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Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show Page #10
sense of authorship there.
The internet was sort of just becoming
a thing when we were doing Felicity.
You know, on specialty websites
we would sort of see
early stages of consensus
of what people were
thinking of episodes.
And it really did become clear to me
that this was... TV was becoming
a little bit like theater,
where you would perform something,
and almost in real time,
you'd be hearing
the laughter or the applause,
or the absolutely painful
deafening silence.
And what was kind of great
was you could use that
as one of your tools.
I love Twitter,
I feel like I was born to tweet.
It's a way for me to sort of
let people know who I am.
You can tell when the fans
are tracking the story.
You can tell when they're confused.
You don't want confused fans.
You can tell when they're bored.
You don't want bored fans.
So, it does give you a way
to take the temperature.
But, Twitter can be
kind of dangerous.
If the writers of Cheers
had had Twitter,
they would have been
besieged by people going
"Get Sam and Diane together."
And you know, like,
sometimes what the fans want
is different than what
they really want.
Very rarely do I interact
with the very negative criticism.
But, sometimes
there's something so egregious
that I just have to comment.
And I've gotten into a dust-up,
twice now
that I can think of,
where I found out later
I was actually in a yelling match
with like a 12-year-old.
Some shows are much better
suited to a digital presence,
to a web presence, than others.
Lost is probably the best example.
Lost found itself
riding this wave where suddenly
they realized
people wanted more information,
and they were very savvy
about it, and they began
branded merchandise,
not just on the web...
they also had a game and a book.
But, at one point,
Carlton Cuse said, "You know,
"sometimes I don't feel
like a showrunner,
I feel like a brand manager."
There was this demand
for us to constantly get out
and explain things.
And we felt like
if we denied our audience,
if we basically said,
"Sorry, the show speaks for itself,
and we're not gonna talk
about the show at all,"
hurt the show.
And so, by making ourselves
sort of available,
ultimately sometimes to
criticism as well as praise
or questions or anything,
we felt that
that was in the best interest
of the show.
That evolved to, by the end
of the first season of the show,
Carlton and I were asked
to do a special
where we explained
"Here are all the things
that you need to know
in order to enjoy the finale."
So, suddenly, I'm just a writer
who occasionally does
interviews with the press.
And then I turn on ABC,
and there's my ugly bald head,
you know, trying to explain
what the black rock is.
And Carlton and I just
turned to each other
and said
"How the hell did this happen?"
We are at the forefront of a new era,
and it is an era with some
really distinct differences
from the way TV has been done before.
When we started Husbands,
"Okay, we put this up
on the web, we demonstrate
there's an audience for this,
and then TV will want it."
Now, I realize, like, no,
when we've demonstrated
there's an audience for it
right where it is?
Right now, what the internet
is capable of providing is growing.
holding onto is shrinking.
But, they haven't met in the middle
in any significant way.
At some point,
I think they will have to.
I feel like what I do is secure
in that I'm a writer,
first and foremost.
I'm gonna want to write
something for somebody
and someone's gonna wanna make it.
You know, and if I am
writing for something
that's just on the internet,
and we're performing
like just on something.com,
and I can feed my family,
We can do it in the
way the consumer most wants it.
Get it directly to them,
they can help us fund it.
There are a lot of people
invested in a big TV show.
Web show, you're invested in it,
which is fantastic.
The profusion of platforms
of channels of distribution,
it's all kind of exploding,
and it used to be
that you could understand
I think the television universe
as a solar system,
and the sun was broadcast television...
the three or four networks...
and everything else
was a satellite that
traveled around the sun.
And that clearly no longer
is the model.
The sun has exploded.
And there are a lot of little
and the idea that we'll
ever have a coherent whole
like that again,
I'm not sure we will.
There he is.
He's up there in his private G6
and he's coming here,
to our tiny company
up in his fat f***ing belly.
So, what we need to do, Douglas,
is we need to get Adam.
It's a little bit heartbreaking
being in the editing room,
because there's only
so much you can make better.
There are really so many things
that you have to be on top of
on the day that you're shooting
that you just, you know,
pay for in the editing room.
What did you think about
the idea of breaking it up
into two sections, one after 10
and one after 13?
'Cause I watched it last night
like a, you know,
like a third grader.
No, it was totally...
I was like,
"Wow, that's cool!"
'Cause I've been writing
so many episodes,
I have not spent enough time in here.
So now, I'm doing a lot of catching up.
... just like this one,
and tell them how to fix their sh*t.
Well, this week it's us.
Right, Jeannie?
Both The Chicago Code
were hard, in that I thought
we'd made good shows.
I get that if you make
something that isn't good,
it's... it's gonna fail.
The hard thing about Hollywood is
that good things
can fail, too.
When The Shield was in the middle
of all its critical acclaim,
I knew that not everything
would go that way.
So, for me, I was like,
"Okay, The Shield
kind of gives me permission
to fail at this point."
And fail I did.
Um...
You know, I made the shows
I wanted to make.
We had a horrible name for Terriers.
explain to an audience
what that show was gonna be.
Chicago Code certainly had its shot.
Got a big premiere,
the night after the Super Bowl.
Got a lot of ads during the Super Bowl.
I can't say that anybody screwed us.
Self-doubt creeps in,
not about my ability
to make what I think a good show is,
but where are my tastes
aligning up to America's taste?
I've learned the lesson
as a showrunner
that you can control
the things you can control.
And unfortunately, you can't control
300 million people and what dial,
you know, what channel
they turn the dial to every night.
Any time you do anything
and you put it out there
and it fails, uh, it's of course
a depressing thing.
Undercovers is
an especially painful disappointment.
I sort of did the show
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"Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Aug. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/showrunners:_the_art_of_running_a_tv_show_18064>.
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