired of chasing moround. It
Speaker 5: was great, and then I just happened to be dating
Speaker 5: a woman at the time whose father was friends with
Speaker 5: the head of Paramounts Network TV division, and he said
Speaker 5: they are looking to bring someone on in current series,
Speaker 5: and I said, I don't know what that is, but
Speaker 5: no one's offering me anything better. So I basically started
Speaker 5: there and then that got me to ABC in nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety three.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, so you started in a at ABC in
Speaker 3: ninety three, the same year Boy Meets World started.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I started ABC in ninety three and I wasn't
Speaker 5: even it's weird. I wasn't even supposed to be covering
Speaker 5: Boy Meets World. But the woman who was on the
Speaker 5: pilot left and so they basically said, oh, we have
Speaker 5: the show, and then it was handed over to me.
Speaker 5: Because you know, basically, when you're a current executive, when
Speaker 5: you're one of say five or six current executives your responsible,
Speaker 5: you're the point person for four to five shows.
Speaker 4: That I was just going to ask, So you have
Speaker 4: four to five different shows at a time on.
Speaker 5: Your You have four to five different shows at a time,
Speaker 5: and there can be companies and dramas. Mostly most times
Speaker 5: it's a combination. Can't have someone doing too many comedies
Speaker 5: back in the day when there were all these sitcoms,
Speaker 5: because obviously the shooting schedules are conflicting with and that
Speaker 5: sort of thing. So at that point, I think Boy
Speaker 5: Meet's World was probably my only comedy But yeah, so
Speaker 5: I wasn't around for the pilot of the show, but
Speaker 5: I was around from I covered the show for the
Speaker 5: first three seasons wow, and then in the fourth season
Speaker 5: I was still at ABC. This is my last year
Speaker 5: at ABC. I was there for four years ninety three
Speaker 5: to ninety seven. I started to do more development, so
Speaker 5: I wasn't on the show in year four and then
Speaker 5: in year five, and then at the end of year
Speaker 5: four Boy Meets Twelve. I left ABC to go be
Speaker 5: a sitcom writer. So I was a sitcom writer for
Speaker 5: uh so that would have been year five of Boy
Speaker 5: Meets Twelve. Then actually, Michael Lot this a long winded again,
Speaker 5: this is great helps just movings a look. Anyway, Michael
Speaker 5: offered me a job writing on Boy Meets World for
Speaker 5: season five when I left, and I was which was
Speaker 5: incredibly generous. I was also offered a job working on
Speaker 5: a show called Over the Top, which you never heard of,
Speaker 5: and Over the Top ran for twelve episodes.
Speaker 1: And this was not based on the Stevens the Sylvester.
Speaker 5: Completely different. This was Tim Curry, Annie Pots and an
Speaker 5: unknown actor named Steve Carrell my cast, because I don't
Speaker 5: know if you remember, but it's wor watching this documentary.
Speaker 5: The last year I was at ABC, Dana Carvey did
Speaker 5: a sketch show. It's called The Dana Carvey Show. And
Speaker 5: there's a Hulu documentary on a call Too Funny to Fail,
Speaker 5: and if you haven't seen it, it's really good. And
Speaker 5: in that company was Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert among
Speaker 5: other people, and Robert Smigel, who you know went on
Speaker 5: to created Triumph the Insult Doll comic, was head writer
Speaker 5: on the show. So they signed holding deals with Correll,
Speaker 5: and I'm not sure if CBA someone signed a deal
Speaker 5: with Colbert, and so Correll was on over the Top,
Speaker 5: playing this insane role, and like most new shows, you know,
Speaker 5: it burned hot and bright and then burned out. And
Speaker 5: so after about we shot twelve, they are at five.
Speaker 5: And then I went back out as an unemployed writer,
Speaker 5: and Michael offered me a job again prior to year
Speaker 5: six of Boy Meets World, and I was like, well,
Speaker 5: I'm insane if I don't take it now.
Speaker 3: A second time.
Speaker 5: That's how I wound up on Boy Meets World writing
Speaker 5: on the staff for your six and.
Speaker 4: Soe wow, yeah, okay that uh wait, The Dana Carvey Show.
Speaker 4: There's that famous clip that is so funny where the
Speaker 4: night it premiered, to advertise it, they cut from a
Speaker 4: home improvement clip of the possibility of Jonathan Taylor Thomas
Speaker 4: finding out he has cancer and it's like, you hear that,
Speaker 4: you know, I can't die, Dad, I can't die.
Speaker 1: And he's like, You're not gonna die. We're going to
Speaker 1: get you through this.
Speaker 4: And now the Dana Carvey Show, and it's the funniest
Speaker 4: transmission and they're showing Steve Carell and all the actors
Speaker 4: this transition and everybody is just losing it.
Speaker 1: It's so yeah, you you should go check that out.
Speaker 5: It's great. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you a little bit more detail
Speaker 3: because we have never interviewed a network executive on the
Speaker 3: show and and and it's kind of a total mystery
Speaker 3: to us, So I'd love to know more. Before you became,
Speaker 3: before you went into development, can you describe to me
Speaker 3: what your job was when you oversee four or five
Speaker 3: shows and one of those Boy Meets World. What's your
Speaker 3: what's the main part of your job, what kind of
Speaker 3: notes are you giving, what are you looking for describe
Speaker 3: your job for us at ABC.
Speaker 5: I mean, well, I would say being a current executive
Speaker 5: on a show depends on where the show is in
Speaker 5: its kind of like development process. I mean, you really,
Speaker 5: if you're talking about a show in the first two
Speaker 5: or three seasons, you're really talking about kind of slowly
Speaker 5: but surely developing the show and dealing with the fact
Speaker 5: that most shows, very few shows come in are handed
Speaker 5: to you fully baked, right. I Mean, what I remember
Speaker 5: about the beginning of Boy Meets World was the premise
Speaker 5: of the show was what's it like to have your
Speaker 5: teacher as your next door neighbor? That was kind of
Speaker 5: like the central premise of the show. And I think
Speaker 5: we all realized fairly early on the first season that
Speaker 5: while that was nice, that could not you You're not
Speaker 5: going to be able to build one hundred episodes on
Speaker 5: that premise, right, And so a lot of it is
Speaker 5: just you know, kind of as I used to say,
Speaker 5: it's too bad that television shows aren't like sports franchises
Speaker 5: where you get practice games, like get five or six
Speaker 5: games that don't count, because what generally happens in these
Speaker 5: shows is, you know, it's trial and error and a
Speaker 5: lot of times you spend time writing to things that
Speaker 5: you realize, oh, man, those two characters are really not
Speaker 5: great in a scene together, and we really shouldn't put
Speaker 5: them in scenes anymore. But by the time we've already
Speaker 5: showed five or six episodes, you know, and there's only
Speaker 5: so much reshooting that can be done. So you're really
Speaker 5: kind of trying to lean into what's really working, especially
Speaker 5: in the first I don't know, one and a half
Speaker 5: seasons of a show, and trying to avoid what isn't
Speaker 5: and also realizing we need to open up new avenues,
Speaker 5: we find other areas that characters can explore, we may
Speaker 5: need to bring in other characters. But it's also a
Speaker 5: real it's difficult because you're producing episodes at the same
Speaker 5: now you're producing episodes at the same time they're airing.
Speaker 5: It's really only a limited amount of time to make change,
Speaker 5: to make fundamental changes. Because you make me make some
Speaker 5: great fundamental change that's not going to be on the
Speaker 5: air for another six weeks in this scenario. So that's
Speaker 5: kind of what happened with Weeman's role, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: because I went back and I looked at the I
Speaker 5: looked at a few episodes of the first season. Then
Speaker 5: I looked at the second season.
Speaker 8: The second season is kind of a complete reboot, completely
Speaker 8: watched a new show, completely out of necessity, because as
Speaker 8: brilliant as Bill Daniels is and was, he can't carry that.
Speaker 5: I mean, look at Home Improvement, the scene with uh
Speaker 5: Tim and Wilson right the next door neighbor. That was
Speaker 5: one scene in every show, that was the storyline of
Speaker 5: every episode. So and so for a current executive, they're
Speaker 5: going to have say four or five shows, comedies and dramas,
Speaker 5: and they're basically they're reading everything from the initial one
Speaker 5: pager of what the story is to the outline, which
Speaker 5: is I used to say, is basically the script but
Speaker 5: in print form building a house, it's your construction plans.
Speaker 5: And then you're reading the script through various drafts, and
Speaker 5: then you're looking at dailies. If you're working on a drama,
Speaker 5: you're going to run throughs and tapings if you're working
Speaker 5: on a comedy. And it's a pretty cool job. I mean,
Speaker 5: what's really cool about it is is you really get
Speaker 5: to kind of like look under the hood of shows.
Speaker 5: You know, I was a current exec for how long
Speaker 5: was I one well, I guess. At ABC, I was
Speaker 5: one for three years, and then I was a CBS
Speaker 5: for four years as a as a strictly currentit EGA
Speaker 5: again doing kind of the same thing, mostly on dramas
Speaker 5: then and then I was made head of the department.
Speaker 5: So at that point the job changes. Now you're responsible
Speaker 5: for your twenty to twenty five shows, and as I
Speaker 5: used to say, I'm responsible for all of those shows,
Speaker 5: and I'm responsible for none of those shows.
Speaker 3: Because you're not the person there.
Speaker 5: You only have a certain amount of time in your day,
Speaker 5: and you quickly realize that you've got to focus on
Speaker 5: the shows that are in their first and second years,
Speaker 5: and you've got to train a staff so that they
Speaker 5: can handle the day to day stuff. But you know
Speaker 5: the bigger picture on something, you know, Like when I
Speaker 5: was at CBS. Once CSI got past year four, I
Speaker 5: was like, I want to know the big arcs. I
Speaker 5: want to know the big problems. But you, if I've
Speaker 5: trained the executive right, you're the day to day person
Speaker 5: on the you know what I mean. So you've just
Speaker 5: got to give me a heads up if I'm going
Speaker 5: to get a phone call or tell me you need
Speaker 5: to call this person and say something, deliver good news
Speaker 5: or deliver bad news. It varies. So, but my time
Speaker 5: at ABC, honestly, I remember it really fondly because if
Speaker 5: you think about it, in four years I was there,
Speaker 5: you had I mean, you had Seminole Television, you had
Speaker 5: your band Home Improvement in comedy, and then you I
Speaker 5: just remember, and you had Ellen come Out. And then
Speaker 5: on the maddic side, you had My so called Life, which,
Speaker 5: though it didn't run very long, is still pollential show.
Speaker 5: And you had like the gold standard of cop shows
Speaker 5: in NYPD Blue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's just in four years I was there,
Speaker 5: and then you also had, like you guys, you also
Speaker 5: had Full House and Family Metters, which you know, full
Speaker 5: House itself invented a whole genre of show. And you
Speaker 5: had TGIF. So it was a law packed into a
Speaker 5: short amount of time and very successful, which always helps.
Speaker 3: Yes, that definitely helps.
Speaker 4: You mentioned you said you're you're responsible at times for
Speaker 4: delivering good news or bad news. Was there ever a
Speaker 4: time that you can remember, especially first season in Boy
Speaker 4: Meets World going into second where there was talk of
Speaker 4: this isn't working, We're not going to pick it up.
Speaker 5: I don't remember that. I really don't, but I do
Speaker 5: remember going we need a new showrunner. We need to
Speaker 5: bring somebody in, and we need to Michael's really busy,
Speaker 5: and we need to bring somebody in who can kind
Speaker 5: of I mean, reinvent the show is too strong, because
Speaker 5: there was definitely enough, There was enough of the DNA
Speaker 5: that I don't think the show was ever in danger
Speaker 5: being canceled. In fact, it was interesting because I was
Speaker 5: listening to you. I've listened to a couple of other
Speaker 5: episodes with the writers, and I think you guys have
Speaker 5: this perception that you were on the bubble every year,
Speaker 5: which is definitely not true. I can't. I can only
Speaker 5: say for the time I was there, and this is
Speaker 5: kind of insight baseball, but you were kind of certainly
Speaker 5: on tgif you brought a little bit of an island
Speaker 5: in the sense that you were surrounded most of the years,
Speaker 5: at least for three or four of them, you were
Speaker 5: surrounded by family matters, step by step and hanging with
Speaker 5: mister Cooper. Now, one of those shows have in common
Speaker 5: in addition to Full House, they're Warner Brothers shows. Right,
Speaker 5: So Warner Brothers owned a lot of ABC schedule. It's
Speaker 5: ironic that they owned a lot of CBS's schedule when
Speaker 5: I was doing too, and so picking up a show
Speaker 5: with the exceptions of shows that are just you know,
Speaker 5: unquestionable pickups, which you know like Home Improvements, Full House, Roseanne.
Speaker 5: If you pick up one show, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: other shows that are kind of in the same category.
Speaker 5: They're like, hey, wait, where's my pickup? So I feel like,
Speaker 5: at least I don't remember Boy Meets Burl being a
Speaker 5: questionable pickup, certainly from year I don't even think it
Speaker 5: was from year one to year two, but definitely not
Speaker 5: in years two to three, three to four. It was
Speaker 5: just a matter of don't pick up something on its own,
Speaker 5: you pick up something ass So it's also a better announcement.
Speaker 5: We're picking up the entire tgif lineup right. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't think it. I don't think it was really
Speaker 5: touch and going to be honest, I don't even remember
Speaker 5: when I was on staff of the show there being
Speaker 5: that big a question about whether we were going to
Speaker 5: go from year six to or seven.
Speaker 1: Man, wow, I still think we're going to be canceled.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but as actors that's kind of the lie. But
Speaker 5: I don't remember. I'm not saying it never was the case,
Speaker 5: but I don't. I think there was a lot of
Speaker 5: pressure on who the showrunner was going to be. The
Speaker 5: fact that David Kendall had worked in the ABC family
Speaker 5: for a long time on Growing Pains a huge asset
Speaker 5: that he had done it before. They weren't going to
Speaker 5: hire someone who hadn't done it before, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. And I don't think Ed John want My
Speaker 5: memory is that Ed and John didn't want to stay on,
Speaker 5: and I think also they wouldn't have not because they
Speaker 5: weren't really good writers. And I actually built friendships with
Speaker 5: both those guys. Still did John periodically, but I don't
Speaker 5: think they wanted it, and I think ABC was just like, look,
Speaker 5: we need to bring somebody in who knows the DNA
Speaker 5: of the long running ABC show. And so they got David,
Speaker 5: who remains a friend to this day and was a
Speaker 5: you know, was a rock, which is what you need.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we love David Kendall here, we do we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, And it also makes perfect sense because I remember
Speaker 4: Michael telling me one of the things not only was
Speaker 4: boy Mes World pitched as a kid living next door
Speaker 4: to his teacher, but it was also pitched as growing
Speaker 4: pains from the point of.
Speaker 3: View of the middle child.
Speaker 4: Correct, Yes, so, yeah, that makes sense that you bring
Speaker 4: in Kendall and it's just a perfect fit at that point.
Speaker 5: Exactly exactly so. And you just even had to build
Speaker 5: out the cast because as if you look at the
Speaker 5: beginning of year two, the beginning of year two doesn't
Speaker 5: look like you know, the beginning of like like year four.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a challenge. It's also a challenge when
Speaker 5: in your show. And as much as I love them both,
Speaker 5: the parents don't really play a substantial role in the
Speaker 5: show the way they do in most other TGIF or
Speaker 5: family shows. You know what I mean. They're round, but
Speaker 5: you're not building regular stories around them as this as
Speaker 5: the driver of the story. We did it a few
Speaker 5: you did it a few times, and I love story.
Speaker 5: I used to love stories, especially built around Rusty because
Speaker 5: you know, it's such a veteran, reliable actor and could
Speaker 5: do anything. But that's not what the show really, that's
Speaker 5: not where the bread and butter of the show was, right.
Speaker 2: It was more of a school show.
Speaker 5: In school show, you know, more driven by by you guys,
Speaker 5: and you know, especially in the first season, I always
Speaker 5: used to feel like, Okay, the story really begins when
Speaker 5: Feenie enters in a weird way, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: what's his connection going to be? Which was great but
Speaker 5: not enough? And so you know, that's that's a lot
Speaker 5: about why why a lot of shows fail because you
Speaker 5: shoot a pilot and you're like this is great, Oh
Speaker 5: my god, and then you start to go, oh, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, and you really realize that when you work
Speaker 5: on big hit show. I was like, I remember working
Speaker 5: on Big Bank, Big Bank. I was at CBS for
Speaker 5: Big Bang Theory, and you know, the three of them
Speaker 5: were obviously fantastic, but I remember I think it was
Speaker 5: the end of the first season and there was a
Speaker 5: scene where it was only the three women because Mine
Speaker 5: came on I think end of her season. It was
Speaker 5: just Kaylee and Miam and Melissa and they were there
Speaker 5: was a scene between the three of them. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 5: I don't really miss the guys at all. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: so and now we've got, you know, counting the guys,
Speaker 5: we've got seven places to go for comedy. Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: when you know you you have a show that, if
Speaker 5: you don't mess it up, is going to be around
Speaker 5: for a long time now.
Speaker 2: That show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it also changed constantly because the Big Bang Theory
Speaker 4: was the show after Boy Meets World that I must
Speaker 4: have gotten nine different versions of that script to audition
Speaker 4: for year after year after year. It just kept coming back.
Speaker 4: I was like, Big Bang Theory again. Didn't they make
Speaker 4: this last year? It's like it must have been three
Speaker 4: three pilot seasons in a row where there was a
Speaker 4: different version of the Big Bank Theory that they were
Speaker 4: trying to cast.
Speaker 1: They tried to get that show on the air forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was amazing.
Speaker 5: Well, the original pilot of Big Bank Theory didn't make
Speaker 5: it on the air. The original pilot didn't have Kaylee
Speaker 5: sou so they ended up recasting and then the show
Speaker 5: got on the air.
Speaker 4: What do you remember from not only your time at
Speaker 4: ABC but also your time at CBS. What's the show
Speaker 4: that you remember that you were like, this show is brilliant,
Speaker 4: this is going to go forever, and then it didn't
Speaker 4: get picked up or that's the one that got away
Speaker 4: for you?
Speaker 5: Wow, I mean I remember shows that didn't get didn't
Speaker 5: go that I felt like, I mean, I thought they
Speaker 5: were really well done, but I I understood why they
Speaker 5: didn't last. Like we did a show called swing Town
Speaker 5: when we were at it when I was at CBS.
Speaker 5: That was a period show set in the sixties, and
Speaker 5: it had a phenomenal pilot, but I realized that it
Speaker 5: wasn't going to be Everyone's the Tea. It was a
Speaker 5: period again, it's a period show. There are certain shows
Speaker 5: that I worked on that I felt like were like,
Speaker 5: were had good results, deserved better, Like I felt like
Speaker 5: The New Adventures of Old Christine, which is Juliuie drive
Speaker 5: this to show. That show ran, I think for five seasons,
Speaker 5: but it never got a gigantic audience, and it deserved
Speaker 5: it because it was an incredibly funny show. And I
Speaker 5: think had it been it, had it been on after
Speaker 5: Everybody Loves Raymond, I think that show could have run
Speaker 5: ten years instead of five because she was just so
Speaker 5: She's just brilliant.
Speaker 4: She's brilliant.
Speaker 5: She's just brilliant. And I used to remember, like I
Speaker 5: used to go to run throughs and then I would
Speaker 5: go to another run through where you know, I'd have
Speaker 5: to sit through soch actors who had like a thimbleful
Speaker 5: of talent compared to her, And this is kind of
Speaker 5: even more tortured. I'd have to think about that. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know, you know, I mean, I so called
Speaker 5: life obviously deserves a longer run than it had. Most shows,
Speaker 5: I mean, this is kind of hard and producers, most
Speaker 5: shows that I think don't make it don't make it
Speaker 5: for a pretty good reason because it's really really difficult.
Speaker 5: And also when you when you've got when you had
Speaker 5: so many shows on, you know, and you needed like
Speaker 5: lead characters that really could command an audience, especially in
Speaker 5: a drama, and there were not as many people who
Speaker 5: would nowhere near as many people who were willing to
Speaker 5: do television. Yeah in those days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: I want to know more about your relationship, your working
Speaker 3: relationship with Michael because the fact that Michael then offered
Speaker 3: you a job writing. Michael does not make those offers
Speaker 3: willy nilly, Like he really respects intelligence, and you guys
Speaker 3: must have had a good relationship and he must have
Speaker 3: really respected the notes you gave as a network executive
Speaker 3: in order for him to want you on staff. What
Speaker 3: was working with Michael like on the network side.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, Michael was really passionate, which I always appreciate,
Speaker 5: and I also felt like, you know, my job is
Speaker 5: to as I used to say, my job is to
Speaker 5: advocate for the show. But not and I used to
Speaker 5: say this to all the executives to work with me, like,
Speaker 5: don't fall in love with your show, because then you
Speaker 5: can't see the problems with it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And it's not perfect, nothing's really perfect. But you also
Speaker 5: want to be able to point out here's what I like,
Speaker 5: here's what I don't like. I also think that there
Speaker 5: are I think Michael knew I was a real advocate
Speaker 5: for the show. He also knew I wasn't afraid to
Speaker 5: express my opinion. And I also think there's certain writers
Speaker 5: and Michael is one of these, And you learn very
Speaker 5: quickly like there are certain writers who want you to
Speaker 5: express what the problem is, but they're not interested in
Speaker 5: you offering the fix. They're interested in you going this
Speaker 5: is what's not working for me, okay, and but don't
Speaker 5: tell me how to fix it. And Michael was also
Speaker 5: generally what my experience with him was, Michael no sessions.
Speaker 5: Michael went first to basically go here's what I here's
Speaker 5: here's what's not working. You know. So those sessions with
Speaker 5: Michael was Michael was doing a lot of most of
Speaker 5: the talking. Most of the time. He was right. I
Speaker 5: also feel like there are certain people who no sessions
Speaker 5: can get very, very long, and they also can there's
Speaker 5: a lot of people in the room. There's too many
Speaker 5: people in the room. There's a lot of people in
Speaker 5: the room who are there but not talking. And so
Speaker 5: what I generally did was I would usually follow up
Speaker 5: with a phone call. I mean, this is to all executives,
Speaker 5: but I would follow up a little bit later and
Speaker 5: just hit on the two or three things that that
Speaker 5: I thought were most important and be as clear as possible,
Speaker 5: because I think the worst thing you can do to
Speaker 5: a writer is confuse them. Yeah. Yeah, I used to say,
Speaker 5: like my mantra was, I'm not asking you to agree
Speaker 5: with my notes. I'm asking you to understand them. And
Speaker 5: the advantage of working on a sitcom is is you
Speaker 5: have more than one bite at the apple you're going
Speaker 5: to Plus if something's really not working, you learn if
Speaker 5: something's really not working at the table, like a story's
Speaker 5: not working, don't note it because it's going to change dramatically.
Speaker 5: So your notes are going to probably be completely irrelevant
Speaker 5: in twenty four hours. But I also so I felt like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's being a current exactly on the show
Speaker 5: is it's it's at least sixty percent about do I
Speaker 5: want to see this person in my face five times
Speaker 5: a week? Yeah? I got to walk onto that stage
Speaker 5: three times a week. And so it's like pissing off
Speaker 5: your roommate the first day of college. You don't want
Speaker 5: to do that. And definitely the hardest part I would
Speaker 5: say is, you know this is the first you know,
Speaker 5: the first twenty five I'm even longer, like say thirty
Speaker 5: thirty episodes where you're really trying to figure out what's
Speaker 5: working and what's not and not no one really has
Speaker 5: all the answers to everything, and you're making a lot
Speaker 5: of mistakes, and you're making a lot of mistakes on
Speaker 5: the fly, and so I just think you got to
Speaker 5: be no one can be sure of much of anything.
Speaker 5: And I think he liked the fact that I was
Speaker 5: an advocate without being too pushy and I was honest.
Speaker 5: And then I mean he read something I wrote, too,
Speaker 5: because I wrote a spec script just because someone said
Speaker 5: you should try doing that. And I fully think that
Speaker 5: almost every executive should have to sit in front of
Speaker 5: a blank screen and realize what a horror that is. Yes,
Speaker 5: and I was encouraged by people, and I kind of
Speaker 5: had a Again, I had a slightly different entree because
Speaker 5: I wrote a specs mad About You spec that I
Speaker 5: gave to Bruce Helferd, who was Harry Show, another show
Speaker 5: I covered at ABC, and for notes. I just gave
Speaker 5: it to him for notes, and he gave me notes
Speaker 5: and said, but you have a lot of potential on this.
Speaker 5: We're going to give you an episode to write next year.
Speaker 5: This is year one and two of Drew And I said,
Speaker 5: that's really, really nice. And in my mind, I'm like, look,
Speaker 5: I'm not telling anybody about this because it's likely not
Speaker 5: going to happen because they're going to fall behind and
Speaker 5: they're the last thing they're going to want is some
Speaker 5: new bee writing a script. And come December, Bruce said, okay,
Speaker 5: right after the first of the year, you're coming in
Speaker 5: and we're going to break your story. So I had
Speaker 5: this episode of Mad About You that I had written,
Speaker 5: and I gave it to Michael, and Michael read it
Speaker 5: and liked it enough, so I think he knew that
Speaker 5: I was serious and I was going to leave being
Speaker 5: an executive to write, so yeah, So we definitely had
Speaker 5: a very different relationship than I think anybody. In fact,
Speaker 5: there were times I was thinking about the writer's room
Speaker 5: where I would like I would have groan about something
Speaker 5: or just go oh, come on really, and and I
Speaker 5: think people were taken aback, like whoa and Michael would
Speaker 5: you know there was a line where I think he
Speaker 5: would give me a look like okay, I know we
Speaker 5: had this history, but back off. But he also respected me,
Speaker 5: so so yeah, I mean, but again like he's he's
Speaker 5: responsible for you know, in a lot of ways my
Speaker 5: having a writing career for three years.
Speaker 3: Are talking about going into season two and what a
Speaker 3: total shock and change it was from season one, like
Speaker 3: a full new reboot. Do you remember there being any
Speaker 3: conversations about Lee Norris and Mincus coming back? And because
Speaker 3: we've talked, we've now interviewed so many different people and
Speaker 3: talked about where that decision came from to let him
Speaker 3: go after season one, and we've heard everyone has a different,
Speaker 3: slightly different perspective on it. And so one area we've
Speaker 3: never asked is somebody from ABC, do you remember those
Speaker 3: conversations about not bringing Lee Norris back?
Speaker 5: I doped, Okay, my guess is and knowing that people
Speaker 5: who were involved internally, was he his character was on
Speaker 5: the broader side. Yeah, And I just think that probably
Speaker 5: at that point they were looking for like, let us
Speaker 5: let's let's try and be as grounded as possible. The
Speaker 5: other thing is we're moving to another school we were
Speaker 5: already taking. We've already got four people, the three of
Speaker 5: you and Ben who are going to be there, and
Speaker 5: we want to introduce two or three more characters. Right,
Speaker 5: how much room is there? You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: So I think I think it was probably a combination
Speaker 5: of both. And I also don't think it's not like
Speaker 5: Lee was a breakout character on the show. I mean,
Speaker 5: I definitely remember what episode Danielle did you did you four?
Speaker 5: I completely remember that table reading really and I completely
Speaker 5: remember the I don't know if you'd call her girl
Speaker 5: or woman who was there at the table and going
Speaker 5: she's just not strong enough.
Speaker 3: Okay, I.
Speaker 5: Remember you being really good, and I remember saying, well,
Speaker 5: why not try her? She's right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, because I know there's been all sorts of versions
Speaker 5: of that, I just remember I remember sitting at that
Speaker 5: table afterwards and going, yeah, it's not going to work.
Speaker 5: I don't remember if I don't remember if she got
Speaker 5: a run through or not.
Speaker 3: But I remember, but she was there. She had a
Speaker 3: she had a table read and a full day of rehearsal.
Speaker 5: Right, right, right right, And obviously the stakes were super
Speaker 5: high and you were you were in the right place
Speaker 5: at the right time. Yeah, and so but yeah, I
Speaker 5: definitely remember that.
Speaker 3: Wow, wow, so funny. Interesting. All right, Well that was
Speaker 3: my other question. My other question was, do you remember
Speaker 3: do you remember that when I came onto the show.
Speaker 5: Totally, totally I was not around for Cardolini. Oh you
Speaker 5: know that I missed that whole part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I was season five, right, Yeah, that's when
Speaker 3: you were writing for another show. So what was joining
Speaker 3: the writer's room then in season six? Like, were they
Speaker 3: all having fun? Was it? Was it a fun room?
Speaker 3: How would you describe it?
Speaker 5: Yeah? It was incredibly fun. I mean, it's funny. Because
Speaker 5: I went back and watched the four episodes that my
Speaker 5: name's on, I remember, honestly, so little about I remember
Speaker 5: these random things you remember. I remember in the B
Speaker 5: episode we offered Ronnie Cox the role. Remember Ronnie Cox,
Speaker 5: the actor from Term. He was in Terminator, not Terminator,
Speaker 5: he was RoboCop. Yes, yeah, and he wrote this really
Speaker 5: sweet note and he couldn't do it. But uh, the
Speaker 5: writer's room was great. I remember so many specifics. I
Speaker 5: literally I could if you if we went into the room,
Speaker 5: I could tell you where everybody was sitting.
Speaker 3: Oh god, did everyone have like assigned seats?
Speaker 5: Yes? Absolutely, yeah, but that's true about most writers. It
Speaker 5: just happens, you know, people sitting. It was a I
Speaker 5: mean I had been in you know, a few writers
Speaker 5: room at that point because I had worked on two
Speaker 5: or three shows prior, and I'd also helped friends on pilots.
Speaker 5: It was a big room, kind of too big in
Speaker 5: a way in my opinion, in the sense that when
Speaker 5: ends up happening, the bigger the room, the the fewer
Speaker 5: people speak, you know what I mean regularly. But then
Speaker 5: we also at times would break the room down to
Speaker 5: get when we got behind, and then to have two
Speaker 5: or three rooms and then more people speak, which is
Speaker 5: really really good. But yeah, it was an incredibly kind room,
Speaker 5: like there was very little tension and respectful and you know,
Speaker 5: I remembered just that I used to say, like these
Speaker 5: are you know, you spend so much time with these people.
Speaker 5: I don't think there was a restaurant in town where
Speaker 5: if you handed me a menu at that point, I
Speaker 5: couldn't have ordered for everybody that.
Speaker 3: Cuckaroo. Was Cuckaroo still around by season six?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it may have been, But that wasn't
Speaker 5: one of our gigantic go to places for my I
Speaker 5: mean we didn't. Also we also we ordered dinner a
Speaker 5: fair amount of time. But our hours on that show
Speaker 5: were generally speaking, I think, pretty okay. I mean, I worked.
Speaker 5: I came from a show where we did a lot
Speaker 5: of late late, late night right which I couldn't I
Speaker 5: just couldn't handle which but over the top we were
Speaker 5: got late nights and over the top, and my I
Speaker 5: just can't function that way, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like I think that, I mean, most people will tell
Speaker 5: you that whatever's pitched after about ten o'clock at night
Speaker 5: doesn't shot.
Speaker 3: You end up reading it the next day, like thinking that.
Speaker 5: We were thinking we wanted to go home. That's what
Speaker 5: we're think exactly so. But you know, but writers rooms
Speaker 5: are odd places. Yeah, to this they remain odd places.
Speaker 5: They're now it's been made even odder because of Zoom.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, it was incredibly a really nice group
Speaker 5: of people. It was also interesting enough. It was a
Speaker 5: real wide range of people age wise, because we had
Speaker 5: I think Carlos was the youngest and yeah, probably I
Speaker 5: don't know, he's got probably like in his mid.
Speaker 3: Twenties, and Erica Montalfa was in our mid twenties.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then we also have people, you know, who
Speaker 5: are quite quite a bit older, seeing a lot more
Speaker 5: and I was kind of in between. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: and at that point Bob was running the show Tishlar
Speaker 5: and you know, Bob was sweetest, sweetest man in the world. Yes,
Speaker 5: and so no, it was. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: And I would say that like whether there were only
Speaker 5: a couple of points where that I remember where things
Speaker 5: got a little blue, you know, a little too blue
Speaker 5: for people and that, but I remember at least people
Speaker 5: would speak up and go, hey, hey, hey, hey guys,
Speaker 5: can we can we pull it back a little bit,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like it was definitely not
Speaker 5: what I would consider to be a rough room, and
Speaker 5: I don't remember it as being like abusive at at all.
Speaker 5: And also I think if there was tension, people would
Speaker 5: get up and walk around. You know. That's a big
Speaker 5: difference now between now and the zoom thing is is like,
Speaker 5: I think it's a lot easier in zoom rooms because
Speaker 5: I have friends who write on mostly in zoom rooms,
Speaker 5: and I think it's much much easier for resentments to
Speaker 5: build up. Yea. And also just the distractions are a
Speaker 5: whole different thing, you know, Like I mean people texting
Speaker 5: while they're on zoom or five chats, and it's generally speaking,
Speaker 5: I think it's I mean, it's more efficient question if
Speaker 5: you run it efficiently, but in terms of the camaraderie.
Speaker 3: Not the same, not ye close.
Speaker 5: Plus also, if you think about it, writers generally speaking
Speaker 5: are more solitary and quieter people, and now you're sticking
Speaker 5: a camera in their face. Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 3: And even like you said, just the idea that if
Speaker 3: something was getting tense or somebody needed a moment, you
Speaker 3: would get up and walk around, but you could still
Speaker 3: like keep eyes on that person or go out in
Speaker 3: the hallway, whereas like now with your computer, if you
Speaker 3: get up and walk away from your computer, you're essentially
Speaker 3: no longer in the meeting, right, But you can't get that, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I just need to walk around for a little bit.
Speaker 3: I need to stretch my legs, like you'd have to
Speaker 3: take your computer with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Completely, But I mean the bigger thing is is like,
Speaker 5: if you're having a problem with someone in the writer's
Speaker 5: room and you're in person, that can't go on very long,
Speaker 5: right like you basically are luck. Look, we're going to
Speaker 5: be in this room. So I may not love you,
Speaker 5: but I'm not going to go some whereas on Zoom.
Speaker 5: I just think it's a matter of yeah, of course
Speaker 5: it can go on. Yeah, certain cases. I'm not even
Speaker 5: in the same city as you.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, we recently rewatched or watched, I guess for the
Speaker 3: first time for some of us, your episode season six,
Speaker 3: hogs Kisses, which is a wild episode that has Tapanga
Speaker 3: filming a college promo and hitting a relationship roadblock when
Speaker 3: she kisses Sean in the video. Do you remember how
Speaker 3: this idea came about? Did you pitch the idea? Who
Speaker 3: came up with the idea that Tapanga and Sean would
Speaker 3: make out for the art of the college video?
Speaker 5: I definitely didn't pitch this idea. I don't know. There
Speaker 5: are certain episodes, a couple of episodes that I wrote
Speaker 5: where I feel like I came in with the idea.
Speaker 5: I don't this is where my memory fails. The specifics
Speaker 5: of these episodes. Yea, they don't really I don't entirely remember.
Speaker 5: And I think that there may be have been ideas
Speaker 5: about that, maybe there was a germ about idea that
Speaker 5: throughout that I threw out that it changed, but I
Speaker 5: don't remember too much about the specifics there to be honest.
Speaker 5: So I wish I could say I did. I know
Speaker 5: you're not a fan of the episode, and I completely
Speaker 5: don't blame you. It's weird looking back at this stuff.
Speaker 5: Like I said, the memories for me are the room, yeah,
Speaker 5: and the day to day as opposed to as the
Speaker 5: specifics of any episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We talk about it a million times that it's unbelievable
Speaker 3: how much our memories are not about the shooting of
Speaker 3: the show or the episode or the lines. It's the
Speaker 3: stuff that happened at craft service. It's the stuff that
Speaker 3: you know, the conversations we had in school, or it's
Speaker 3: those moments that we remember way more than, like you're saying,
Speaker 3: the specifics of the show. So some character stuff, I
Speaker 3: want to know, do you remember what your take on
Speaker 3: generally on Corey and Tapanga was, what your thoughts were
Speaker 3: on them as a couple.
Speaker 5: I mean, I like them as a couple. I thought
Speaker 5: everything was happening in an obviously kind of like way
Speaker 5: too accelerated way. But I also think that because I
Speaker 5: remember there being a lot of debate about should they
Speaker 5: get married or not? And it's so young, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, And I think everyone was kind of
Speaker 5: it was a point like, well, what can we do
Speaker 5: to this, what can what can happen in this relationship
Speaker 5: that hasn't already happened, So it's it wasn't mirroring reality obviously,
Speaker 5: and so I think we felt like that was the
Speaker 5: next step for them to take. I mean, they were
Speaker 5: incredibly appealing as a couple, and so and that's what
Speaker 5: viewers really a lot of the viewers really kind of
Speaker 5: like we're responding to. I also remember at the time
Speaker 5: and looking back, that we didn't know what to do
Speaker 5: with with Jack and Eric and uh calling Rachel Rachel. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And so I think we were completely at sea, and
Speaker 5: I think the episodes reflect that. Honestly.
Speaker 4: Do you do you remember when they when when you
Speaker 4: came on season six, did they tell you already that
Speaker 4: they were adding a new character or were you there
Speaker 4: when they were kind of debating or deciding to put
Speaker 4: Rachel on the show.
Speaker 5: I think she was on the show already. She was, Well,
Speaker 5: I shouldn't say that, I should say that they were
Speaker 5: the character was coming on. I think I remember Maitland
Speaker 5: being cast.
Speaker 2: But I want to I want to go back for
Speaker 2: a minute too, your time as as an executive. I'm
Speaker 2: so curious back then, besides ratings, how did you get feedback?
Speaker 2: Like how did I mean you you you guys had
Speaker 2: your internal meetings about these characters are popping, But were
Speaker 2: you getting letters from fans? Like how would you get
Speaker 2: that that feedback? Now it's obviously online, but back then,
Speaker 2: how would you know?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they definitely got They got kind of like,
Speaker 5: you know, viewer responses online and how they could tell
Speaker 5: how how storylines play. There was also focus group testing,
Speaker 5: obviously with a much bigger thing back then in terms
Speaker 5: of you know, where you'd focus group test a few
Speaker 5: episodes a year to see how people were responding. I mean,
Speaker 5: also too, it's interesting is that like so many more
Speaker 5: people were watching network television just across the board. Ye,
Speaker 5: so you know, a show could stay on the air
Speaker 5: for a long time and draft off the show in
Speaker 5: front of it in a way that you never were
Speaker 5: able to before. And I think that so it was
Speaker 5: probably a combination of the It was the ratings. It was, yeah,
Speaker 5: you got audience feedback, You got tons of audience feedback,
Speaker 5: and you were reading like like what people were responding to.
Speaker 5: It took it took longer, but but yeah, I think
Speaker 5: that's kind of what it was. And also, you know,
Speaker 5: certain shows, there were certain things where shows started humming
Speaker 5: along and you're like, Okay, look, the show's doing well creatively,
Speaker 5: we're really happy with it, which happened to boy moved
Speaker 5: to a no run, no show run seven years. When
Speaker 5: you're not and you're not creatively happy, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. So so you get to a certain point.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's when a show runs as long as
Speaker 5: it is. I always feel like the sweet spot for
Speaker 5: a show is almost like episode like thirty five too,
Speaker 5: like fifty five, because it's kind of like you're past
Speaker 5: what doesn't work, You've made all those mistakes, but you
Speaker 5: haven't gone through everything yet, know what I mean, And
Speaker 5: and so that's really great. And then you know, with
Speaker 5: most shows, you get to about you know, fifty to
Speaker 5: fifty five and You're like, Okay, we gotta we gotta
Speaker 5: start looking for something else here. And that was the
Speaker 5: challenge with Corny into Panga, right, because what else to
Speaker 5: do with them? I mean, the Shawn episode, to your point,
Speaker 5: was probably because okay, look, let's we've never done an
Speaker 5: episode where Sean came between Corny and to Panga and
Speaker 5: that would flip Corey out, So that's at least.
Speaker 3: Funny, right exactly, So.
Speaker 5: That's probably where we were at that point.
Speaker 4: Do you remember what the strangest possible storyline that you
Speaker 4: heard pitched in the room was for either six or seven?
Speaker 5: God? I mean we did or didn't do either. We
Speaker 5: did the Drag Show, which was pretty strange.
Speaker 3: Is that we have is that with Eric and Jack.
Speaker 5: And Sean were women or was it Eric that was
Speaker 5: in season We've done them both.
Speaker 2: We did it season four. We had Chick Like Me,
Speaker 2: which actually is.
Speaker 5: Pretty probably you guys Jack, that was pretty nuts. The
Speaker 5: I'm trying to think of what else? What was the
Speaker 5: episode where you guys you and that was weird? The
Speaker 5: episode were Quinta Panga went to some Caribbean That wasn't
Speaker 5: That wasn't good. It's interesting now in terms of like
Speaker 5: the things you can't do that you could do back then,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean about all shows in terms
Speaker 5: of some of the sexism, Yeah, and the racism that
Speaker 5: you just cannot you cannot you couldn't do today, you know,
Speaker 5: so very much of a different time because I watch
Speaker 5: these episodes like Wow, that was like, of course that
Speaker 5: wasn't even close to the line. But our show could
Speaker 5: hardly be called a controversial show, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And we never had standards and practice issues on the
Speaker 5: show like we did on many other shows that I
Speaker 5: worked on. So it's really it's kind of it's interesting
Speaker 5: in that respect.
Speaker 3: Did you have a boy Meets World character you liked
Speaker 3: writing for the most?
Speaker 5: Eric? No question? Will. It is just I mean, you
Speaker 5: all are amazingly talented, but we'll just yep. Will's blessing
Speaker 5: and his curses that he could make anything funny, anything,
Speaker 5: and that's a that, like I said, that truly gift.
Speaker 5: But it's also for a writer, it's kind of like, oh, whatever,
Speaker 5: just put it in. We're running out of time, and
Speaker 5: that's I know. You guys have other people who did
Speaker 5: you read who the table reads? Where we That was
Speaker 5: very strange reading doing a table read of the writers
Speaker 5: of you guys was a very strange thing, and I
Speaker 5: didn't particularly like the idea because I was like, no
Speaker 5: joke should die because the actor didn't have a chance
Speaker 5: at it. But I always read Will's Park Oh cool. Yeah, so,
Speaker 5: but yeah, that was a bizarre process and I was
Speaker 5: kind of like, I didn't want to make I never
Speaker 5: believed in making too many changes to the jokes just
Speaker 5: based on that. I mean, it comes with the story,
Speaker 5: it's you know, but I don't. I don't think you
Speaker 5: need a table read of writers to know whether her
Speaker 5: story's working or not.
Speaker 3: Well, you ended up writing four episodes in total, two
Speaker 3: and season six, two and season seven and stayed with
Speaker 3: us till the end of the show. And then, as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, you found yourself as the vice president of
Speaker 3: CBS then senior vice president, two very high level positions
Speaker 3: over thirteen years within the company. Uh, did you ever
Speaker 3: buy any Michael Jacobs shows when you were at CBS?
Speaker 3: Did you ever work with anyone from your time at
Speaker 3: Boy Meets World again? After you left?
Speaker 5: Michael never pitched the show? Well, I was never. I
Speaker 5: don't know if Michael ever pitched the show to CBS.
Speaker 5: I was in current. I wasn't in development.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 5: But I always used to say, if you don't think
Speaker 5: the first first year and maybe in the second year
Speaker 5: of a show is development, then you've never done development,
Speaker 5: you know, because the development department a lot of times
Speaker 5: it's like they handed off to you and you're like, oh,
Speaker 5: you guys really had fun doing one episode, Now we
Speaker 5: have to do there's some problems here, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, you handed us off a Collagy baby in
Speaker 5: most cases. So let me think I worked I never
Speaker 5: worked with Laura and Patty were on I think a
Speaker 5: couple of shows that dramas that I worked around, but no,
Speaker 5: not not comedies, not comedies. So no, I mean then
Speaker 5: people may have come in and pitched stuff. I'm trying
Speaker 5: to think of who else. Barbie may have come in
Speaker 5: and pitched something, but not to the point where I
Speaker 5: actually was on on sets with them or giving notes
Speaker 5: to any of them. I never had to deal with that.
Speaker 4: What do you, curiously, what do you think from the
Speaker 4: executive side of the Slow Painful Death of the American Sitcom?
Speaker 5: You know, I think it's well, I think there's it's
Speaker 5: kind of the slow painful death of scripted television, and
Speaker 5: there's kind of as far as the sitcom is concerned,
Speaker 5: because there's been post War Meets World, there was another
Speaker 5: rise in another fall of you know, comedy. I think
Speaker 5: that it's a combination of things. I think that there
Speaker 5: there's only there were from a from a cost perspective,
Speaker 5: the best writers were far more interested in doing single
Speaker 5: cameras than they weren't doing multi cameras. I think multi
Speaker 5: camera had to stink about it kind of renewed to
Speaker 5: think about it that. I think now has has shifted
Speaker 5: a little bit, and people multi camera is a cheaper form,
Speaker 5: so people want to come back to it. But I
Speaker 5: don't know. I think now it's a bigger issue of
Speaker 5: just you know, there's if they can have cheaper programming,
Speaker 5: they're going to take it. And so it's difficult because
Speaker 5: you there's just not space. Even if there were eight
Speaker 5: phenomenal multicams. I think putting on a reality show or
Speaker 5: investing in sports is a better bang for your buck
Speaker 5: for a lot of the for the certainly the broadcast networks.
Speaker 5: So you know, I definitely think there was a time.
Speaker 5: I mean, when boy meets Not when I've started on
Speaker 5: Boy Meets world. If you look at the schedules of
Speaker 5: the networks, there were probably seventy five percent more comedies
Speaker 5: on than at the end of Voi nets World, like
Speaker 5: just in a year period. Now, that was that was
Speaker 5: too much. There were too many comedies on, and the
Speaker 5: talent pool was spread really really thin because again going
Speaker 5: back to like the idea of at that point, a
Speaker 5: lot of people were still still thought it was an
Speaker 5: insult to do television, so to have and and with
Speaker 5: a sitcom you've got to have a lead obviously, or
Speaker 5: or two people who are driving most of the stories
Speaker 5: and that people fall in love with. And so the
Speaker 5: talent pool was stretched just way, way, way too thin.
Speaker 5: And you know, a lot of comics were given you know,
Speaker 5: you look, comics were given shows based on nothing. You know,
Speaker 5: they were based on I shouldn't say based on nothing.
Speaker 5: They were they had huge reputations as comics. But you know,
Speaker 5: you talk about a show like Drew Carrey, you know,
Speaker 5: Drew was an amazing, great stand up but if you
Speaker 5: go back and watch that show, he's surrounded by really
Speaker 5: funny people, yes, who've got you know, who've got years
Speaker 5: of improv experience behind me and guest actors who are
Speaker 5: really really strong, so they're buying time for him to
Speaker 5: ease into the form. And that was the case with
Speaker 5: not enough shows. They're just we're enough people who are
Speaker 5: kind of like supporting leads or you know, friends is
Speaker 5: lightning in a bottle. It's like like big Bang theory,
Speaker 5: you're not going to get five or six really really
Speaker 5: funny people when the cast, when everybody's desperately trying to cast.
Speaker 5: So I think now, I mean to me, now is
Speaker 5: a great time for more sitcoms to be produced. It's
Speaker 5: just a matter of there's got to be a desire
Speaker 5: to do it, and linear television obviously is being really
Speaker 5: really challenged right now by the streamers. Yes, so we're
Speaker 5: in a period of contraction. But I also think that
Speaker 5: there's a place, if there is a way to do
Speaker 5: it in a more cost efficient way, more sitcoms will
Speaker 5: get on the air. It's just a matter of how
Speaker 5: do you do it, you know, cheaper and and we're
Speaker 5: also at a point where anybody can create content, so
Speaker 5: that's also part of it too, Right. I have a
Speaker 5: thirteen year old daughter, so the way she consumes content
Speaker 5: is completely different than the way I do, and that
Speaker 5: Genie's not going back in the bottle, So it's now
Speaker 5: a far more complicated answer than just, hey, put more
Speaker 5: sitcoms on.
Speaker 3: You know for sure. I want to ask you about
Speaker 3: one other job you had, content executive and a producer
Speaker 3: for Dick Wolf Entertainment, one.
Speaker 4: Of the most d done done Sorry, my favorite, Calm down,
Speaker 4: I can't, I can't.
Speaker 3: It's Law Order, one of the most successful brands in
Speaker 3: TV history, the team behind every Law and Order and
Speaker 3: all the best crime shows. Basically, was that a close
Speaker 3: Was that a company you had worked closely with at CBS?
Speaker 5: No, I'd never worked Honestly, I don't know that I
Speaker 5: ever worked on a Dick Wolf show before I got
Speaker 5: that job, because Dick Wolf shows were all on NBC,
Speaker 5: okay when I was at ABC. Or he may have
Speaker 5: tried to develop a show at ABC or CBS while
Speaker 5: I was there, but I don't think so. It was
Speaker 5: all the shows were all NBC, so an FBI. The
Speaker 5: fbis were developed and aired at CBS long after I
Speaker 5: was gone. Because I left CBS as an executive in
Speaker 5: twenty thirteen, I had a production deal for three years.
Speaker 5: That's those shows then, and they came on even after
Speaker 5: that because I think FBI is going into like as
Speaker 5: seventh season or something. So it was a really fascinating experience.
Speaker 5: I mean, I fortunately came into that job with the
Speaker 5: background of working on long running franchises like CSI and CIS,
Speaker 5: so I understood the kind of you know, and I
Speaker 5: mean this in a completely positive way, factory mentality, like
Speaker 5: this is our brand, this is what we do. Yes,
Speaker 5: we deviate a little bit at times, but we know
Speaker 5: what we know, what works, and so just a phenomenal machine. Also,
Speaker 5: what was what was different for me is that all
Speaker 5: his shows, none of the shows shoot in LA So
Speaker 5: in order to build relationships I had to get on
Speaker 5: a plane and go to Chicago for all the Chicago
Speaker 5: shows or New York for and I did. I did
Speaker 5: very very little on Law and Order. Wasn't around. Actually,
Speaker 5: Law and Order was rebooted the year after I left.
Speaker 5: It was being rebooted as I left, and SVU was
Speaker 5: going into its twenty fifth season. So it was very,
Speaker 5: very nice that I got this all these all of
Speaker 5: a sudden. It was almost impossible to not see my
Speaker 5: name on network television.
Speaker 1: It was everywhere everywhere I turn, and there you are.
Speaker 2: I can't watch a single murder without seeing your.
Speaker 5: Name right right, and then that's just kind of like
Speaker 5: a perk that that executives get a Wolf to get
Speaker 5: a credit on screen, which I always laughed at because
Speaker 5: I was so intricately involved in so many shows at
Speaker 5: CBS and I RA and I rightfully never got a
Speaker 5: credit because again it's not you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: But the first thing I did when I saw my
Speaker 5: name and I was like every producer, I talked to
Speaker 5: him like, I promise you, I'm not taking a dime
Speaker 5: out of your budget. It's not costing you a dime
Speaker 5: to have my name on the screen, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean? Because Wolf Is is a family, a real
Speaker 5: family of people who've worked together for a long long time,
Speaker 5: and the editors who've been there forever. And then that's
Speaker 5: part of the reason why the those shows are so
Speaker 5: well done. So a person comes in, you really do
Speaker 5: feel like a guest. But everybody was really, really nice.
Speaker 5: And I was involved in kind of like the development
Speaker 5: of Organized Crime, which now the Chris Maloney Show which
Speaker 5: is now on Peacock, and then with FBI most wanted
Speaker 5: that show and them, and now those two shows that
Speaker 5: were canceled FBI must wanted an FBI international. I was
Speaker 5: involved in the development of those two shows, very involved
Speaker 5: in FBI and the Chicago shows again to varying degrees.
Speaker 5: The nice thing about Wolf, though, there was a lot
Speaker 5: of the writer's offices are there's two big buildings that
Speaker 5: maybe he has another by now, but there were two
Speaker 5: big buildings that where all the and the post production
Speaker 5: was done, actually three because post was in a whole
Speaker 5: other area, and the writers, a lot of the writers
Speaker 5: were there, and that was really nice because I got
Speaker 5: to hang out because Wolf. Most of the shows that
Speaker 5: Wolf don't have writer's rooms, and they they basically the
Speaker 5: writers come in, they work on their episodes themselves, and
Speaker 5: they pop into each other's offices. But there's a couple
Speaker 5: of Wolf shows that have rooms, but most don't. So
Speaker 5: it's nice because you literally could go down the hall
Speaker 5: and talk to someone and it's it's a very collegial
Speaker 5: feeling in that respect, and you really get to see
Speaker 5: I mean, and I got to see this a lot
Speaker 5: when it came to CSI, because obviously there was CSI
Speaker 5: Miami and CSI New York, and those shows were in
Speaker 5: some ways very different. But also they had the CSI
Speaker 5: production around them, and that's what Wolf was is very.
Speaker 4: Much CSI Miami is still just watching Cruso's performance episode
Speaker 4: after episode is one of my favorite ways to spend
Speaker 4: a day.
Speaker 1: It is just so awesome.
Speaker 2: I have a question about that period. So you're doing
Speaker 2: really kind of standard procedural crime stuff at the time,
Speaker 2: when you know, especially the streamers, and you have your FX's,
Speaker 2: these they're really breaking that mold. How did you feel
Speaker 2: about that? Were you envious of those shows or were
Speaker 2: you so happy and actually very content to stick within
Speaker 2: the procedural conference.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I think there was enough in
Speaker 5: certain shows. I mean, everybody's envious of doing kind of
Speaker 5: that type of work, but that's also not the job,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Like, but the nice thing
Speaker 5: about the Wolf shows is, and I broke Hot was
Speaker 5: like this, once you get past once you get into
Speaker 5: the third season, really you start to do some personal stuff.
Speaker 5: Like if you watch Chicago PD, which I think is
Speaker 5: a fantastic show. I mean, Chicago PD was the closest
Speaker 5: NYPD blue that I found since I worked at ABC.
Speaker 5: It really reminded me a lot of that show, and
Speaker 5: that show did a lot of personal stuff Chicago med
Speaker 5: did a fair amount of personal stuff, so they weren't
Speaker 5: devoid of personal personal stories. But but I don't know,
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm very pragmatic. I mean that's one of
Speaker 5: the things when you when you when you're a current executive,
Speaker 5: you learn you've got to be very very pragmatic about
Speaker 5: things and about like who you're producing shows for, and
Speaker 5: so you kind of pick your spots where you can
Speaker 5: do it. And then but you also don't sit there
Speaker 5: and go if I deviate too far, I'm gonna lose
Speaker 5: my audience. And that's that's the job, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean it's I watch a lot of the other
Speaker 5: stuff you mentioned, but I also feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: these shows are the these shows are some of the
Speaker 5: most popular shows in these streamers libraries. Ye, no, totally.
Speaker 5: You know, you can for every you know one or
Speaker 5: two ones that you do that are more our tour
Speaker 5: dreven or you know, heavy character, they're not the ones
Speaker 5: that are paying the bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so funny. I go, when I think back
Speaker 2: to the first time I saw the first episode of
Speaker 2: The Wire, I was like, well, this is a poorly
Speaker 2: written scene, not enough it is changing. We didn't. We
Speaker 2: didn't move for the needle. And then it took like
Speaker 2: three episodes. I was like, oh, oh, they're like Bret,
Speaker 2: they're folding the form out and expanding in a way.
Speaker 2: But it was my instant reaction was like, why is
Speaker 2: everyone talking about the show? This is so poorly written,
Speaker 2: you know, and it just was a completely different mindset.
Speaker 2: But I think you're right, it's you know, the the
Speaker 2: procedural show is more popular. Ultimately, I think you know
Speaker 2: it ultimately wins.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's more popular. But also like to your
Speaker 5: point about you know, just those are that was the
Speaker 5: reason why a lot of actors didn't want to do it,
Speaker 5: because the worst thing for some of these actors would be, like,
Speaker 5: you're telling me I have to play the same role
Speaker 5: one hundred times.
Speaker 2: Deliver this exposition about the would always.
Speaker 5: We would always laugh about this. Where there would inevitably
Speaker 5: there would be mostly was an actor because back in
Speaker 5: those days there were far more male leads and dramas.
Speaker 5: They're kind of still are, but and they would, you know,
Speaker 5: they would sign on for the role. And part a
Speaker 5: lot of the reason I think why they signed on
Speaker 5: for the role was because the money that just the money,
Speaker 5: and and it also allowed them to stay in one place.
Speaker 5: And you know, at some point in season one, I
Speaker 5: mean this happened with like I don't know, like seven
Speaker 5: to ten actors. I won't mention they would, you know,
Speaker 5: start to get frustrated, and you know, because they're working.
Speaker 5: They're working six or seven days, and of the six
Speaker 5: or seven days, four or five of them are what
Speaker 5: we call shoe leather, which is you're moving the plot along,
Speaker 5: and there'd be that sit down, you know where with
Speaker 5: the executives. I didn't sign on for this.
Speaker 8: You're like, well, actually you did sign Benjamin.
Speaker 5: And you're gonna get to You're gonna get to, you know,
Speaker 5: do more.
Speaker 4: But it's but you see the turnover on the especially
Speaker 4: in Law and Order, where it's like you get two
Speaker 4: seasons of a DA, three seasons of a DA, and
Speaker 4: then there's a new one.
Speaker 1: You get two seasons of a detective and then there's
Speaker 1: a new one.
Speaker 2: The guests are often the juiciest roles, right interrogation scenes,
Speaker 2: the guest stars are breaking down and having to admit something.
Speaker 2: I remember doing one of those shows and just being
Speaker 2: so excited because I got to, you know, I had
Speaker 2: the interrogation scene and it was like a police abuse thing.
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, and I get in. I'm
Speaker 2: so excited to meet the two leads and they're just like,
Speaker 2: who holds folder?
Speaker 5: Wait?
Speaker 2: I hand it to you. Wait, you take the folder,
Speaker 2: and then I hand it to you. And they didn't
Speaker 2: want to look at me. They didn't want to talk
Speaker 2: about the scene. They just wanted to figure out who
Speaker 2: does the folder work? And I was like, oh right,
Speaker 2: that's your life, this is this scene is every other
Speaker 2: day for you, and like I'm just the new guest star.
Speaker 3: Of the week.
Speaker 2: But for me, it was like I have to act.
Speaker 2: I have to do, you know. And they were like
Speaker 2: who holds? And you know that all they could.
Speaker 5: That's all I mean. It's it's interesting because a lot
Speaker 5: of those wolf actors law and order ones, certainly they
Speaker 5: stuck around for a long long time. Yeah, but I
Speaker 5: also think, you know, those are veteran actors who also
Speaker 5: had done who appreciated, you know, the stability of the role,
Speaker 5: and also also did did stuff on the side, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, Like they did theater.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, your Chicago New York actor is
Speaker 2: that's a different piece in a lot.
Speaker 4: That's why Sam Patterson didn't mind being on Law and
Speaker 4: Order for as long as he was on, because he's
Speaker 4: also doing theater and he's like, I'm an actor, this
Speaker 4: is what I do, have a great role on this.
Speaker 1: Why would I why would I leave?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's the difference between an actor and someone
Speaker 4: who wanted to be a movie star.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. There were a lot of actors who were
Speaker 5: not lead characters on shows that I worked on who
Speaker 5: would be complaining, you know what I mean about their
Speaker 5: character or whatever. But those I would like, Okay, So
Speaker 5: then on your hiatus, you should be doing theater where
Speaker 5: like hid on the call sheet on Sea I, but
Speaker 5: you could be doing Hamlet. You know, maybe not in
Speaker 5: maybe not in Central Park, but certainly in a big city.
Speaker 5: Who would put your name on a billboard. But it's like, more,
Speaker 5: that's not what they did. Yeah, you know, so it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's it's a phenomenal gig. But in
Speaker 5: the case of a number of them, you had to
Speaker 5: be like, Okay, you know, this is this is what
Speaker 5: the show is, and yes, you will have your opportunities
Speaker 5: to but we can't on a show when there is
Speaker 5: a ticking clock, Why would we Why would viewers want
Speaker 5: to go home with you? So there's a killer out there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so you have to you know, you pick your spots,
Speaker 5: and the longer a show goes on, the more forgiving
Speaker 5: and audience is about. Yeah, I don't know why this
Speaker 5: character is divorced. I do want to see them have
Speaker 5: a romantic relationship, but it's definitely a challenge on on
Speaker 5: both ends.
Speaker 3: Well, you've worked closely. We've mentioned a few of them.
Speaker 3: You have worked closely with a ton of successful showrunners
Speaker 3: over the past twenty years, most importantly this podcast, Michael Jacobs,
Speaker 3: but we have Dick, Wolf, Chuck, Lorie, Don Miguil, The
Speaker 3: list goes on and on. Do you think there's anything
Speaker 3: in particular they all have in common.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think they have. I think they
Speaker 5: have strong points of view and aren't afraid to express them.
Speaker 5: I think they are decisive when they need to be.
Speaker 5: I think that they also understand the grind that producing
Speaker 5: twenty two episodes is. I mean, the fact that it's
Speaker 5: just so crazy. Now where you know, my friends, we
Speaker 5: are working on shows that are eight to ten episodes.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh my god, I'm luxury You know, I
Speaker 5: can't believe we did twenty four episodes in its world
Speaker 5: one year.
Speaker 3: That's you know, that's two years last.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's just you know, put your head down and
Speaker 5: don't look up until Christmas. So I think I think
Speaker 5: they also, whether they whether they're they admit it or not,
Speaker 5: they find who they can delegate to and lean on
Speaker 5: that person. And I think they also are smart enough
Speaker 5: to admit what they don't know.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: I think those are those are the trades. I also
Speaker 5: think you have to be able to You have to
Speaker 5: have a thick skin and realize I am likely going to,
Speaker 5: if not piss off with every decision I make, someone
Speaker 5: is not going to like it. Someone's going to disagree
Speaker 5: with it. But you have to be able to know
Speaker 5: that and move on. And I kind of looked at
Speaker 5: those people and as I as I when I was
Speaker 5: heading head of Current, like it took me a good
Speaker 5: two years to learn how to do that job in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, been one of them off, just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that person got really pissed off at me today. But
Speaker 5: they're also likely with most of the decisions I made,
Speaker 5: they're not going to remember them in a year, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? That's that's a thing that you
Speaker 5: encounter with a lot of people is like everything is
Speaker 5: the most important thing, and it's just not whether you
Speaker 5: get to a point where you're like ninety five percent
Speaker 5: of these decisions are what I call disposable. And I
Speaker 5: don't mean that in an insulting way, but I mean
Speaker 5: it in the idea of like you're barely going to
Speaker 5: remember it, and it's not a big it's not a
Speaker 5: big fork in the road, but there are and that
Speaker 5: also helps you where it's like there are big forks in.
Speaker 3: The room, right, It'll help you differentiate between the tables.
Speaker 5: And then you have to stop down and go, Okay,
Speaker 5: we need to really think about this, because if you
Speaker 5: take the wrong call here, we're going to have another
Speaker 5: meeting in a month or two and you're really not
Speaker 5: going to like it, or we're going to have another
Speaker 5: decision to make and you're really not going to like it.
Speaker 5: And if at all possible, let's look at what Let's
Speaker 5: look at common mistakes and that has happened in the
Speaker 5: past and see if we can put them into this category.
Speaker 5: Because that's what I would do a lot of which
Speaker 5: I would be like, let's just not make keep making
Speaker 5: the same mistake over and over and over, Like, let's
Speaker 5: not just change something for the sake of changing it,
Speaker 5: because if that we're going to do that, then we're
Speaker 5: going to be back here again. So most of those
Speaker 5: people could do it, but they and they also kind
Speaker 5: of knew, like they knew what they were really really
Speaker 5: good at, and they also knew what they weren't good
Speaker 5: at it, and they might not admit it, but there
Speaker 5: their admitting it would be like you take care of it,
Speaker 5: you know, like that's not going I don't want to
Speaker 5: do it, like I want you to do it because
Speaker 5: I don't want to do yeah, yeah, And or in
Speaker 5: a lot of cases, by the way, that's delivering bad news.
Speaker 5: A lot of very very successful people got that way
Speaker 5: because they didn't like delivering bad news and so someone
Speaker 5: else got to do it. And I was on the
Speaker 5: the delivering bad news part of it a lot. But
Speaker 5: you know, I just kind of most people realize, you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's at that point if you're delivering really bad news,
Speaker 5: like if you're telling someone their show is canceled, very
Speaker 5: rarely is it a surprise, right, And it's disappointing. It's
Speaker 5: really disappointing when it show's on the bubble and yeah
Speaker 5: and just go look, I'm just sorry. But you know,
Speaker 5: development was a lot stronger than we anticipated, or it
Speaker 5: just didn't go your way. But you know, for most
Speaker 5: people that I had to deliver the information too, I
Speaker 5: got yelled at a couple of times, but most people
Speaker 5: were very were understanding, you know. So there's there's it's
Speaker 5: hard to be a really good show runner. There's I
Speaker 5: mean someone said to me early on in my career,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of ways to run a show poorly.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, it's not that many ways to run a show. Well, yeah,
Speaker 9: and it's not a coincidence that there are certain people,
Speaker 9: you know, even in this new world, whether it's zoom
Speaker 9: or eight or ten episodes, a lot of the fundamentals
Speaker 9: of really good show running to me are completely the same.
Speaker 3: Well, finally, looking back on your time almost thirty years
Speaker 3: ago now on Boy Meets World, before all of these
Speaker 3: big executive jobs came your way, did you ever think
Speaker 3: people would still be talking about Boy Meets World in
Speaker 3: thirty years?
Speaker 5: I mean I would say it's no and yes no,
Speaker 5: Because whoever thinks anything they do is going to be
Speaker 5: that seminal that people are going to talk about it.
Speaker 5: But I do feel like there's a there's a warmth
Speaker 5: to this show, and there's kind of like a in
Speaker 5: a weird way, I wish fulfillment of like a world
Speaker 5: to live in in this show that I think people
Speaker 5: kind of you know, don't lose sight of. I mean,
Speaker 5: I found it very interesting when I used to when
Speaker 5: I speak at colleges, because I do it periodically for friends,
Speaker 5: and I don't come in there talking about Boymi's world,
Speaker 5: but every time someone will raise their hand and ask
Speaker 5: me a question about SO, I just I feel like
Speaker 5: there's and you guys doing this I think also is
Speaker 5: rightfully kind of like reigniting interest in the show. And
Speaker 5: so it's about the themes of what the of what
Speaker 5: the show stands for. And I I so in that point,
Speaker 5: given where we are now, I'm not surprised at all.
Speaker 5: And when I watch my what my daughter's watching, most
Speaker 5: of the half hours that my daughter's watching are you know,
Speaker 5: would never have existed if it wasn't for t G.
Speaker 5: I F So in that sense, I'm I'm not surprised
Speaker 5: at all. And I think there's also kind of a
Speaker 5: sense of to be able to kind of see where
Speaker 5: these characters grew, how they grew up, and how you guys,
Speaker 5: you know, are living your lives. That's also something where
Speaker 5: the nostalgia element of that to me now feels irresistible.
Speaker 3: Well, David, we hope you'll come back and join us
Speaker 3: for season seven. When we get to one of your
Speaker 3: season seven interviews episodes, we'd love to have you back
Speaker 3: to go over it, talk about the episode. We hope
Speaker 3: you'll join us again. Thank you so much for being
Speaker 3: here with us and spending your valuable time with us.
Speaker 3: It's really you've been You've enlightened us so much on
Speaker 3: what the process was, and we appreciate you so much.
Speaker 3: So thank you.
Speaker 5: I hope I made some sense absolutely, Thank you guys.
Speaker 5: It was a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and look forward to doing it again.
Speaker 2: By as a wealth of knowledge, stuff he knows I
Speaker 2: would like, like he should. I mean, he could teach
Speaker 2: probably the best college course on television production and like
Speaker 2: how to how to run a show because he's seen
Speaker 2: it from both sides.
Speaker 3: Like that is well, we talk about it. We didn't
Speaker 3: get to talk about it on in the podcast, but
Speaker 3: he has for he's got consultation services with a company
Speaker 3: called Stage thirty two, and it's for people looking to
Speaker 3: make TV from end to end, meaning developing an idea,
Speaker 3: pitching it, learning the process of presentation and production. I
Speaker 3: mean truly, I.
Speaker 4: Know we got a good another great resource we have,
Speaker 4: like we have access to some of the greatest resources
Speaker 4: in all.
Speaker 1: Of television and we've got to use them to put
Speaker 1: our show together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, like a you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's going to sound like kind of an I'm
Speaker 2: being dismissive, our insulting, but he has a dispassion about
Speaker 2: him that is very cool to see because I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, as showrunners or creatives are usually there are
Speaker 2: energy and passionate and that actually can be off putting
Speaker 2: and not conducive to a calm running show. And he
Speaker 2: clearly just has like been through it enough to know
Speaker 2: to like he can pull it back.
Speaker 3: He can just Yeah, even him saying that one of
Speaker 3: his best when he's training people don't fall in love
Speaker 3: with your shows.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: He open's great man.
Speaker 1: All right, so somebody else we got to put the
Speaker 1: list to help us on our show.
Speaker 3: Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Speaker 3: pod meets World as always. You can follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your
Speaker 3: emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com. And
Speaker 3: we've got merch.
Speaker 4: In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by
Speaker 4: two separate yet equally important groups, the police to investigate
Speaker 4: crimes and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.
Speaker 1: This is their merch.
Speaker 3: Dun Dun, his brain's just insane. Pod Meets Worldshow dot
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Speaker 2: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 3: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted
Speaker 3: by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and Writers. Executive producers Jensen Carp
Speaker 3: and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
Speaker 3: producer and editor, Tara sudbachsch producer, Maddie Moore, engineer and
Speaker 3: Boy Meets World superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is
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