You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, 'I am on strike' than 'I am unemployed.' And those are the people who vote for strikes.- Dick Wolf
When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?
TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we are not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.
There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.
Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'
The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.
The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.
The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.
The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.
The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.
The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.
The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.
People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.
