Kevin Reilly

But I've certainly been surprised on the downside times. But I've definitely been surprised when finally not pleasantly, like oh my god, they're catching on to what we've known for a while. Kevin Riley was a president OFBC Entertainment through the entire first chapter of the Office, from when the show was pitched, all the way up through the development and the first couple of seasons of the show, the modest and humble beginnings of a tremendous television show.

More on that in a bit. It's hard to believe that he started out as a production assistant, running coffee orders and making copies for music videos, and he worked his way all the way up to being network president at multiple networks. By the way, his resume looks like alphabet soup. That's a business term. He's worked for just about every television acronym there is, NBC, FX, TNT, TBS, HBO, Fox,

Turner Media, and many many more. He's advocated for some of your favorite shows, including The Office, which we have talked to him about before, even when other execs wanted to shut those shows down. And he has been a visionary for television programming and streaming innovations for over thirty years. That's right, Kevin has his hand in so many shows, including The Sopranos, The Shield, Nip Tuck, Thirty Rock, The Office,

and so many more. I'm excited for you to hear his story, his career path, and also his take on the writers an actors strike that's going on right now. Of course I stand with my guild, but I know for a fact that unless both sides talk to and understand each other, we're not going to get anywhere. So it's really special and important to me that Kevin and I got to have this conversation at this particular point in time. I learned a lot, and I think you

will too. So how listen. Here he is my old and dear friend, Kevin Riley.

during that time. And you have such an interesting it's crazy, like, of all of my shows, like my favorite shows since two thousand, almost all of them you had your you had you were involved in one way or the other, and truly like change, the face of television changed in some ways, how people consumed. We'll talk a little bit about that during your time in blocks or used to consume. Yeah, well, but even so, you know how people consume and and

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

I kind of would go into the city. I mean, I had I had my best friend growing up as his father managed the New York Athletic Club, which was like a just an institution, and he was a kid who was just like he was the fourth child, and at that point the parents were like, you know, wheels off. They were great family, but he just got so I just I would go in with him and we would have these crazy adventures where we'd ended up being extras in a movie. We'd go under the stanchion at a

crime scene. I mean, we had some crazy adventures in New York City, but no, I was not a city, right.

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

So sort of on some level. Those were kind of where I decided I have no idea what this is. I don't know even know how you get into that business. I don't have a clue. But that's I really knew back then that's what I wanted to do somehow.

the sun. Yeah, drank freezy drinks and fade donald when you learned.

So I'm gleaning whatever I could. But the one couple things I did well, which is I just I had a lot of pressure. I mean, everyone I grew up with ended up in somehow Wall Street, if you will, whether they were a trader or if they had bigger brains, they became an investment banker. And everybody kind of did that. And a lot of guys that you graduated had job offers and their acceptance letters on the wall. I didn't.

I I tended bar. I was like, I better go pay the bills because my father, who did not support this career choice to begin with, was definitely not going to support it and support me. So I just tended bar. That's what I went to do. Well. I went to some programs at NYU and just ran around New York City from one my parents house in Long Island, trying to figure out who would give me a break.

It probably scared me too much, you know, because my parents just were not Look there were great people, they just didn't get that at all. And the writing I had more discipline on. But then I kind of went the same route. I was like, man, I just spent two and a half years years in New York. I don't think I ever slept. I was on the I was carrying coffee on the sets of commercials, music videos. I did like one hundred and fifty of them. I

mean literally didn't sleep. There were times I would get home at two in the morning and be like, Okay, I need to be back on set at five, I've got to catch the train. I would set a clock and literally put it on my chest and sleep for forty five minutes and wake up and throw coffee in my face and go back to work. So it was

all kind of a blur. But I did some writing, but I was by the time I got to California, where I just packed my car and winged it and drove across country with no month, like literally eight hundred dollars to my name, which I spent very quickly. I just think I didn't have the guts, frankly, to say, all right, I'm going to be a writer. I was like, I'll I need something that's gonna if I get a job,

will pay me in the short run. And I had regret about that for a number of years, where I kept beating myself up for being a sellout, you know. And then I finally was like, well, if there's then go right, you know. And then I was like, gave that. I was like, move on.

nice guy. And then I like him, you should you know, here's his name. And I was like, oh, I have contacts, you know, I know Flockharts, second friends, Nanny, and I'm going to you know, yeah, exactly, so my contacts I

like through that thing in my suitcase. And when I got to LA and all the people who said call me when you get here didn't return my phone calls, and I was in a cold panic and like seriously running out of money, and then out of money, I like dug out that number and I called this guy Universal, who was a nice guy, and I had a meeting. He didn't hire me, but a few months later, when I was really starting a panic out of the Blue.

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

my people. Sure, yeah, I think I could squeeze that in. So that was just like a huge breakout of the blue, which was really me driving stopping in Atlanta to go to Hooters with my idiot friend from Cornell and in Atlanta. So that's how I got it.

and I kept falling asleep in them. And one day the head of the department of the marketing department like threw a ball of paper at me while I was asleep, and I woke up and she goes after the meeting, she goes, can I see you? And she said, look, you're really bright, and I have no doubt that if you stuck with this, you would run this department someday. But if you don't get your head into it, I'm

going to fire you. And the problem was I was interviewing crazily to get out of this job and then kind of phoning it in and sort of lost interest in it even though thank god I had it. And literally two days later I got offered a job at NBC, and I went in and just told her, like, you know what, we're on the same page. I'm quitting.

young person, You're slightly into your head. You can't believe you even have this job, your busiest shit. A lot of times it was like at the end of the day, you know, one of the still things about la when the sun's setting and it's just temperature's really nice. I'd walk out and you're driving off the lot and you're like, huh. You know, I remember watching like for me on the NBC lot. It was usually guests leaving as I was like driving off the lot, guests leaving from their taping

of the Tonight Show. So you know, Jay Leno would do the Tonight Show. It's still Johnny Carson in those days, and they you know, would tape from five to seven or whatever it was, and when the guests you see the limos and you sometimes you'd see them loading up in their car and we're driving out together, and those are the moments where I was like, cool, I guess all right, I'm actually in the real deal here.

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

was a really influential position. And this guy, at a very young age was thought of as a genius in television. He had been promoted to the head of it when he was a very young guy, and he was both intimidating just by virtue of how great he was, but I loved him. I mean, like he passed away at a really young age. He had fought cancer a number of times and eventually gave into it and in his forties, I think, so it kind of gave him that James

Dean sort of status in the business. But he he was just a witty guy who loved loved the medium. He loved great TV. He loved cheesy, fun entertainment. I remember one time I was on a plane and of course he was sitting in first class and I went past him, and I remember like he sent a little like goofy note back to me. He had ripped something out of Variety and made like a joke in the column and had like twenty people pass it back to me.

And I was like, holy shit, like this is like my boss's boss boss is sending me back his gofy note. And I love that about him. So it was a cool experience, and you know, cut to it was his actual There was times when I would sit in his office on the couch, like the fifth one on the Someone said to me early on when I was like, how do you get into one of his jobs? He was a producer, He said, look when I go into pitch and I'm pitching tartak cough. There's like six other

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

there were like eight televisions in a row. It used to be three, and then they added to the Minimore Networks right right, And I always thought that was cool. It's like, oh man, he's got all day long, three things running all at once so we can watch what's happening with the competition. And then when I got there, that was a you know, cool moment too.

So that is how I really got to know Brandon because there were only three employees at NBC Studios my second year at the company, which was Brandon, my boss, Leslie Lurie, and me. So I really did get to work with him even closer at a young age. And we were producing this show called Good Morning, Miss Bliss, about a group of kids in school with Haley Mills, who was a famous actress from back in the day, and she was I don't know, in their late sixties

at this point. Inter thing. It was for the Disney Channel. We weren't even producing it for NBC. They canceled it. It was not good, and Brandon was like, take that, the cocky blonde kid, these other two girls and the funny nerdy kid, figure out what it is, and we're going to do it ourselves and make it ahead and shove it down their throats. So that was like Brandon's competitiveness, Like they canceled his thing, and now he was going

to turn into a hit. And Peter Engel, who I'm going to text right now, who God bless him is still going and strong in his eighties, who created it is a one of just a great inspired nut. It was my show. I was given this thing. We even cooked up the title on a phone call one day of like, I was like, what is this thing about? What is it? And Peter's head writer at the time, I was like, look, this shouldn't be about school when you're in school. It's about what happens when you're out

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

and I'm doing this Saturday morning live action kids thing that no one gives a crap about. Cut to like five hundred episodes later, the thing became an institution, and it was intended for like, at the time, tweens watching Saturday morning TV, which is like one of the only things you had. It was like very few choices when

you woke up. And when what we never realized was like a whole generation of college kids, you know, of that age would wake up and kind of you know, shake off their Friday night by vegging out watching this show. And it became kind of a cult thing. And I cannot tell you to this day how strong that thing is.

as like this insane institution. You know, for a lot of listeners are probably like, yeah, my mother's watched it forever, But at the time it was this very novel thing. Dramas were not selling into syndication because nobody wanted to buy one hour shows, so Dick Wolf literally designed it as two half hour shows originally that we're going to do the Law and the Order, but then they could be joined on the first run on television, but then

they would be syndicated separately. NBC bought this show not because they wanted this. This was Dick's like big show, but they wanted his hit show, which was going to be a thing called Nasty Boys, which was these guys with a souped up boat and they were a squad that came in in masks and they seized your property for drug raids and things, and when they did, they got to keep it. So they had super cool motorcycles

and boats. And it was not a good show. And I'm working on I'm, you know, now, only a couple of years into my career, and they kind of gave them to me in this and I oversaw them and everybody's like, how's Nasty Boys going. I was like, you know this thing, Law and Order is like really, oh yeah,

that's talk about Nasty Boys. So Nasty Boys aired, I think it like came and went in less than one season, and Law and Order was not a huge hit of the gate, but was always a very kind of groundbreaking show at the time in terms of its rhythms and

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

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

At the end, case closed, and they've done I don't know at this point, between the franchise of all the different iterations, I don't know how many hundreds of episodes, thousands maybe at this point. But a serial show, which Er was, and many other great shows and many of the biggest shows today are you know, it's an ongoing storyline. Now.

You had procedural elements in Er, which is, you know, the the medical cases would close, you know, come on, stat get on the thing coming away with somebody's gonna lose She's gonna.

like trying to explain the telegraph. You know, you're like, what why would you do that? Like this and buggy thing like that sounds ridiculous. And what was crazy is the statistic of viewers somebody who viewed them. I used to hear the statistic all the time, even somebody considered

this self a viewer. Statistically would watch one out of six episodes, So I don't know how anybody followed anything, but it was a lot of things went into it of like you know, still serialized shows did not repeat well at all because you just were it was just really hard to jump in and randomly see an episode and we're like, wait, when did they split up? You know, I missed that episode. I don't even know what's going on.

Really dent shows, you know, like I mean, look the early seminal shows like A Hill Street Blues that really started multiple storylines going at the same time over the course of a season really made them big impact. But for a day and date experience, it was always a little harder to program those things.

I mean, look, as a young guy, I to the extent I've made any reputations in the business, I always felt like I wanted to reach forward, like you were saying, curious about what people were watching and what they wanted to watch differently than what was on. You know, there's a tendency in general for people to want to do what they've seen before, and in television it wasn't that

much desire. You know, the old Guard to a large degree kind of wanted to just serve up the same aversion of the same thing they'd done a million times before. I was always like, what's next, What's new? And I

could feel generationally that this thing was really changing. I mean that's how some of these shows like Er that were like what do you mean the patient dies and the doctor's making what do you mean the doctors are making jokes while they've got somebody's chest open, the bullet with a bullet wound, Like that's you know, that's not what the heroes do. What do you mean, a bad

guy is the center of a show. These were rules you didn't break, and I was always like, well, why wouldn't you like that's kind of what the my generation I could see the next one wanted, and so I was just getting kind of frustrated that this wasn't changing enough. So then brill Sen Gray was just this management company that had big clients that wanted to go into producing, and it seemed like a cool move, and so that's what I did.

He wanted to do something more artistic than the formula, and he did it to pay the bills, but he was always grumbling about it. He's like, I'm doing this goddamn thing. So we ended up giving him an overall deal. He was always like a new one of the better writers,

pure writers. And we developed the sopranos for we sold it to Fox, and Fox was the upstart network that was doing quote unquote edgy stuff, and it went into development and it got all the way down the loan line and we LaPaglia for a minute was attached as Conny's soprano, and we had at least interest from his camp and we were going to get it made, and then Fox passed on it, and then David was depressed, and it kicked around for like two years just as

a passed on project, and eventually found its way over to HBO, who sort of picked it up to redevelop it, but pretty much had the same script that we had at Fox. It wasn't really written and just took the

Fox out of it. You know, we took all the stuff that you couldn't air on broadcasts and then just put it back in right and did a little bit more development, and then then they agreed to shoot the pilot and went through this casting process of the really inspired choice to cast Gandelfini, who was really the opposite of a leading man, but you can't conceive of anybody else doing that role.

this is first like, this is a thing. There's something here, and if we keep doing this, it's gonna be good, and if we get a little lucky, it actually will be something significant. And that's just the way I've always looked at it. I've never been surprised, like, oh my god, I had no idea that was good. But I've certainly been surprised on the downside times. But I've definitely been surprised when fine, not pleasantly, like oh my god, they're

catching on to what we've known for a while. So, yeah, the pilot was and Chris Albrick at the time, and

I've told him this story. I went over to screen the pilot and he screened it with Carolyn Strausho has gone on to produce many great things, most recently The Last of Us for HBO, which was incredible and at the end, and I told Chris's story, he doesn't even recall doing it, but the lights came up and Chris literally put his head in his hands and was rubbing his eyes and it felt like it felt like five minutes of silence, and then he looked up and he

was like, it's good. It's really good. And I think he had to just wrap his hands around like this weird thing of where this guy burns down his best friend's restaurant and he's wading in a pool with ducks.

I think he just had to be like, okay, like I think we'll do this, and weirdly, the moment where you really really felt like it's been written about, but there was, I believe the fourth episode because prior to that point, Tony had never directly he had circumstantially ordered hits or had talked about You knew he had his hands and stuff, but you never saw it directly or you never you never saw him directly go go kill that fucking guy and then somebody's It was indirect a

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

big deal. But at the time you're like, wait, this is the quote unquote hero of our show. It's one thing to know he's a bad guy, but he's a bad guy who we kind of like, and he likes ducks and his mom doesn't treat him well. So we were like, but now he is choking someone to death with his bare hands. That's a whole different ballgame. Like people going to just go I'm out, Like I'm out,

I can't get behind this guy. And it was a huge debate, and HBO, to their credit, this was the early days of them forming their DNA, basically said okay, well back you. I mean they first were freaking out, but they agreed to back it, and at that moment was when I think a lot of people involved were sort of like, Wow, now this thing is really in a category of it's and I think many for them just galvanize this thing of like you got to see the show.

green lighting that and having that show go? Does that come from the Sopranos and the success.

have heard of the Sopranos. But I was like Peter Legori and I who kind of were in the seats at the time. Peter had been at HBO as a marketing executive. His history was not as creative. I came over there and we basically said, let's get as close as we can to HBO on basic cable. You know, we can't do everything they do, but we're going to try to be as sort of finger in your eye as possible. And this was written as a spec script, as a writing sample. It was given to me by

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

pay cut to go to that job. I went from these beautiful offices in Beverly Hills with magnificent literally recognizable art on the wall and the designer would have to approve your furniture choice to the this shithole on Suppulvita Boulevard. Literally there was it was shag carpeting from like the eighties. There was a giant stain in the middle of it. There was a hole. Someone had punched a hole in the wall of my office and just hung a picture over it, but not it didn't fully cover the hole.

And so it was just felt like, what this really ragtag operation? And we kind of made this thing and under the radar, I remember, you know, technically it was an ADS supported network. We screened this for advertisers in New York, and like dozens of them bolted for the door after the lights came up. They like didn't even want to look us in the eye. They're like, we're not putting. And I remember Donna Speciali, who became I worked with for years at Turner, was the head of

ad sales who I really loved. At the time, she was at some I forget what agency was. She was a big buyer, and she came up She's like, I really like this and I'm gonna watch you guys, and I'm gonna see how this goes. I'm not putting a nickel into this show. And the only the only thing that the only advertiser we had was Mike's Hard Lemonade on FX. They literally nobody else would touch it but

Mike's Hard Lemonade. And then we just filled it with Mattress King commercials and a bunch of shitty local stuff, right nobody, you know, that stuff was too too edgy for them to put any advertising in. But that was like the foundational DNA for the network. And I recently caught up and Binge the Bear. I don't know if you saw it. I loved it. Blew me away. I thought it was brilliant, and I was like, man, there it is some of that same DNA still in that place.

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

Fox was really a bonafide challenger and always sort of did a lot of pounds for a pound of cool stuff that I always thought was cool on television. NBC had been at the top and gotten you know, on the front the er Friends, Seinfeld trifecta was just a juggernaut. But it was beginning to you know, Seinfeld had gone off, it was coming down. Friends was on its last days.

Law and Order was still on, but had you know, they had all come down to earth and you could see the writing on the wall that it was about to really go from hanging on to the top to being bad, being in trouble. And that's when I joined. And I was very naive, thinking, well, I'm just going to be the savior of this place and I'll be like Brandon Tartakoff, I'll turn it around and everyone will tell me I'm a genius. But now we're also fighting

a broader environment. You know where it's the beginning the early early stages of digital consumption generationally. You know this idea of watching day and day, and I know this in my gut. I'm like broadcast television in my mind, is in its last breadths of dominance. It's but I was like, everybody's got to face the facts that NBC, the juggernaut, that of what it was of turning on must see TV Thursday night, those days are not coming back.

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

When you're a first place network, that means billions of dollars, that means profits, That means everyone gets big fat bonuses and bragging rights. Right when your best but not first and have slipped and you're losing starting to lose a lot of that money. Not so fun on the business level. We were owned by General Electric at this and ge

was just used to this little cash machine. Just Seinfeld comes and sell, you know, tells jokes at our giant retreat to guys who make locomotives and turbines and tractors and so cool. And then you know, we were a small business in the GEO portfolio, but we paid a lot of cash, so it was a fast cycle business. You know, when you're making jet engines, that's a big

capital thing that doesn't pay out for long cycles. You know, in television, you have a season and at the end of the season, it's like, oh, here's the cash, and you can just it's available. It's not tied up in this big thing. So they liked us. We were just a big cash machine, but all of a sudden when it started turning really challenging and cash intensive, not so much fun from Fairfield. And you know, as somebody said back in the day, they send them guys with the clipboards.

And when they send the guys with the clipboards there to help, you really don't want the help. Like it's a bunch of consultants and people going, Brian, how are you? How are things?

the building was crawling with those people. So I'm trying to put on some of these cool shows only other than Heroes, which was a bit of a hit right at the gate and kind of a cultural thing, but not enough like Friends to single handedly turn the network around. And I thought we were doing really cool work but to be honest with you, I was getting almost not only was I not getting credit, I was getting nothing but second guessing. I was rumored to be fired every

other week. And so again like a really I went from this incredible FX thing where it was like the most fun thing, but it was three years and all of a sudden, I had that dream job. I thought back at Brandon Tardakoff's desk with the actual thing. And even the day I did the job, I got an award called the Brandon Tartakoff Award, which was like kind of like the best of the best in broadcasting. And I went down and got the award in Miami, and I kind of told that story like I had the

day I got it, I had this sinking feeling. I sat at his desk, I looked up at the Bank of Televisions and I was like, this is fucking cool, and I have made a terrible, terrible mistake coming here.

And so what was awesome is that the shows, the stuff we did I was always really proud of, and it all then went on to have cultural impact and then business impact, like the office that is one of the biggest assets in their whole portfolio today but as we lived, it didn't start that way, and so you know, I was pretty much invited to not do that job after four years. And yeah, I was pretty fucking uh I was not. I was pretty bent out of shape over it all.

first Primetime Emmy and Golden Globes Awards. I mean when Michael Chickliss first got up to take the first Emmy, I literally grabbed his arm like what are you doing, Like you didn't win, and he was like he looked at me and he's like, just go with it, because he did win, and everybody was like, what the hell is that? So there's experiences like that. I've had, you know, moments in other shows, but all kidding aside the experience

of the office where it was. Look, at that point, I had made a decision I'm probably going to get fired from this job at some point. I'm hanging on by a thread. I am going to just fall on my sword for the things I believe in. And somebody had given me his advice like the worst thing you could do is sell out and do what the bosses want you to and then fail. Then you can't even

look yourself in the mirror. So I was like, if they fire me, at least I want to say even if they don't work, I want to say, well, I put on what I believed because I have that power to fight for some things. And the office was just I don't know, just from a minute one, I'm like, this is this is one of those ones. I'm just not giving up on this thing. And then because it had like really good people involved and it was such

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

scars to do, you know. I just shared some of mine, you know, And but it's in its pure moment when the thing happens and it's sort of coming out the way you dreamed you And look, some talented people are are very complicated. I had a really amazing experience on thirty Rock. I adore Tina. She's an incredible talent. Tina had a star named Alec Baldwin. Enormously talented guy and

obviously publicly enormously complicated. And so you know, there's a you know, as Lauren said one point after Alec quit for the fourteenth time, after he had won the Emmy the night before, his agent calls up to say, I just have to inform you that Alec is quitting the show, which is at this point literally was about the seventh and I remember Lauren at the time saying, Alec will realize in retrospect it this was a good time, you know, And but when you're in it, and this moment of

this picture I'm literally looking at of my left eye over here, is pure joy for people who some of whom needed a job and had a great one, and others who just realized they were part of something special and we got the affirmation. And that just for me, and the fact really as it is for you, the fact that then it went on to be one of those rare shows where like now now you're into like kids who weren't even born are at the time we're watching, and.

our jobs. I was always kind of an irritant, and I think those who appreciated it, and probably at a younger age, I was too much, you know at times, you know, they were just they don't want you always trying to rock the boat. So you know, that's part of what a creative is, you know. And the entrepreneurs are a version of that.

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

It will be a compromise all the way around. And look, the unfortunate thing is I've been asked, like even there's somebody from New York Times like begging me to come on their podcast and talk because I'm like a neutral person who understands all the issues here. And I've avoided it all because I will shoot my mouth off and regret it. But what happened here is that a bus

rolled into town called Netflix. That everybody got on that party bus, and everybody when they were firing money all over the place and had this new model my last thing as a corporate eriotage, I always felt like, this is an unbelievable thing they're building, that's an incredible consumer experience, and don't you think this is going to be a problem for us? And all the powers that be were like, they don't They're gonna go out of business, and they

kept selling all of our stuff over there. But look, I also felt like the artist got on that party bus. The irony part of the writers. You know the series writers issues right now is it's only ten episodes. You know, they don't they don't have big grill bust writers rooms. I mean I used to talk to writers who are like, why would I come do your network show for twenty two? I only have to do ten? At Netflix? This is great.

You know, they were ordering at like a six to one ratio from what so everybody was taking the money and having a great old time with Netflix. And Netflix uberized the business, you know, they turned it upside down for better and worse. And the studios they were on the party bus because they were selling We were selling them all of our stuff really arrogantly misjudging the impact it was going to have, not really getting out ahead of like what do we have to do? Should we

take this thing seriously? What should we do? We just thought we could somehow wait it out or wait till they die, And yet we were fueling them with our stuff by giving them our shows. And the studio leadership did almost the worst thing. You know, I said to someone the other day, like, let's stick with this somehow. Traffic analogy, like if you're going to go through a yellow light, you want to kind of go fast enough to go through safely through that yellow light before it

turns red. The worst thing to do is to slow down and go slow and then gun it and then go through a red light, which is sort of what the studios did with streaming. They waited and let this thing begin to seriously erode and you could see where it was going to erode their business, and then lurched into it, further accelerating their problems. And so what we have now is a business where the legacy companies have underlying issues. Bob Eiger came out a few weeks ago

and said, these guys don't get it. I mean, it wasn't a great look for Bob it certainly, I'm sure a moment he regrets having doing it with the Billionaire's conference behind him, really a bad look. What he's not wrong about, though, is that these this strike is not striking against the business we just talked about, this monopolistic business that was born almost one hundred years ago that

we actually got to participate form, Bryan. It's now a stressed business that is stretched where the legacy players, the WarnerMedia, Discoveries, NBCUS, Paramount who yesterday sold Simon and Schuster and is they're gonna start, They're gonna have to strip down the pieces of these companies. They're not going to come rocketing back in business as usual. And for the most part, the digital players are not in our business as we knew it. I mean, Amazon, does you know, I'm Apple's doing in

some really cool shows right now. Last I checked. That's not their core business. They sell these things and they make trillions of dollars. I mean, they're they're highly profitable doing that. So the power basis shifted, how the business work is shifting. And when the actors who are robbed of their residual payments, which was harder thing that when you got a good job that could pay your rent

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

now they get checks for like thirty five cents. But in order to report that you have to have transparency on the actual usage of the service, which Netflix started the game by never reporting any of that, right, and they still don't. And unless there becomes more transparency, you're not going to really be able to measure. So it was imperfect. But we used to have a thing called rating and in the box and box office, which were measurements of success. Right, those don't exist. So my point

is it's a much more complicated tapestry. The issues are legit, but this strike mechanism. Look, do I think everyone should have held hands and together gone, listen, guys, we're all in this together with different agendas. But this business, we got to figure out a different path forward. Yeah, but they didn't, you know, they let it get to the eleventh hour and then a strike happens. So I think the double strike, I think the actors really will together

force some step forward. But I'd love to say it's all going to be fixed. It's not going to be.

could except for work that now it doesn't exist. It's interesting, it does feel like which I think has been the problem, a little bit like trying to put a pin on something that keeps moving. That the way things are consumed, the way monetization formula could be made. It's all shifting so quickly.

be downloaded and streamed legitimately. So let's just use from that, you know, the beginning filmed entertainment, whether it was at the box office or on your television, was the pinnacle of cultural consumption. Like that was what the kids talked about. That was the write of pasth you went to the movies with your friends, you sat around the television and tuned in at eight o'clock at night. Everybody bought Michael Jackson's thriller. It was a very almost sort of monopolistic

kind of environment. The environment today between the gaming world and the interactive and all the TikTok and everything pressing in from the sides that is highly demanding of your time, and then the streaming business that has then upended the middle of it. You have something that is a much more complicated landscape to manage. So it's true the issues are still the same, and at the time, I'm sure

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

is not. It's not the five families at the top that just say all right, once I waived this wand it just is fixed. They're public companies under tremendous stress that their growth engine is highly compromised. That's not clear what's really driving these companies forward. They're very big, probably in some regards need to be stripped down and recombined and probably will, and so this makes these things much more complicated, unfortunately, and the streaming business again a large degree.

They're talking about the fact that you know, I'm in I read an article recently about Orange is the New Black cast on how early days of Netflix, they had this international hit and the actors would go places and be mobbed, but then they literally would get like checks for dollar ninety five and they're like, wait a minute, I thought when you had a hit, you were paid at least enough to pay your rent. And that's heartbreaking. But it does show that Netflix created a different model,

and they don't report still to this day. Here's how many actual people used and saw your thing. So maybe there is a way to create these tiers. But the business is betwixt and between this new player that sort of took over and then the older players that tried to transition but just have a lot of they're not they're not really one and the same.

here's the thing that sticks with me. You have people who made a lot of money, networks that made a lot of money off of the office, and then syndication deals that happened both with Turner and with some small network syndication and NBC Universal decides seven years after the office is done and all the money that has been earned and paid and all of that, that it's worth five hundred and sixty five million dollars to reacquire the office. It's hard to think that they're not making money.

good they're doing. They are they are rich, Yet the formula remains remains unchanged, and that that to me is just confusing.

look at all these costs. So studios have always done the same thing, and sadly it has taken lawsuits, usually for being challenged to go in, or audits if they're not as public, to go in and say, you know what,

this doesn't feel right. We're banding together. We got lawyers and accountants and we're going to go in and find And then there was either some giant settlement or a case where finally things would be even doubt And so yeah, those dynamics that have been around for too long, and yet there still was the irony is even the office arguably one of the last of the good ones from the old days quote unquote, and even that, you can you can feel your own you know, you're you're you're

an upbeat guy, like you're what you've had your moment. You're like, wow, I really thought that would have had a little more trickle down here. Okay, but now you look forward to guys who are doing Look, there is no streaming equivalent because there is no multi generational two

hundred episode plus, there is no syndication. It's just a one time air on a streamer that has a moment and then drops to the bottom of an algorithm, So there's not even even if the precedents were there, Like the whole system that could create the trickle down is broken down, and that's it in a nutshell where I do believe it will ultimately get reconstituted, and I think, to sort of cut to the bottom line, this strike will be a brick in the wall of rebuilding a

new system on the other side, which will have different players, because ultimately, I also don't really understand myself how once you have something that has been a success at the top, whether if you had a hit movie or a hit show, you know it would live on where it would be. Oh, you could see it in an airplane, you could watch it on your before you eat dinner at night on your local channel. You could sell it overseas and people

in other countries would see it. Now, once that thing is cycled through, it's at the bottom of the algorithm, not only not being seen, but not even expressing itself. You know, the real hits were rides at a theme park and had T shirts made and all these other revenue streams. I don't understand a one app your business where everything just has one moment and and it's disposable because that is still something that costs billions and billions

of dollars to produce. So historically the ones that you know, the hits, used to pay for all of the failure, and it's I'm not saying it's justified, but it is one of the reasons why they always claim they weren't making money because nine of the ten failed, so they had to pay with the one that worked, so they

were like, we're not making money. But I only giving this detail because the tapestry now of the business itself is different and it's going to be a transition that is just not it's still in that transition and it's going to take years for that to kind of reconstitute. But this will be a brick in the wall, and that in a sense, it's good that both unions went out, Otherwise nothing would.

I always am. If you need something to do while you wait, you can follow rate review this podcast, or if you're too busy for all that, just tune in next week. Either way, have a great one off the beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Lang Lee. Our senior producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and

our intern is Thomas Olsen. Theme song Bubble and Squeak performed by the One and Only Creed Breath