I made that show for Amazon in its early days, and it was so Janet was so cuckoo about the sex and was so aggressive about the kind of craziness of that world and the strange behavior that he saw in the paris of that moment, and I got seduced by it, and I was like, Okay, Yeah, maybe there's a large audience for this. The initial reaction of the Amazon Prime mom who watched that show was I'm not only I mean that show could have taken Amazon down. It was that bad choice and that wrong of an
environment to put that show him. My name is Ben Silverman, and I am a media entrepreneur and the executive producer of the Office.
Well well, well if it isn't another episode of Off the Beat with yours truly, your host, Brian Baumgartner today, Yep, there you go. I'm talking to the big man, the giant donkey, the creator, the guy who started it all. Well he started for me at least, Ben Silverman is here on the program now. Ben. He may not be on your television screen all that often, but he is almost always behind it in some way, lurking in the corner. The fact that he created the Office is just the tip.
That's what she said, just the tip of what he has accomplished in the entertainment industry. He is the co CEO of Propagate Content, the production company behind this very podcast and many other shows. He was also the chairman of NBC Entertainment. He founded production companies including revelly An Electus, and he has created and executive produced many many shows that you know and love, The Office, The Biggest Loser, Ugly, Betty Jane, The Virgin, The Tutors, Charmed, Untold, many many more.
The last time I talked to him, at least on tape, was a few years ago when I was putting together my first podcast and oral history of the Office. If you haven't listened to that, go listen to it. It's almost an audio reunion of everyone who worked on the Office. Or you can scroll all the way back on this podcast to March of twenty twenty one, when I released my extended conversation with Ben about the Office. Wow, I
cannot believe I've been doing this that long. I guess it's true what they say, time flies when you're talking to incredible people every week. Anyway, this time I wanted to talk with Ben about the other parts of his life, his career, his empire. He's a brilliant creative mind, a super smart businessman, and well he's just a really interesting dude. You're gonna see what I mean pretty quickly, Ladies and gentlemen, always the smartest guy in the room, Ben Silverman.
Bubble and squeak. I love it, Bubble and Squeakna bubble and squeak. I could get every mole lift over from the night before.
Kaneti wah, Ella, Kaneti wah. You're in Japan. I understand.
I am in Japan as we speak. It's it's early morning here. But I'm thrilled to be talking to you, my California brother.
Uh, that's what you say, right, I've never been to Japan.
You. Luckily, we have insulted everyone in the world through our collaboration and television show, and I am doing it incredibly efficiently as I wander these streets getting grinned at all day long. But I'm I am very I can mons moss and there's many great Japanese expressions. Yes, kanichiwa is hello, but they don't use that as much as you'd expect.
Is that like Domo Arigato do.
That's a good well Aragatos, thank you, thank you more.
And I have absolutely been in a couple of bowing battles like I always go for the last bow and you know, you could get five six, seven bows going, just like reled it in our show as as much scot and it is incredibly amusing to me as it's playing out, and I feel like I'm in some kind of scripted you know, comedy but right, but my fellow Bauer is not quite And now, because you know, I've been doing this for a week, initially in business meetings
where you know, business cards are presented to me like their their you know, gold, I mean, I'm just like, oh, can you enter your number in my phone? And it's like almost an insult. And then secondarily, I am loving the language like I have been trying to learn it, and it's not that hard to pronounce. It's it's impossible to read because we just don't know the characters right.
Now, obviously, you are the international adapter slash creator of foreign content for America. Are you watching television to find the next great hit?
I have been watching a ton of television and trying to actually land some ip, but I am failing mercilessly. Here, there's a reason the Korean content has exported so well because they're down to work with us, and they're excited to export their content and they are thrilled to have partners. Not so much here. There's not a lot of there's not a lot of yes, I would love to watch this do well. Outside of my borders, they're much there's
much more focus on like it's actually beautiful. I mean, they're just there's focus on doing something the best, but not necessarily the most efficiently or at scale or to be monetized in the same way. So it's just a different culture in terms of its desire to export.
Yeah, you know that actually occurs to me I and then we're going to talk more about you. But you know, you see like on YouTube or whatever, you do see like some Korean television even not just remade, but like content. You don't see a lot of Jeopardy. Is there a lot of like scripted original content in Japan.
It's it's not nearly the level of the Korean content in terms of the scripted content. On the nonscripted side, it's there's so much of it, and there's a lot of it in categories that would work, but they're not as formated like food travel. You know, they do a lot of the kind of genres that we do in
American television, but they're so specifically Japanese. There's not as much of a format to it to adapt, and there's so much crazy popping up all over the screens that you know, the entire country, you know, gives you a little PTSD as you navigate through it. If you remember years ago, there was a television show and half the audience fainted watching it in Japan because of the amount of stuff going on screen. And you feel like that walking through Tokyo. You feel like that in the subway,
and you feel like that watching the shows. There's like thousands of words popping up all over the screen in different colors, and then there's always like somebody like entering the screen laughing, and then there's somebody in costume, and you know, it's highly original and highly confusing and therefore not quite as very specific, yeah, not quite as effective. The Wall Came From Here, which was a adapt betame show,
and there's a couple other things like that. But it's not England, it's not Korea, it's not you know a lot of the other markets that are so strong exactly.
Yeah, Well, enough about Japan. I want to talk. I want to go back with you. I know you were born in Massachusetts, but really grew up in Manhattan an artistic family. Your dad, Stanley, who I know and love so well, a composer, your mom an actor and network executive. So was the arts? Was television? Was entertainment? Was it focused on in your household growing up? Or was that their job? And you were just you know, running the streets of Manhattan.
The arts were an integral part of my upbringing. You know, it was no question that through us Moses, I was exposed to some of the great minds of the latter half of the twentieth century and the artistic community. My father collaborated with everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Anthony Burgess to Arthur Miller. And I ran around the halls of Lincoln Center and various you know, chamber music calls and
exposure to music. And my mom was actually a theater producer and collaborator of my dad's early on before they divorced at age four. My being aged four because my mom realized she was gay, and so that can end a marriage quickly and they talked about it all the time. And then my father's second marriage which also ended. No, you know not because they don't still love each other. As my dad always says, I'm the great ex husband because he's still best friends with both of his ex wives.
But my Stepmam Martha was also a brilliant violinist, so I would be exposed to it all and I would hear it and Thuusmosis would be connected to everything from Shakespeare to Brahms, and it absolutely gave me a great foundation. But it also made me more ambitious in what was possible within the arts and creativity because I saw how much they struggled financially and how difficult it was to get their work heard and seen. Only recently has my
dad had his biggest hits hit. In celebration, my father's new album just came out as he's eighty four years old, his first album probably twenty five thirty years and he has a collaboration with Sting on it right now, which is great, So all of you should download in celebration my Stanley Silverman, and so he was like performing above a you know, his stuff was happening above a church in some weird downtown art space, and you know, I
was like, wait, wait, this isn't fun. I want this to be I want the world to see my stuff, right.
I mean, you talked about so many of these collaborations. Were you present with these great minds and artists and with your mom in her business. Were you seeing these people and knowing who they were? I mean you brought up Arthur Miller for example.
Yes, absolutely. One of my dad's collaborations with Arthur was up from Paradise, and I would you know, they were divorced. So my dad was working. When I saw my dad, I was where he was working, because you know, he worked at night, you know, he was inside these theaters and music halls. And so I walked into a screen door at Arthur Miller's house in Connecticut. I hung out with Joe Papp, the artistic director and founder of the
Public Theater. I you know, met and played with Michael Tilson Thomas arguably the greatest conductor of the modern era. So these people were all in around my world. My mom collaborated with Tommy toone, you know. So it was just how I grew up, you know, it was part of my rhythm and I was the ultimate latch key kid because of it. You know, I was kind of I was raised by the arts, but I was also raised by wolves a little bit. You know. I walked to school alone at age four in New York City
and had to kind of manage for myself. But it is also where I fell in love with television because as the ultimate latch key kid, TV was my babysitter.
Well that makes sense. Do you think that that independence that you had early on, do you think that gave you a toughness?
Like?
Do you think that gave you an independence? I mean, do you feel that? Do you acknowledge that?
I really do, And we obviously were both parents of young kids, you and I and I do see the absolute shift in how we raise our children. At the end of the day, love conquers all. And my parents loved me so much and we are so close and they are the two smartest people I know. And I absolutely feel their love, which gives you another form of confidence. And felt their belief in me as a kid and then as a young man. But no question, you're walking the streets in New York City as a four year old,
You're pretty comfortable as an eighteen year old. I remember arriving at arriving at university and these and the kids from the suburbs were all getting hammered and you know, doing kegstands, and I was like, you idiots where you know, I'm going to the city, you know, like you know, its just my kind of attitude and energy around. It absolutely was grounded in my self reliance, you know. So my mom would leave for the weekend so she could
live her life. She knew I didn't really want to deal with that fact until later on when I could understand it and synthesize it. And I would be handed between ten and twenty dollars for the weekend and basically was left alone in my apartment. And as I walked to school, she was very good and knew the ways to keep me safe. Though. When I walked to school as a kid, you know, basically a post toddler, she would just say, Okay, if you feel scared at all,
look for a doorman. And if you don't find a doorman, look for a mother with a stroller or children. And if you don't find a doorman or a mother with a stroller or children, look for a man in a suit and those were like my guardrails. But that's good. That's good advice, I guess. So.
I mean, it's so impossible to believe. I don't know if we've talked about this or not, but I look, I love my life here in California, and I love New York. I love I love it. I love to visit and go there in short spurts. But I have thought often and talked about I don't know if I could get a show there for a year or something like before the kid get too old, that going there and having them have that experience of being on the streets of New York exactly what you're talking about now.
I don't know about letting them walk to school alone or whatever, but just that feeling of being around so many people and having to kind of learn your way, and there's a certain toughness that it has to bring to you as a child to be navigating that city.
So I had two bikes stolen and I got my jaw broken. Yeah, those are the downsides, but no question, and one big thing I always felt about New York is it's a city that is integrated in how everyone has to utilize the city in the same way. It's absolutely changed and the world has changed. You would never let your kid walk to school alone at age four because somehow the manifestation of bad people is just like accelerated.
But I always felt when about California and I love it is if you have any means, or even just a car, you kind of move in your car between place to place, never touching the society at large. In New York, we all were taking the same subway, we're all taking the same bus, we're all walking the same streets.
We were all integrated, whether whatever class or you place you came from, which is very different than California, where you're kind of being shuttled around in your car cocoon between one bastion of your own community to another place in your own community and not touching the community at large, whereas in New York, you're literally on the subway together, you're in the park together, you're on the streets together, you're on the bus together, and so you're exposed and
through that exposure, you learn and you also tolerate each other in a different way because you're kind of living the same life, even if at the end of the day you go to the penthouse or the twelfth floor, and somebody else is going to the basement. The experience the rest of the day is shared.
Yeah, that's very that's very smart. I see you studied history at TOUGHS. So what was it about history or what did you think? What direction did you feel like your life was going to go.
I always wanted to be in showbiz, but I also had considered being in the Foreign service and working in international relations, and so I was looking at a degree
that could give me a basis for anything. And I truly believe in the liberal arts education in a profound way, and felt that the liberal arts education is the best foundation to understand the stories that took place in reality, which is history, and to understand the stories that took place in creativity through like English classes and art history
and other modes of expression. Were really important to me, and with advice from my family to to study that way and not pursue an economics degree or a business degree, and it sets you up for anything you wanted to do. I happened to be fascinated with history. I played with toy soldiers growing up. I had two uncles who served in World War Two, Lester and Davy. I had a lot of connectivity in my world to what came before me,
and it absolutely was something that interested me. It's partially you know, I created the Tutors about Henry the Eighth, which was a big hit on Showtime and around the world and still airs and other shows like that, including Marco Polo because of my connectivity to history. So it
absolutely helped inform my creative process. But it truly gave me a great foundation for anything and would work well if I chose a different career also, but you know, from a very young age, I knew I wanted to go into show business.
Ye, So that brings me to my next question. But I do have to say, you know, when I go now and I'm talking to young actors or at universities or whatever, that is one of the major pieces of advices that I give to young actors, which is have a broad base of education. If you just are studying acting or theater, you don't have that sort of world perspective that exactly what you said I feel like a
liberal arts college brings. And truly it's one of the reasons that I made the decision, you know, to not go to a school like Juilliard or Carnegie Mellon or with that, with all respect to those schools, I wanted. I wanted that liberal arts experience. So I think that's really smart for you. Like when were you like this is what I'm going to do. Because you are a creative person, you came from a creative family. But when was the decision for you made that you wanted to
work in entertainment. You wanted to produce, and you and you wanted to lead and create, but from a non creative side, not that you're not creative, but that you wanted to manage and run television.
Well, I think there was a couple of touch points that really impacted me. One is going to the movies and just being in the movies, and specifically as a young kid going to the Regency, which was an old cinema in New York City on Broadway that played old movies, and I fell in love with Fred Astaire as a young kid and would dance in the aisles as Fred would dance on screen. And so I had this kind of connectivity as a very young boy, you know, in my four or five six year old kind of brain space.
Then subsequently watching NBC in the eighties and what Brandon Tartakoff unleashed with Saint Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues and The Cosby Show and very specifically Cheers, my favorite show of all time at that moment in time, and seeing all of that and wanting to kind of understand it. And then there was an article that came out in New York Magazine about Brandon Tartakoff, and I read that article and I really got excited about who he was
and what he did and how he got there. I knew he went to Yale, I knew he played baseball, I knew how he started and arrived there, and I thought that was an unbelievably interesting guy and job and trajectory. And then separately from that, I started to kind of try and learn on my own. Like I was very good at math, and so my sixth grade at Rhode of Sholham Day School in New York City, I didn't
have to go to the regular math class. I was kind of put in my own math class with one other kid, David Kart, And I remember I chose to write and work on statistics and understand ratings. So in the sixth grade I was doing a project on rats instead of going to regular math class. And so I kind of knew, you know, and I was trying to figure out ways to know. But reading about Brandon showed me, oh,
there's a job like that. Watching television showed me how much I loved it, and going to the cinema and you know, showed me how much I loved it. And then seeing my family in the arts, but struggle in the arts also made me want to be more of a mogul than a kind of artiste. And okay, okay, and I really wanted my stuff seen. I was like, whatever I do, I wanted to be watched and consumed.
Yeah that makes sense. I mean the crazy thing. And we've talked about this before, by the way, if you if you haven't noticed so far, this is how you can never win an argument with Ben Silverman. He remembers every name. I mean, the names that you're pulling out from sixth grade. I mean, it's unbelievable. But you as a child, which is what I wanted to touch on it, just at least briefly, how crazy it is you wanted
to be the chairman of NBC. Like it's such a specific dream and such an ah Like I don't know. I just find it so fascinating that every step in your life, which of course eventually you got there spoiler alert like that that happened at such a young age, and you were able to see the impact that you could have, not necessarily, as you said, being a creative like your parents, who you saw struggle.
Yes, and you have to manifest. You have to manifest, and you have to keep marching towards whatever it is you want to accomplish, and you have to really dare to dream. You know, my mom would always say, you're the boy. If I locked you in a closet by accident, you would have come out telling me how great the dark was. So you need to find your path and your enthusiasm and your happiness and whatever is presented to you, because it's everything is.
So damn hard.
You better enjoy the ride or be able to kind of find your way to it. One thing, even further,
that was crazy. When I got to college at Toughs, which I loved and was a great, great environment for me, I wrote a paper in a creative writing class there, and my paper, the best thing I ever wrote, was all about this young kid getting an internship in Hollywood, and then he meets Brandon Tartakoff in the paper I wrote about it, and that Brandon, well really likes the kid and connects to the kid, and then and then
the kid gets gets hired and he makes it. And then by the end, the kind of the end of it is isy and he no longer returns Madonna's phone calls. That was that was That was like the entire trajectory of my, you know, twenty year old self's creative writing project.
So it came true, except now it's it's Correl's phone calls.
I'll always I'll always return Toil's focus.
Something I saw that I never put together before. First off, you were an agent at William Morris and we've talked about that before and the impact that that had. But Ben, obviously or not obviously, Ben started Creative Revelly, which was the production company behind the office. I didn't realize how close it was to the office, Like were you starting revillly as you began those early conversations with Gervais. I'd never put this together.
Well, I had awareness of the office while working at William Morris, okay, and then basically did it all so quickly as I moved into the same office building on a different floor with my crew of assistants who I had been slowly promoting or quickly promoting inside William Morris, and went to work on the things I had wanted to do myself while at William Morris. And knew that they would end up ruining in the way they would
have approached it. You know, even like Greg Daniels wasn't represented by William Morris, and I knew if I brought the office into William Morris, someone would force only a William Morris client into it. I knew that there was going to be a lot of things that would destroy I didn't have the rights, I didn't have the conversation with Ricky until I was independent. None of that had played out. It just happened quickly the moment it was quickly out. And same with the restaurant, the show I
created while in William Morris. My first phone calls on the restaurant were made at William Morris, and then I left to go do the work and begin the process at large. And that was a rapid fire thing.
I mean, that all so crazy, that that happened so fast, that's so crazy. Founded in two thousand and two, Ben created the US adaptation of the Office. Obviously epeed many other shows like The Restaurant he just mentioned, Biggest Loser, Ugly, Betty Date, My Mom, and many many more. What was it for you about acquiring rights to these shows that
existed elsewhere and bringing them to the United States. What was the magic What would you describe, humbly, of course, as the magic sauce, the magic potion that you had or tried to put on to make these shows palatable for a US audience.
Well, one of it was like seeing something and connecting to how it would apply to the American vernacular, like watching The Office. The Office actually felt informed by American office life. It was just done in a very British way, you know, somewhat sadder, somewhat more pessimistic, and somewhat somewhat
more uncomfortable than our show was done. I always talked about it as kind of the CPA version, and we though had office life at scale and had a sense of drudgery in our American offices as well, that it would relate to you know, instantaneously, the word is the same, right, it HiT's the office in both cultures. In other shows I had to kind of identify where and how they would translate, like what made sense for those ideas to
work inside the United States. And then there were some that should have been created in America but just happened to have started overseas, which I saw as an agent, like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Like that is the quintessential American show. It just happened to be created by a brit for the British market and obviously worked everywhere in the world. But as I thought about the specific shows, there were some things that I knew would
never work. You know, there were shows about a rural pastor or something that raised sheeap in the English countryside that was going to be like a harder adaptation to find and kind of dial in. And then there were ones that you just knew, right with the right take, the right vision, the right location, the right team, this could really pop and connect on a human level and on a conceptual level to a larger American audience than
the smaller international audience that had seen it. A lot of that changed as those shows started to be seen on the streamers now, but at that time there was no outlet for the original material, so no one even was familiar with them.
Right now, I feel like you have an inate ability to see the universality of certain either formats or subject
matters that can apply. And I feel like with the Office specifically, it's just a conversation that I had with both Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who said essentially the same thing, which one us they felt like mistakes were made in the past on English shows brought to the US because the English creators kept holding on sort of for dear life with their fingernails and trying to say no, no, no, it's got to be like this, this is how we
did it, This is how we did it. Whereas Ricky and Steven they feel like their greatest contribution was to say, Greg Daniels and Ben Silverman understand America way better than we do. They understand American television way better than we do. Let's let them take the format and adapt it in a way that makes sense there. But I feel like you have sort of an innate ability to see all of those steps when just taken with the original material.
Well and like and as a young as a young man, a young precocious man, in that process, I remember having to live with that and deal with many people whose shows I felt were so adaptable and incredible and insisting that it was the same cast and the same writer adapting them. And then I'm like, well, why do it right? You know, why adapt it? And in fact, you don't know the intricacies of our language. You know the intricacies of your language. You don't know the style of our humor.
You know the style of your humor, and you're going to ruin it. And sometimes, like with great sex, you need to lose control, you know, And that was you know, like there's there are moments where you just have to let it happen. And yeah, this was absolutely the case with Ricky and Steven, where they were like, we love what we did. We liked you and the vision you have for this, so go for it. We'll give you everything you need and we'll explain everything we did. But
then it's yours to run with. And they were not around set. They were not you know, looking over our shoulder, They were not second guessing us. They were embracing us. And I think, as I also told them, they would make a lot more money, do you know, from our show than they ever would from theirs. And many more episodes. And I always said for fans of the original Office, you will only have twelve episodes no matter how you cut it. You know, we have two hundred and twelve right now.
That's right, and I think significantly for you, you know, with of course, all due respect to all of the other creative people that worked on the show. You know, it's also that little sixth grader with karp got I remember the name that you know, we're studying ratings and statistics and ratings percentages. You know. Having an understanding of the business of American television is also part of it.
I mean, the creatives have to make certain decisions that enable the show to go two hundred and twelve episodes, obviously with your input, but having a sense of how do we serialize this, how do we make this go for twenty four to thirty episodes a year for nine ten years, that's a big part. All right. So here's my question. Because you have had amazing success in terms of looking into the future and people going what the fuck, Ben, that's insane, what are you talking about? That's insane, and
you finding a way to make it work. Here's my question. I want to hear at least one. But I want to hear an example of something where in the end you say to yourself, what was I thinking like that that could never work? Like what what is an idea or a show that you had that did not pan out well?
Had obvious failure? One of them, One of them that I made was Casanova with Jean Pierre Jeannet, which was in my kind of what I thought would be my trilogy of tutors and Marco Polo, and then I would
do Casanova in France. Jean Pierre Janet is incredible director, and I made that show for Amazon in its early days, and it was so Janet was so cuckoo about the sex and was so aggressive about the kind of craziness of that world and the strange behavior that he saw in the Paris of that moment, and I got seduced by it, and I was like, Okay, yeah, maybe maybe
there's a large audience for this. The initial reaction of the Amazon Prime mom who watched that show was I'm not only I mean, that show could have taken Amazon down. It was that bad choice and that wrong of an environment to put that show, you know, And I really really didn't understand the environment Amazon, which is now like so kind of almost puerile, and the kind of content that makes to service its you know, giant toilet paper buying audience. And then and then I didn't understand that
Depravity was not for everyone. So that that was a massive, sad mistake that I made and wrong place wrong. I kind of thought premium content could push the envelope further than it had with sopranos and Peters and no, there's an end. There's an end to that. There's a time out, time out bill. That's one step too far. I don't mind. I don't mind Henry the Eighth getting a blowjob, but you know this is one step two podcasts.
What makes me laugh really is just like, oh, one of your shows built Netflix and the other one almost killed him.
Like that.
That is now. That's now how I'm gonna think of it. So why did you sell Revee?
Because I got name chairman of NBC and when absolutely the biggest mistake of my life.
Pure taking taking taking the job or selling Revee or I.
Had to sell Reveale because of the job. I shouldn't have had the childhood desire to run NBC, because had I continued with revee I would own an island somewhere and be Richard Branson level wealthy or whatever it is. I I that company and what I saw coming and the content I had ready to go behind. It was so good, and I was so on fire and so beloved and so the bit boy wonder kind that it had every bit of momentum. And two years later, the woman who bought my company sold it for seven times
the amount I sold it to her for. So it was it was clearly undersold. I sold it on a phone call. I didn't even take it to market. I literally was like so naive about it. I'm like, sure, you know what, you can buy it? What do you think it's worth? Okay, fine, you know, like that's a lot of money. And had no idea how valuable it was and how unique it was and how extraordinary it was in that amount of time to create the Biggest Loser, the Tutors, Ugly Betty and The Office, let alone the
twenty other shows. I pioneered with my team and partner or Howard Owens, the transformation of advertising supplied content. I was becoming the leader in digital content. I knew streaming was coming. I was working with Microsoft. I was working with the early technologists as they wanted to figure out content to define themselves. I was inside every outlet at a premium, a one level, and my creative juices were
so sharp, So that was a huge mistake. But I did it because I had a childhood fantasy of running NBC. I didn't expect an economic crisis. I didn't expect General Electric to be in the process of selling it, and I didn't expect a writer's strike that was also a screen actors Guild strike. And I certainly didn't expect that there would be one journalist who wanted to take me down because I looked like I was having fun.
Well, yeah, I mean, look, it's impossible to feel bad for you. Number one. I hope you understand that it's impossible, because you have lived everyone's fantasy, and I think including I don't know someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, but I understand what you're saying. But it's so fascinating that pull, that drive to what you saw what you saw as what you wanted as a young child and as a medium child, to have the opportunity to accomplish that. And maybe there
was another choice that would have been better. But that's very interesting, Yeah, that you regret that you found it Electus in two thousand and nine did a variety of shows there, including Jane the Virgin. Eventually with the aforementioned Howard t Owens, you found an chair Propagate Entertainment, which now runs Electus as well as Artists First and Big Breakfast and Authentic Management, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
What do you feel like you can do now with Propagate that you couldn't before.
Well, part of it now that I'm really excited about is what's going on in the brand creation led by talent and IP relationship to audience. And just like we collaborated and partnered up to open up new mediums like podcasting, we have also been able to take the IP of a podcast turn it into a book. And you know, finding and seeding our own IP is something I'm really excited about. Before it was all about traveling the world
to find the IP. Now there are opportunities to seed our own IP through these new forms and modalities of expression. And I also am loving and have been incredibly focused on and saw the kind of transformation that we're going through in brand create and you know, obviously George clooneyan one of my best friends, Mike Meldman's you know Cassa Amigos and what they did together, and what Ryan Reynolds
has done in basically every category in the world. I mean, he's like the modern actor Warren Buffett in his life in the stuff that he's pursuing and creating. And then so many other examples Leonardo Dicaprian all birds, like all these touch points of where celebrity and direct relationship to audience are unlocking. Brand creation has been amazingly interesting to me, both for the curiosity and where brands are also culture. Now, you know, you are what you wear, you are what
you eat. And I'm working with Cedric the entertainer and Anthony Anderson, who I absolutely adore and are brilliant, brilliant collaborators and comedians and entertainers and men, and we have launched a product called AC Barbecue and it's been a
absolute labor of love. And we have just recently launched in twenty three hundred walmarts, and we'll be expanding across the nation with our you know, our flavor profiles and our and our various product lines and ac Barbecue comes from Anthony and Cedric's authentic love of food, as they call themselves handsome and husky, which is in a category you could fit in there, Bry, and they have absolutely invested in it because they see it as well as
a way to connect further with their audience, deliver on something they love and care about, and grow a business because it's a lot harder to monetize traditional content in today's you know, media ecosystem, but it's much easier to directly connect to your consumer and audience in today's ecosystem. So focusing on that has been a real exciting chapter. And the company we've built to propagate is the perfect
vehicle to do that. And it's something I'm very excited about and loving and is highly rewarding in the same way it's rewarding to turn on the television and see your show, it's rewarding to see your product in a store.
Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. That idea of entertainment and content being yeah, what you eat, what you wear, what you drank, what people consume.
Yeah. I talk about like the three c's. I talk about where culture and content create commerce, you know, And that's like a big flywheel for me. It's like, you know, how how do you create culture and how do you turn it into commerce? And at the center of it is content.
With celebrity, which brings consumption. Boom five the five I trademark with the second two.
With the bb himself come to five.
You talked a little You just mentioned this a little bit. You and I, well, I mean we're partners. There's no other way around it. This podcast here, as you all know, produced by Ben and Propagate. And first of all, Oral History of the Office. Were you happy with the Oral History of the Office and how that came out about?
I was so happy with it, Brian one. You are so talented and thoughtful and so intellectual, not just so funny. And I keep going and and all those years of chugging cigarettes and Jim Beam have really made the greatest voice in podcasting.
And I don't know what you mean by the way, Jim Beamer, I don't know what he's.
He doesn't drink Brown Royal, but just either way, Jim
Beams sounds funnier. But it made me so happy also because what surprised me about it really was the reaction of all of the people involved with the office to this moment ten years later to kind of talk about the show and reconnect, and we had kind of splintered off like the show ended, and we all went on our own journeys and paths, and we're happy with the equity and success that that show had given us for the rest of our lives in terms of the ability
to have that as part of our resumes. Right, it is the most popular show arguably now in the history of television, and uniquely one that has remained its relevancy generation to generation that I've never seen before. But bringing us all back together provided a real emotional thing I didn't expect, and seeing everyone's willingness to participate and talk about it and share their stories about the origin story
was highly rewarding. And as people ask me about it, I go, if you want to learn how culture is created, if you want to learn what it takes to make a hit show, this is the best textbook in history around the architecture of television.
Yeah, I mean well said. I think the other thing that the show was bigger than it was when it was on the air and continued to get bigger and bigger, which I think necessarily brought us all back together. I mean that was I think the reason for the excitement for some of the emotion, because that, to me, that's the thing that had never happened before. The uniqueness of that, I think was a huge part of it as well.
And so rewarding to us because while we were making it, we knew we were making the best comedy on television. We knew it in our guts. We understood how adventurous it was and how outright funny. It was something that
is lost in modern comedy. And I felt so validated personally, as did everybody involved, that it found its audience eventually, and I think we all felt a little ripped off while it was on air that it wasn't as validated, and so to share in that moment, as you describe it, Brian as brilliant, because it was that Wow they figured it out. Wow they loved it right, you know, isn't this cool? Like we did. We didn't go. We weren't driving around in limos and spraying champagne on each other
every every Friday morning. After the show aired on Thursday. It took us ten years later and we were all splintered out into a million different plays I was basically like bizarre, Like I didn't enjoy as much while it was happening as I do after it has happened. And if I'm on an airplane and someone sits next to me and ask me what I do, I just say I produced the Office. I don't even talk about anything else. There's like there's nothing else inside the whole thing that
I talk about. You know, I can go into it for a second or third question, and there are clear ugly Betty fans and Jane the Virgin fanatic, sure, and untold lovers. But I'm just like, I've produced the Office, and that's like kind of like my baton drop. By the way, baton drop is the worst thing I've ever said. I meant the mic drop the baton drop. My tire relay got lost. We finished in ninth place. We didn't even finish the race. But you can no one dropped
the baton. I just want to know we're keeping this in.
I had literally transitioned to my next question and did not hear the words baton. I don't know where that most amazing thing I've ever heard.
That's Japanese get lag ladies and gentlemen. That is Japanese get leg is by far the worst get lag I have ever had. So you just watch it play out.
I do have to ask you, I want your candor here. In two thousand and eight, while you're chairman of NBC, guess what happened? There was a writer strike. You've talked a lot about. Well, that major job, very difficult to chairman of NBC, trying to get content on the air during a strike. Now here we are in another writers strike, I think very soon to be an actor and writer strike. How is it different for you now than it was when you were chairman of NBC And what are your what are your feelings?
Well, it's it's painful now as a producer because while I was at NBC and all these executives, they're still getting paid, right, you still get your salary. You know, we're not making stuff, we're not getting paid. So it's unbelievably painful on a real primacy of financial renumeration. You know that that is a major major challenge now versus then. But separately, the world is soft up and there's just so many lines of miscommunication and hatred and intractability across
the spectrum of our lives. Right now and it's playing out inside our writer strike and you know when David's Aslov's getting booed at the BU commencement streech because of the writers, and like it wasn't like that public a class warfare when it was going on. It was just more about like are they going to get more residuals or not? And it was, you know, like there was
all these things. But it's now like it's truly taking on a labor movement, and before it was kind of like a middle class movement against a upper class movement. You know, now it's it's got a lot more to it, and a lot more teeth and a lot more intractability, and a whole new set of players who can actually survive it more on the studio and streaming side, which it makes a compromise a lot harder. And it also has so many people with so little knowledge about actually
what is going on inside the fight. I always find the AI thing, like, if you're even talking about AI as it relates to this strike, you're fucked right.
You don't know what's going on. It's is this is not what it's about, you.
Know exactly, But there's probably like you know, a thousand members of the guild. I think their job is going to be taken by a bot, you know. And it's like and so there's so many issues. So that's really challenging, and it's and it's also so vitriolic. Like when I was doing it, I got made fun of. But Judd Apatow called me and said, Ben, you're a guy who loves creative people. You come from the creative side. Let's
work on solving this. And so I talked to Jet about it, and I would connect to people about it, and I would work on trying to solve it, and you know, really leaned across. I don't think those conversations are even happening. And then on the other side, there's these like super rich uber writers now who are like the winners of the modern streaming ere who all got way overpaid for, you know, creating one show that didn't
quite work. And they're sitting there like these writers and I'm like, you're a writer, what do you what are you doing? You're a writer. Just because you made seventy five million dollars doesn't mean guy shouldn't be allowed to make seventy five thousand dollars, Like, you know, so there's all these like challenges, you know, across the board and stupid noise entering the system that is a relevant to the real negotiation. So it feels very challenging, to say
the lead, and disheartening. And you'll see a lot more Korean content, and you'll see a lot more other forms of content if it keeps going on, and then if that content works, there's going to be less written content by the guilds. I mean, it's just like this horrible spiral, and so hopefully there's some great person and leader who can step in and synthesize it all and make it happen.
It's me, I'm just waiting for them to call me. I've got it all figured out. Tell me it's well, it's so interesting that you say it feels like an old school labor movement, because what you're talking about about the noise and AI and all that's You're exactly right, it's but that feels like an old school political strategy
of trying to confuse what the real issue is. And the real issue is is like those early labor movements, the working class and the middle class of actors and writers are being destroyed, and they just won't be there, and it all stems from from an inability or it all stems from never addressing what used to exist with DVD residuals now on the streaming side, because an actor who now does a job that in the old days, when they weren't having jobs for six months at a time,
they were still making every quarter some amount of money from residuals, and now they make none, and they lose their health insurance, and then they get sick, and then it it's I mean, it's this horrible, awful, but it's your're literally seeing it happen. It's not like in the future anymore. And I think I think in two thousand and eight it was about there's things called streaming. Now we need to figure out how we're doing that and GOLLI b make new contracts that will help deal with that.
But now it's like, oh no, Literally, people are not surviving. They're unable to survive on six episodes, but having exclusivity for a year, they're unable to survive without any basis for continuing to get paid during those times when their work is still being seen by everybody on streaming services, they're still out there offering their entertainment, but there's no money. No, and very specifically, that means it's not a career. That
means it's a hobby. That's right, it's a hobby. It's no longer a job, and that is that's right out. And it used to be a career. You could do it for your whole life, and you could say support your family and you could send their kids to college, and you could live a version of a real American life. And unless you're the point zero one percent of it,
now you can't do that in the same way. I mean, you don't want to woes me for people who are making six figures, but you do need to woes me for the people who made six figures one time over a twelve year career and now are not able to make anything. And so it's very confusing and disturbing. I don't have the answer because the macroeconomic climate is so bad and all of the traditional media players are being
killed regardless of a strike. So where does the money come from, Like, who's actually going to give the money to settle this thing and make this thing go away? I don't know, and I don't have the answer because one side is not doing well and the other side is doing worse and that's not a great place for a negotiation. Yeah, that's right. You have so many new projects, thankfully for you, like your new barbecue brand, not on
the let's sit down and watch television space. I do want to talk to you though, about your documentary series Untold. The storytelling is innovative, it is in depth, and you have a story in sports and as a sports fan that you think you know, but watching this series has
taught me so much and has been so entertaining. So one, I just want to congratulate you on that, and two, is that something that you want to continue to explore through and with propagate the intersection of sports and traditional media and storytelling.
One hundred percent? You know, we are all sports fans, Drew Buckley, Howard, Me and the company and love sport, and I'm told has become an incredible franchise and super important to Netflix because it helps with their discovery, you know, like instead of having a thousand individual documentaries, you're able to create a franchise and an umbrella for the documentaries.
And I think the title is so good because it's like exactly as you say, stories you think you know but actually have been untold and we're going to tell them. And whether it's Marty Fish's documentary or The Malice and the Palace or the upcoming slate which is so strong and will be dropped starting in August. There is incredible
material in these films and an incredible storytelling style. And the Way Brothers, who also did Wild Wild Country, who are our creative partners, are brilliant storytellers themselves, And we love this franchise and I love documentaries in general. You know, we have always loved documentaries, but no one bought documentaries or aired documentaries before, and so one of the great things about modern media is these new genres binding an audience.
There was a stat that our executive at Netflix gave us, which was in the early days of Netflix, roughly with forty million subscribers, only ten percent of their audience would watch or had watched a documentary. Now, with whatever it is over, you know, one hundred million subscribers, eighty percent of their audience is consuming documentaries. So I'm really proud
to be part of that. And I knew early on that would happen because it's such a visceral and extraordinary storytelling medium, and there's something about the honesty of the camera with real people that you connect to in a different way than just a scripted show. And as the script the show's got saturated, the documentaries actually became fresher. And so I love Untold. I think it's brilliant. We're always looking for great new untolds to tell and I'm
excited to extend it to other genres. And we have an antonycul Smith documentary on Netflix right now that's incredible that could easily be part of our untold of pop culture, you know. And so finding other frameworks to tell these stories and deliver these stories to an audience at large is super exciting to me and the company and an area that we're we're doubling down on and very excited about.
Well, I do want to give a compliment to your directors. I assume of untold because I think that I love documentaries. I love watching documentaries. I think so often there is a little bit of that feeling of you're aware that someone is either talking in a certain way or behaving in a certain way because they know they're going to be on television. And here's the thing, I feel like,
in a real visceral way. As you're watching this series, you feel like you are really getting to know these people as characters, and even though they're not scripted, even though they are real people, the camera man, it gets really inside and I feel like you you really see the subjects and their feelings behind these different stories. So I want to give kudos to again, I assume the director who is there doing the interviews on these stories,
because it's it's it's really well done. So congratulations on that, yes, and thank you. And I think you just feel the truth will set you free inside those films, you know, And I feel like that absolutely the subjects don't feel like they're manufacturing their responses. God, Ben, you know it. I could talk to you forever, but kenetschi wa and uh damn it. I should have known. I should have known that one. Uh syonara, have a great time in Japan, my partner, my friend. I love you.
I'll see you back in the States. Let's see it on the golf course. Let's get on the golf course, Brian. We got a battle, We got a battle. Thank you, Thanks Ben, thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. Brian. It's a pleasure and love love talking to you to be continued as we say, and to be continued to be continued.
Ben, my friend, thank you, Thank you for everything that you do to move this industry forward. And as you march into that brave new era, just promise me one thing that you'll keep me in mind for cool new projects. Okay, thank you. Hi, I could do a celebrity brand, just tr try me out. As for the rest of you, that's it for today. I'm off. You can always find us on the gram as the kids call it. Anytime you want a little dose of Off the Beat at Off the Beat on the Instagram, And until next time,
have a fantastic week. Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Linglee. 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. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bratton