Seinfeld (Audio)

1. 0:01 – 4:52

   Why Seinfeld still matters in 2026: enduring audience and massive streaming value

   1. BGBen Gilbert0:01

      So David, I bought a DVD player for research for this episode.

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal0:05

      No way.

   3. BGBen Gilbert0:06

      [laughs]

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal0:06

      Did you buy the box set?

   5. BGBen Gilbert0:07

      Because there is some stuff, like facts about the pilot, that are only available in the DVD commentary and don't-

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal0:16

      Yes

   7. BGBen Gilbert0:16

      ... exist anywhere online. So I had to go on eBay, buy a copy of the, uh, Seinfeld DVDs, and buy a brand new DVD player here in 2026 to view it. [laughs]

   8. DRDavid Rosenthal0:28

      Do they even sell those on Amazon anymore?

   9. BGBen Gilbert0:29

      They do. Sony makes them. Uh-

   10. DRDavid Rosenthal0:31

       Wow

   11. BGBen Gilbert0:32

       ... they're like, I don't know, 100 bucks or something, but-

   12. DRDavid Rosenthal0:33

       Sony, there you go. Appropriately, distributors of Seinfeld.

   13. BGBen Gilbert0:37

       That's right. All right. Shall we do it?

   14. DRDavid Rosenthal0:39

       Let's do it.

   15. SPSpeaker0:40

       Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down. Say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?

   16. BGBen Gilbert0:57

       Welcome to the fall 2026 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies... Well, usually companies, anyway. [laughs]

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:05

       Usually. The podcast about great business assets.

   18. BGBen Gilbert1:09

       And the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:13

       I'm David Rosenthal.

   20. BGBen Gilbert1:14

       And we are your hosts. Today, listeners, we are taking a giant left turn. David and I were staring at each other, poring over our usual topic list, and we decided that we only wanted one criteria for selecting this one. What episode would we have the absolute most fun making, and can we do something different and fresh for Acquired? And we found something we are very pumped about, the business of Seinfeld, the show Seinfeld. We both had just read this astonishing stat that Seinfeld, in the first six months of this year, in, in 2026, has been watched by 60 million Americans, which is about 20% of the entire US population.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:00

       This show went off the air almost 30 years ago.

   22. BGBen Gilbert2:02

       So I reached out to Nielsen to verify this. Not only is it true, they said that if you update it through the end of August, that number is up from 60 million to 72 million-

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:14

       Oh

   24. BGBen Gilbert2:14

       ... Americans.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:15

       Wow. [laughs] That's almost the same audience size as the Seinfeld finale when it aired.

   26. BGBen Gilbert2:21

       This is a show that finished making new episodes nearly three decades ago, and yet we are all still watching it. So why? Netflix's 2019 deal for Seinfeld, which was reported at well more than $500 million over five years, was the largest sum that a streamer has ever paid an outside studio to license a series that's no longer in production. $100 million plus per year, decades after they are done making new episodes, and everything, the way the economics break down, the way that it is owned and structured, is essentially a complete accident of history. Seinfeld managed to be one of the last shows of the old world, where everyone watched the same thing at the same time, while at the same time also having a foot in the new world, just as the internet was taking off.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal3:10

       Yep.

   28. BGBen Gilbert3:11

       And the story is really an entrepreneurial one of obsession, of craft, of a team that created the number one show in America by doing everything completely different than the way it had ever been done before and defying all conventional wisdom. It is one of the best examples we have ever studied on Acquired, where the creators, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, were such big believers that their product was excellent that they didn't care what anyone else thought or what the numbers looked like at first, and how a small, passionate, early fan base with a slow burn went on to become their greatest asset. Today, listeners, we do an experiment here on Acquired, the business of Seinfeld.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal3:53

       Let's do it.

   30. BGBen Gilbert3:54

       So listeners, as always, you can find the visuals, charts, and illustrations of key concepts from this episode in our companion PDF at library.acquired.fm. You can join the email list at acquired.fm/email. That's where we will send all the behind-the-scenes photos that we found in research, past episode corrections, and vote on future episode topics, acquired.fm/email. Come talk about this with us and the whole community in Slack after you listen at acquired.fm/slack. And before we dive in, we wanna thank our brand new presenting partner, Sierra.
2. 4:52 – 19:21

   Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up grind: craft, feedback loops, and late-night leverage

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal4:52

      Well, naturally, even though this is an episode about Seinfeld the show, not Jerry Seinfeld the person, we have to start with Jerry himself.

   2. BGBen Gilbert5:01

      Yes.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal5:01

      So Jerry is born in 1954 in Brooklyn to a Jewish family, and when he's young, the family moves out to a small town on Long Island named Massapequa. I actually spent a fair amount of time in my childhood in Massapequa. It is, uh, definitely suburban Long Island. Not a lot of interesting culture going on there. [laughs]

   4. BGBen Gilbert5:23

      Great.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal5:24

      But, but Jerry's father, Cal Seinfeld, was known in the family and amongst his friends for just always being a funny guy, always telling great jokes, as Jerry would talk about it later. He had the funny gene, and Jerry definitely did too.

   6. BGBen Gilbert5:44

      Yeah, Jerry insists that comedy is a gene, right?

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal5:48

      Yes. Yeah, yeah. He thinks his kids have it. He knows his dad had it. He has it.

   8. BGBen Gilbert5:50

      And that it can't be taught.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal5:51

      Yep.

   10. BGBen Gilbert5:52

       Obviously, you can work really hard and hone it and develop more material, but the, like, instinct is actually genetic.

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal5:57

       Yep, yep. He's always making his friends and family laugh. And right around the same time when he's about 12 years old he falls in love with an album, with a record. Not a music album, not one of the, you know, great bands there at the time of the '60s, '70s, but with Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy album Why Is There Air? But this is like-

   12. BGBen Gilbert6:23

       This used to be a big thing, these comedy records.

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal6:25

       Yeah, this was a big thing, stand-up albums-

   14. BGBen Gilbert6:28

       Yeah

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal6:28

       ... on vinyl.

   16. BGBen Gilbert6:29

       It's funny, today we all tune in to Netflix to watch the big stand-up special that just dropped. Albums were doing that same thing 50-plus years ago.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal6:38

       Yep, totally. So after high school, Jerry goes to Queens College in New York, actual New York City, where he majors in communications and theater, and he sets up for himself... He's really into comedy. He sets up an independent study where he studies stand-up comedy like his heroes. So he goes out to the comedy clubs in New York, he writes papers for college analyzing various comedians' sets, and then ultimately he himself goes on stage as part of his college studies to get experience, try out being a stand-up comic. And it's just, like, what he's born to do.

   18. BGBen Gilbert7:14

       And it seems like from every interview he's given, and Jerry has given a lot of interviews-

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal7:19

       We'll get into why Jerry has given a lot of interviews later in the episode.

   20. BGBen Gilbert7:23

       Yes. He basically said, "I had one goal. I mean, it, since middle school, high school, become a successful stand-up comedian. That's it. I didn't have, like, specific goals around other things I wanted to do, some sort of, like, career progression, something I wanted to rise toward, family, hobbies. Like, I had no goals around anything other than become a successful stand-up comedian."

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal7:46

       Yep. So at age 22, after Jerry graduates from Queens College, he goes into his career. He makes his stand-up comedy debut at the famous Catch a Rising Star comedy club on the Upper East Side in Manhattan in 1976. And just like he did in college in his independent study, he, like, does the same thing. He tapes himself, he analyzes his own performances. He's performing night after night after night. I mean, this is a level of obsession that is necessary for Jerry to become who he is, but it's also not that uncommon in the stand-up industry. Like, this is what you do. If you are gonna dedicate yourself to the craft, you are every night performing, analyzing, just meticulously refining every word, every syllable, every movement that comes out of your mouth and your body.

   22. BGBen Gilbert8:41

       And stand-up is this thing that is unique among any sort of performance, be it entertainment, music, sports, where you get a real-time scorecard from the audience on something that is entirely within your control. And you might have just come up with it that morning. Let's say you're singing and you manage to write a song and perform it. This is sort of a long process. Usually, it involves other people arranging the music or other musicians playing with you. In stand-up it's you and your material delivered through your instrument with a real-time, brutally honest feedback from the audience whether they're laughing or not. It is as raw as it comes.

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal9:23

       Yeah, it is a solo act. You know, he compares it to being a solo athlete, but it's, like, the most extreme feedback and spotlight version of an athletic performance.

   24. BGBen Gilbert9:34

       Yep.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal9:34

       So this is what Jerry does night after night after night. Pretty quickly Jerry becomes a success as a stand-up, and that leads him to other opportunities in comedy, and specifically in television. So in 1979, three years after he begins his comedic career, he gets a call from Hollywood. They want him to come out to LA and join a sitcom, a show named Benson, which I'm sure none of you listening remember. So he's gonna get this recurring role on this sitcom. You know, great, he's gonna make a lot more money than just playing in the clubs. It's gonna be steady work, et cetera, et cetera. Well, he's in three episodes, and then his character gets dropped from the show. Doesn't, uh, doesn't work out exactly as he planned.

   26. BGBen Gilbert10:17

       Which is the common experience in television.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal10:20

       Yep. But this becomes very, very important to Jerry and to the eventual show Seinfeld because despite this disappointment with Benson, during that first brief stint that Jerry has in LA, he performs in local comedy clubs, performs stand-up on the nights and weekends around LA, where one night he gets spotted by the legendary talent manager George Shapiro, who along with Shapiro's partner Howard West, were, like, the most legendary comedian talent managers/agents in the business. They had gotten Andy Kaufman the recurring role on Taxi, that sitcom that was a huge hit. They were placing their comics on The Tonight Show, which was filming out there in LA at the time with Johnny Carson, getting them exposure nationally. It was all this flywheel between stand-up and TV that was happening.

   28. BGBen Gilbert11:16

       And what Jerry is watching here is, "Oh, that's how you become successful as a comic to make money," and it's kinda like the next rung on the ladder. But it's not like what he wants is to be in sitcoms. His calling is stand-up, and sitcoms are the thing that the industry sort of has for you.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal11:37

       Yep. Well, it also becomes a self-reinforcing flywheel for your stand-up act because once you're on TV, whether it's sitcoms or, like, a regular spot on The Tonight Show, you get national exposure. Then you can tour with your stand-up routine.

   30. BGBen Gilbert11:51

       Mm.
3. 19:21 – 22:37

   NBC’s strategic shift (GE era) and why they finally take the meeting

   1. BGBen Gilbert19:21

      So NBC at the time is in this pretty interesting place. They had just recently figured out who they were. In the late '70s and early '80s, they did not have a cohesive strategy. It was the classic, we're making anything and everything for everyone. But they turned it around in the mid-'80s. So Brandon Tartikoff, who you mentioned was the, the president of NBC Entertainment, had developed this philosophy to try to appeal to urban audiences aged 18 to 49 with smart content, and it worked. They're becoming the number one network. In 1986, GE comes in and buys the company, and they had two big messages. Keep in mind, this is GE, so-

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal20:02

      GE, like Jack Welch-

   3. BGBen Gilbert20:04

      Yes

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal20:04

      ... GE, General Electric, yeah.

   5. BGBen Gilbert20:06

      One, you need discipline in your business. You gotta pay attention to costs and ensure that everything that you do aligns with your chosen strategy. You can't just be haphazard. And the NBC guys kinda know this at this point. And two, things are changing. Viewers have way more choices with cable.

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal20:22

      Yes.

   7. BGBen Gilbert20:22

      They're not just gonna watch whatever you put on by default. So you need to quickly develop great shows, and if they're not great, get rid of them, that are aligned with your business strategy and the audience you wanna reach, and the advertisers you're trying to r- reach, and stop doing everything else. So of course, NBC kinda looks at, hey, this is already kinda working for us, let's build a real business strategy around it. Hey, this is a very valuable demographic, urban audiences 18 to 49 who wanna watch smart content. That's a great business to sell to advertisers. This is obvious now, but at the time that was pretty novel.

   8. DRDavid Rosenthal20:58

      Well, it was also novel, I think, for a broadcast network to just have a corporate strategy, period. To like-

   9. BGBen Gilbert21:04

      Yes

   10. DRDavid Rosenthal21:05

       ... the other networks and NBC before this point in time, they were just like, "W- we're the broadcast networks. America watches what we put on TV." GE coming in and saying, "No, we're General Electric. I'm Jack Welsh, Mr. Black Belt, Six Sigma, greatest CEO in American history," until it all fell apart, but, you know, at this point in time-

   11. BGBen Gilbert21:22

       [laughs] Yes

   12. DRDavid Rosenthal21:23

       ... uh, you need a corporate strategy.

   13. BGBen Gilbert21:25

       Yes.

   14. DRDavid Rosenthal21:25

       It's tied to revenue and profits and-

   15. BGBen Gilbert21:27

       Yes

   16. DRDavid Rosenthal21:28

       ... everything that GE does.

   17. BGBen Gilbert21:30

       So the perfect thing to do is sign Jerry Seinfeld to a development deal.

   18. DRDavid Rosenthal21:34

       Yes. Now, there's just one problem though, walking out of this meeting when Tartikoff and Littlefield and Ludwin, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, what- whatever you wanna do, just come back. We- come back with a script, we'll m- make it." Jerry has never written a script in his life for anything, [laughs] and especially not a TV show. But Jerry knows one guy, one of his old New York stand-up buddies, who does have some experience with script writing that might be useful for this special here for NBC. So three days later after this meeting in LA, Jerry flies back to New York, and he goes looking for that guy, Larry David, late at night after the sets at Catch a Rising Star, where Larry was a regular as a stand-up comic.

   19. BGBen Gilbert22:26

       And they got to know each other well during this period, where they're just both constantly going up, trying new material. You don't go on till 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 PM, so you're, like, friends with the other comics just sitting in the bars chopping it up.

4. 22:37 – 27:35

   Enter Larry David: the ‘comic’s comic,’ industry flameout, and the real-life Kramer origin

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal22:37

      As Jerry was coming up as a kid outta Queens College, Larry David was one of the established comics that he looked up to, but their careers had gone in very different directions here by the end of the '80s. Who was Larry David here in November of 1988? The answer is he is nobody. And he's not even, like, a promising young nobody who has potential and talent like Jerry. He's 41 years old. He's single, he's broke. He lives in subsidized artist housing. His stand-up routine has, um, I think the term that people used to describe him at the time was he was a comic's comic, [laughs] meaning that he was appreciated by other comics, but his, uh, humor did not exactly land with audiences.

   2. BGBen Gilbert23:21

      And he had basically been chewed up and spat out of the industry.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal23:24

      Jerry said, you know, they always just sort of had, like, a comedic resonance, the two of them, and had known each other for a long time. But Larry has had this [laughs] kinda like George Costanza eclectic string of failures that lead to this moment. So the stories about Larry before Seinfeld, you probably already know them, you just know them as George Costanza stories. So Larry had actually moved to LA not for a sitcom, but because he got a job on a show called Fridays.

   4. BGBen Gilbert23:54

      That's right.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal23:55

      It was, this is-

   6. BGBen Gilbert23:55

      Which was an SNL knockoff, right?

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal23:57

      Yes. [laughs] I didn't know anything about this. ABC, here in the late '70s, early '80s, was jealous of Saturday Night Live on NBC, so they decide that they're gonna just do a wholesale knockoff of Saturday Night Live, and the only two things they're gonna change is one, they're gonna film in LA instead of New York, and two, they're gonna do it on Fridays instead of Saturdays, so they call the show Fridays. [laughs]

   8. BGBen Gilbert24:21

      And they're gonna fish in the exact same talent pool.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal24:23

      Yep, yep. They also can't get the best talent out of New York Who's interested in this kind of stuff because they're going to SNL, so they get Larry David [laughs] to come out for this. They get a eccentric young comic named Michael Richards. You might have heard of him. Fridays lasts, I think, three seasons and then gets canceled. But fortunately, SNL says, "You know, we could use some extra writing talent around here. Everybody who was a writer on Fridays, we'll offer you a one-year trial." So Larry, he just needs a job, he needs a paycheck. He comes on for one season at SNL. The entire season he gets only one skit that he writes included on the show, and famously in Saturday Night Live history, one day Larry is so frustrated that what he's writing is not getting on the show, he flies into a rage, yells at all the producers, and screams that he's quitting, and he walks out of the set. And then he's freaking out. He's like, "Oh, shoot. I don't have a job. I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent. What am I gonna do?" He's, you know, s- uh, so worried, so worried. He goes home. He explains the situation to his next door neighbor in his apartment in part of subsidized housing there in New York, who is named Kenny Kramer.

   10. BGBen Gilbert25:41

       [laughs]

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal25:42

       And Kramer, the real life Kramer says, "Larry, why don't you just go back in tomorrow and pretend like nothing happened?" So Larry does.

   12. BGBen Gilbert25:52

       Which he does, and v- you might-

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal25:54

       And it works

   14. BGBen Gilbert25:54

       ... be thinking, "I feel like I've heard this story before." George Costanza does this on a Seinfeld episode.

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal25:59

       Yeah.

   16. BGBen Gilbert25:59

       This is the first of many, many, many examples where what you see in Seinfeld is just things that happened in Larry and Jerry's, and eventually other writers' lives. But this is the early stew of what would become Seinfeld, is mining their own lives for stories.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal26:15

       Yes, and, and most specifically Larry's, because Jerry's life is exciting. There's, you know-

   18. BGBen Gilbert26:20

       [laughs]

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal26:20

       ... Hollywood and stuff. You know, the, the funny stuff is happening to Larry.

   20. BGBen Gilbert26:25

       Yes.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal26:26

       Also, this is gonna become so important once Jerry brings Larry into this project with NBC. L- Larry did this and things like this during the one-year period where he was working at NBC. NBC hated this guy. To the extent he had any reputation, it was as a loser and somebody who, like, could not function in any sort of corporate environment, and NBC wanted nothing to do with.

   22. BGBen Gilbert26:51

       And he turned out to be a genius.

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal26:54

       A genius.

   24. BGBen Gilbert26:54

       And one of the best comedians and writers that the world has ever seen.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal26:58

       Yeah, yeah. So during that ill-fated year for Larry at SNL, he also intersects with a young woman on the cast named Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

   26. BGBen Gilbert27:07

       Who also had a very short stint at SNL and kinda churned out of it.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal27:11

       Yep, I think she lasted two or three years, but they bond over, you know, not getting any air time or their material on the show. So back to this night here in early November 1988 when Jerry goes looking for Larry at Catch a Rising Star, this is what's on his mind. "Hey, my buddy Larry has experience writing this kinda stuff, Fridays, SNL. He's been on TV."

5. 27:35 – 35:03

   Seinfeld is born in diners and delis: the true premise vs. “show about nothing”

   1. BGBen Gilbert27:35

      Mm.

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal27:35

      "He can help me flesh out what we can do with this opportunity." So he finds Larry. They go out for a walk together. Jerry explains to Larry what's going on, and they stop at a Korean deli there in the Upper East Side, Lee's Market, which was right near the comedy club. And when they're in the deli, they can't help themselves, these are two comics together, they start making jokes about all the products here on the shelves in this Korean deli. Larry makes a quip about Korean jellies, and Jerry looks at some fig bars and says, "It looks like somebody made these in their basement." And the words come outta Jerry's mouth, and Larry turns and looks at him and says, "This is it. This is what the show should be. This is the kinda dialogue that we should do on the show. You know, two guys just, just talking like this." They're both excited, inspired by this. They said, "Okay, okay, great. Let, let's meet up again tomorrow night after our sets." So the next night they meet up again. They go to the Westway Diner on 9th Avenue. It's around midnight. And Jerry says to Larry, "You know, I've been thinking about what we came up with last night. You know, the number one question I get asked, I'm sure you get asked too, you know, being stand-ups, is, 'Where do you get your material?'" And Larry says, "Bingo. That's how we set up the show so we can do that kinda dialogue on the show. The premise will be how do stand-up comedians get their material?" Jerry says, "Yes, yes! Great. They, the, the comedians, they get their material. They, they do this," and he's just gesturing with his hands to themselves there at the table in the coffee shop, hanging out with his friends. And at that moment, Seinfeld is born. [laughs]

   3. BGBen Gilbert29:13

      Which you'll notice nowhere in there did David say the words a show about nothing. That has nothing to do with how the show Seinfeld is born. Later on in the show, this is ... Seinfeld is so meta.

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal29:26

      Yes.

   5. BGBen Gilbert29:26

      They would do a season arc where Jerry and George are creating a show called Jerry- [laughs]

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal29:33

      Yeah

   7. BGBen Gilbert29:33

      ... and pitching NBC about the show. That is a show about nothing, and then of course, that gets co-opted to be like, "Oh, Seinfeld in real life is a show about nothing." But no.

   8. DRDavid Rosenthal29:42

      No, no, the premise is the show is about how stand-up comedians get their material.

   9. BGBen Gilbert29:46

      Yes, and so this leads Jerry to believe, "Okay, whatever format this takes, I'm playing myself, and I'm not just playing someone named Jerry. I'm playing someone with my sensibilities, with my observational humor about the world. I'm not gonna cast myself into a character that is super different. I, I don't wanna do that. I'm not acting." I, I mean, we all know Jerry can't act. Uh, so-

   10. DRDavid Rosenthal30:10

       Yeah, Roseanne Barr, the comic who did Roseanne, like, she's not playing Roseanne Barr on Roseanne. She's playing a sitcom character.

   11. BGBen Gilbert30:16

       It's a d- slightly different Jerry Seinfeld. I mean, the version on the show is in a little shoebox apartment, and this guy was making a million dollars a year flying around, so there, there are differences, but still, it's, it's pretty true to personality.

   12. DRDavid Rosenthal30:28

       And again, you can see how this all takes shape because nobody's thinking about a sitcom here. This is a one-off special that they're gonna do.

   13. BGBen Gilbert30:36

       Right.

   14. DRDavid Rosenthal30:36

       So that brings us to the next month, December 1988, when Jerry returns to NBC in Los Angeles to meet again, this time bringing both a pitch for the idea for the script and a partner, Larry. And NBC, as you might expect, doesn't exactly like either of them, [laughs] or especially at least doesn't like Larry. But nonetheless, the two of them, Jerry and Larry, walk out of that meeting with probably the most valuable TV deal that has ever been made in all of television history.

   15. BGBen Gilbert31:11

       [laughs]

   16. DRDavid Rosenthal31:12

       But before we tell that story, now is a great time to thank our brand new presenting partner this year, Sierra.

   17. BGBen Gilbert31:19

       Yes. All of the leaders of the world's most important companies today are wrestling with the same question. In a world where everyone has access to the same intelligence, what is my competitive advantage, and what is the right way to turn AI into revenue for our company?

   18. DRDavid Rosenthal31:37

       That's where Sierra comes in. First, your customer relationships are your competitive advantage. When you deploy Sierra's AI agents, every interaction adds to your understanding of that customer, deepening the relationship and generating insights that compound over time. Second, you should pay for outcomes, not tokens, like an insurance claim paid, or a sale closed, or a customer retained. Sierra's pricing model is quite novel in that way.

   19. BGBen Gilbert32:05

       Sierra is already the leading platform for customer service agents, everything from account sign-up to troubleshooting subscription management. They work with over 40% of the Fortune 50, one in three of the world's leading banks, and five out of the 10 largest healthcare companies. And their agents can also handle complex workflows that generate revenue, too. So think about appointment booking in healthcare or refinancing a loan in financial services, things that can take weeks or months and span across voice, chat, email, and WhatsApp conversations.

   20. DRDavid Rosenthal32:36

       And they just introduced a new product, Personas. Instead of every AI agent sounding the same, you know, polite but slightly robotic, you can give your agent a distinct voice and personality, tailoring its tone, humor, even the rhythm of how it speaks to your brand.

   21. BGBen Gilbert32:52

       And great brands should have a recognizable character to them, and your company's agents should match that same character that you have worked hard to create.

   22. DRDavid Rosenthal33:00

       How an agent speaks impacts customer trust, and Sierra told us that one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world just introduced a new voice and persona for their Sierra agent, and the rate it solved customers' problems increased by nearly 50%, five zero.

   23. BGBen Gilbert33:17

       So to find out how you can build standout customer experiences that grow your business with AI, visit sierra.ai/acquired, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. So David, Jerry and Larry, they've got a TV deal, right? There's a show?

   24. DRDavid Rosenthal33:34

       Well, right. So Jerry and Larry have this TV deal that would go on to become, you know, arguably the most valuable television deal in history. But NBC isn't sure about the idea, and they definitely aren't sure about Larry. Why on earth do they go through with this? Well, one is we talked about this whole, you know, comedians crossing over into television is currently hot, so they're motivated to do it. It's part of their corporate strategy, which, eee-

   25. BGBen Gilbert33:59

       In general, you're probably gonna get eyeballs if you bring in a, a brand name star or star in a show.

   26. DRDavid Rosenthal34:05

       Yeah. Young male comic. You want your young male audience, you know, in urban areas, et cetera, et cetera. Great. But two, m- more important, at the end of the day, this is just a one-off 90-minute special that they're talking about here as a commitment. This is not a big deal. Uh, like if it doesn't-

   27. BGBen Gilbert34:22

       Right

   28. DRDavid Rosenthal34:22

       ... work, it doesn't work. They decide in the meeting, great, okay, fine, let's call this thing Seinfeld's Stand-Up Diary.

   29. BGBen Gilbert34:30

       Oh, I never-

   30. DRDavid Rosenthal34:31

       The original-
6. 35:03 – 52:44

   The most valuable TV deal (by accident): FINSYN, deficit financing, and the Seinfeld cap table

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal35:03

      Totally. Totally. Okay, so the deal, what's the deal? Why is it so valuable? How much is NBC gonna, gonna pay these guys? Well, actually, NBC isn't gonna pay them anything directly, because at the time, NBC could not legally own the show. Thanks to rules from the FCC at the time, broadcast networks were prohibited from actually owning the content that they broadcast on the networks, a set of rules called Financial Interests in Syndication, or FINSYN.

   2. BGBen Gilbert35:43

      Yes. So time for a little history lesson, listeners. So today, y- you know about these, like, media conglomerates, but before that, the TV networks were entirely separate companies than the production studios. So NBC was its own thing, totally separate from Universal. CBS, just a broadcast network, n- nothing to do with Paramount. ABC, separate from Disney. So the networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, right when TV production started in the '50s, they need to hire the production studios to make stuff for them to broadcast on their networks. Some of these studios were very large, like Paramount or Universal or Warner Brothers or Disney. Some of them were really small, like MTM Entertainment, which is named after the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal36:26

      Mary Tyler Moore Show. Yep.

   4. BGBen Gilbert36:26

      Yes.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal36:27

      Or Desilu of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

   6. BGBen Gilbert36:29

      Yes.

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal36:30

      Interestingly, the big guys, the big Hollywood studios getting into making TV, we talked about on our Disney series, it was Walt Disney that started doing that. Originally, the Hollywood studios kinda boycotted TV 'cause they were worried about it-

   8. BGBen Gilbert36:43

      That's right

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal36:44

      ... as a threat to the film business. Walt was the first one who was kinda the visionary, said, "No, no, no, these, these broadcasters, there's so much money that's gonna be made here as television sweeps the nation, and we're gonna be the best arms dealer for them."

   10. BGBen Gilbert36:57

       And if we flash all the way forward- Way more money was in TV than movies

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal37:02

       Way more. Way more money in TV

   12. BGBen Gilbert37:04

       Walt was incredibly right. When you look at where the cash gushers are in the entertainment industry, you know, over the last 40, 50 years, it's come from TV, not from movies.

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal37:14

       It's kinda, you know, one of these, uh, jokes in, in Hollywood that we really learned about studying for this episode of all the glamour goes to the movie stars and the movie directors and the movie executives. The richest people in town were always the TV guys.

   14. BGBen Gilbert37:27

       Yep. Yep. Okay, so back to the, call it, '60s. The way that the deals worked between the networks and the studios were called deficit financing. And this is crazy that this is how it works, but, but it is. The networks would not fund all the production costs of the show. So they would green-light something, find the, the production company to make it, and say, "We'll pay you 60 to 80% of what it costs to make the show, 'cause we're-

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal37:54

       Yeah, like in this case, this special with Seinfeld and Larry David.

   16. BGBen Gilbert37:57

       Right. 'Cause historically, these networks are cash conscious, and so they'd rather save 20 to 40% of the budget of the show, and we'll give up some future upside, but, you know, that's okay.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal38:08

       Right. Well, in return, the production company would own the show.

   18. BGBen Gilbert38:11

       Yes. So because NBC's not totally covering the costs, they're leaving this deficit, they just get a license to the show to air it on their airwaves once, twice, very limited license. But that meant that the studio was still in the hole for the rest of the funding to make the show. But, you know, it is sorta fair. The studio gets to own the rights to that show in the future to monetize it when there's things like international ways that they could license it, or merch, or later, home video, or the eventual huge cash cow of syndication, or reruns of the episodes on other networks or on cable channels or something like that in the future. But then the network started including one deal term that was, uh, very, very favorable to the networks. They overreached, and they demanded a large cut of the future syndication revenue-

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal39:04

       Hmm

   20. BGBen Gilbert39:04

       ... even though they were not fully funding the cost to produce the shows.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal39:08

       Ah, I didn't realize-

   22. BGBen Gilbert39:10

       This is back in the '60s

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal39:11

       ... that there was a period in the '60s where the networks could own syndication rights.

   24. BGBen Gilbert39:15

       Yes.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal39:16

       Ah.

   26. BGBen Gilbert39:16

       So studios, of course, as you would expect, complained to the government, and they say, "This is ridiculous." Like, they're not funding the whole thing, but they're making it so we can't make money now, and we can't make money in the future? So in 1970, the FCC issued the thing that you mentioned, David, the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or FINSYNC, and these rules prevented the networks from owning a financial interest, which mostly meant from participating in the future syndication-

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal39:42

       Yep

   28. BGBen Gilbert39:42

       ... of shows that they were buying from the studios. So this created a true separation between networks that aired the shows and the studios who make the shows. You've got a buyer, you've got a seller. It's very clean.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal39:55

       Yep, yep.

   30. BGBen Gilbert39:56

       But then, by the late 1980s, flash forward, I don't know, 20 years or so, the networks are now the ones complaining. Cable shows up.
7. 52:44 – 59:53

   From special to sitcom pilot: Castle Rock, ‘Seinfeld Chronicles,’ casting the core ensemble

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal52:44

      ... along here. So once all these various parties are in place, they need to go, you know, write the script for this thing. So Larry and Jerry, they go off, they start working on the script, but they have a tough time coming up with 90 minutes worth of stand-up material to, you know, do the expose, if you will, on how it gets into comedians' sets for the special. 90 minutes of stand-up material is a lot of stand-up material.

   2. BGBen Gilbert53:10

      It's an eternity. It's really hard to be funny for 90 minutes.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal53:14

      So as they're working on it, they're banging their heads against the wall. They also realize that there does need to be some kind of semblance of a story, I put story in quotes, or, you know, some situations to get the characters into the scenes where the conversations would happen that would lead to the stand-up material. So Larry floats an idea. "What if we just do this as a standard 30-minute sitcom pilot?" Which a standard 30-minute sitcom is only 22 minutes of actual content, you know, 22 minutes, great, like that is a manageable amount of stand-up material that we can come up with for this thing. And doing it as a sitcom here, that'll give us some story reasons, enough situation, you know, situation comedy, sitcom, to get the characters into the scenes so we can say the dialogue, et cetera, et cetera. And the way that we'll make it all fit is, Jerry, what you wanna do anyway, like you said, Ben, you'll just play yourself in the sitcom to end in the stand-up." So the script for this first pilot that they come up with, the first initial script that they're gonna pitch back to NBC, is that Jerry is supposed to go on The Tonight Show, you know, NBC tie-in, Tonight Show, but he doesn't have any new material, so he needs to pull his act together, and he's hanging out with his friends, particularly his Larry-like friend, George-

   4. BGBen Gilbert54:32

      [laughs]

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal54:33

      ... to get the material. And then at the end of the episode, Jerry's gonna perform it on The Tonight Show. They go back to NBC, they pitch the new version, and they have a new title for what this is to reflect the shift from a 90-minute special into a pilot, essentially, for a sitcom. They're gonna change it from Seinfeld Stand-Up Diary to The Seinfeld Chronicles. It's gonna be an ongoing chronicle of Jerry's stand-up material.

   6. BGBen Gilbert54:58

      Which if anyone like me now has the DVD box set, you can watch the original version of the pilot that airs, not the edited version later, that is actually called on screen The Seinfeld Chronicles.

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal55:11

      Indeed, indeed. Once again, NBC Somewhat surprisingly just says, "Okay." [laughs] Jerry, Jerry has a great quote about this. He says, "Every step of the way, we were waiting for somebody to come in and say, 'You can't do this on network TV.'"

   8. BGBen Gilbert55:25

      [laughs]

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal55:27

      But nobody did.

   10. BGBen Gilbert55:27

       'Cause it's just different than everything else that's on network. It's like a sitcom that's not a sitcom really. We just needed to kinda like borrow from the sitcom format to accomplish our goal of how a comedian-

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal55:40

       Yep

   12. BGBen Gilbert55:40

       ... gets its material. And it's like not even happening in the comedy department-

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal55:43

       Yes

   14. BGBen Gilbert55:43

       ... it's happening through these late night people.

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal55:45

       Through the late night department, the specials department. This is part of why they say yes to this change in plans, because it actually makes their life easier. Previously, they were gonna have to fit a 90-minute special into the calendar. Wait, you're telling me now I only need to give you guys 30 minutes? Sure. Whatever you wanna do, no problem. [laughs]

   16. BGBen Gilbert56:03

       So they sorta sail through NBC here.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal56:05

       In a wholly unprecedented move, the net of this is that NBC's late night and specials department okays a sitcom pilot. This has never happened before. [laughs] The show just stays in, in, in Late Night.

   18. BGBen Gilbert56:21

       And just so listeners understand what we're talking about, the comedy department that has, at this point, what, The Cosby Show, it has Cheers.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal56:29

       Yep.

   20. BGBen Gilbert56:30

       It has like a bunch of hits, they've got a whole process for reviewing scripts and giving notes and working with the creators. And the late night department's just like, "Uh..." It's really easy to say yes, 'cause it's an even easier yes than the thing we already said yes to, and they just get to skip all the comedy department checklists and committees.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal56:51

       So NBC says okay, and Castle Rock, now the production company, and Jerry and Larry are like, "Well, all right. Let's, uh, let's cast this thing."

   22. BGBen Gilbert57:00

       [laughs]

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal57:00

       "Let's go make a pilot." So Rob Reiner at Castle Rock suggests that they should look at a mostly Broadway actor at the time named Jason Alexander for the part of George. He felt, and, and Jerry and Larry certainly agreed, that they needed a really polished like, like really... I mean, J- Jason Alexander is an inc- an incredible actor. They needed a really, really great actor to play opposite Jerry, 'cause Jerry is not a great actor.

   24. BGBen Gilbert57:28

       He was about to win a Tony a month later.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal57:31

       Yes.

   26. BGBen Gilbert57:31

       When Jason came in to read, they were like, "This guy's unbelievable. He's perfect for it." Later on, Jason would sorta figure out, oh, this character is kind of Larry David. He's not exactly Larry David, but he's loosely based on him. He actually thought it was a Woody Allen character at first.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal57:46

       Yes.

   28. BGBen Gilbert57:47

       So he came in and sorta did a Woody Allen impression for George.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal57:51

       Next, they need to cast Kramer, because Larry has decided to write his eccentric neighbor into the script here for the pilot, but he's not calling him Kramer just yet.

   30. BGBen Gilbert58:07

       Kessler? Is that right?
8. 59:53 – 1:10:17

   Pilot bombs… then survives: terrible testing, a burned-off airing, and the 4-episode ‘season’

   1. BGBen Gilbert59:53

      Interestingly, the comment that really sticks out from this session is that some of the executives thought it was too New York and too Jewish.

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal1:00:02

      Yep, which is quite ironic, because basically the entire origins of American comedy are New York and Jewish. [laughs]

   3. BGBen Gilbert1:00:12

      But they didn't wear it quite on their sleeve the way that Jerry did. I mean, this is-

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal1:00:16

      Yes

   5. BGBen Gilbert1:00:16

      ... they named the show Seinfeld, and it has this like, I don't know how to put it other than this very Jewish type of humor, the, the sensibility, the timing, the observational humor, the persnickety-ness, the crankiness, the like, uh, the detail oriented, the obsession.

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal1:00:33

      It's a really good point. The Jewish tradition of comedy really was the main lineage of comedy in America. I mean, the Marx Brothers, George Burns, like any... But basically everybody that came out of Vaudeville was, was Jewish. But they changed their names, they didn't wear it on their sleeves, it wasn't as obvious. I think the thing the NBC executives didn't realize is that here by the late '80s, it kinda didn't matter anymore. Everybody knew Woody Allen was Jewish. He was the biggest name in comedy.

   7. BGBen Gilbert1:00:57

      The other point in this is nobody knows anything.

   8. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:00

      Yeah. [laughs]

   9. BGBen Gilbert1:01:01

      It's Seinfeld, right? It would go on to become Seinfeld-

   10. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:04

       Right

   11. BGBen Gilbert1:01:04

       ... and they're like, "Eh, I don't know."

   12. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:06

       Yep.

   13. BGBen Gilbert1:01:07

       So they test it. They're like, "We should proceed with our standard testing and feedback."

   14. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:11

       We'll recruit a test audience to watch this thing.

   15. BGBen Gilbert1:01:14

       Right. The practice at the time, and I didn't know this, this is super interesting, they would cold call. They had a research department that would cold call a bunch of houses to recruit 400 households to watch a unused channel on their cable system at a certain time. And if you knew to tune in and you had the right hardware, you would tune in, and then you would see the pilot pop on, and then I think there's, like, nothing else afterwards. You're like-

   16. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:38

       Wow

   17. BGBen Gilbert1:01:38

       ... just watching this one channel at this one time. The researchers then convene these people or call them and ask them a standard set of questions. It tested horribly.

   18. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:48

       Horribly.

   19. BGBen Gilbert1:01:49

       Like-

   20. DRDavid Rosenthal1:01:49

       Yes

   21. BGBen Gilbert1:01:49

       ... the network executives were just a foreshadow of how people in the world saw it. Th- some of the most infamous comments that came out of this is, uh, one, "You can't get too excited about going to the laundromat."

   22. DRDavid Rosenthal1:02:04

       Which is where most of the pilot takes place with Jerry and George, at a laundromat.

   23. BGBen Gilbert1:02:08

       And Jerry and George have this whole discussion about w- what it means that this girl who's coming into town wants to see Jerry when she's there, and is she gonna stay with him, and, like, how much should they read into it, and, like, when he greets her at the airport, are they supposed to hug? Is she gonna hug him? Like-

   24. DRDavid Rosenthal1:02:23

       Right

   25. BGBen Gilbert1:02:23

       ... just overanalyzing the crap out of this situation, but they're having the conversation while in a laundromat, which is where a lot of the, the feedback sort of focused. The other quotes include, "Jerry's loser friend George isn't-"

   26. DRDavid Rosenthal1:02:37

       Right

   27. BGBen Gilbert1:02:37

       ... "a forceful character," "Jerry needs a stronger supporting cast," and, "Why are they interrupting the stand-up for these stupid stories?"

   28. DRDavid Rosenthal1:02:46

       Yeah.

   29. BGBen Gilbert1:02:47

       If the viewers liked anything about it, it was actually just Jerry's stand-up, but even that didn't test that strong. The recommendation from the research department to NBC was, if you're gonna air this, and then if you're gonna green-light this and you're gonna do something with Jerry, it should be stand-up and it should be better than this.

   30. DRDavid Rosenthal1:03:04

       Yeah. Uh, my favorite, uh, quote from the pilot research report was, "No segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again," and the overall pilot performance was rated as weak.
9. 1:10:17 – 1:20:56

   Elaine changes everything: subverting sitcom norms with ‘no hugging, no learning’

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:17

      So adding Elaine-

   2. BGBen Gilbert1:10:19

      Yes, arguably makes the show. I mean-

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:22

      Yes

   4. BGBen Gilbert1:10:22

      ... when you watch the pilot, you're like, "Oh yeah, there is a giant ingredient missing," and it's not just because the couch is weird, and Jerry's apartment's weird, and-

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:29

      [laughs]

   6. BGBen Gilbert1:10:29

      ... like there's an Elaine-shaped hole in the show. [laughs]

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:32

      Totally. Elaine makes the show, and it's not just NBC's note of, "You need a girl." It's so much more than that. I mean, yes, adding a female character gives Seinfeld a lot more appeal to more demographics than the pilot did, but the character of Elaine is also this incredible act of subversion to the network because by you need a girl in it, NBC meant give Jerry a love interest, and that is not [laughs] what Larry and Jerry are doing with Elaine. And I think it's really what establishes what Seinfeld the show is.

   8. BGBen Gilbert1:11:12

      Yes, 'cause if you look at every other sitcom, I, I bet NBC felt like they didn't even need to give the full note, give Jerry a female friend who will have an on-again, off-again, is there a flame here, and then eventually end up together and give the viewers what they want.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:31

      It's Sam and Diane in Cheers.

   10. BGBen Gilbert1:11:33

       Yes.

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:33

       It's Ross and Rachel.

   12. BGBen Gilbert1:11:35

       Yes.

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:35

       Blah, blah, blah.

   14. BGBen Gilbert1:11:35

       Eventually Jim and Pam. Like, this is the formula, and the way that Jerry and Larry chose to interpret the note is literally, "But we're not gonna do any of that other stuff."

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:46

       Yeah, we're just gonna need a girl. So, uh, George Shapiro, the talent manager, has a great quote about this, about what you need a girl means. He says, "The network wanted Jerry and Julia to be married or dating. That was normal network thinking. Fortunately, we had two creators who didn't give a crap. Jerry and Larry felt strongly that Jerry and Julia shouldn't have a relationship, and they were ready to walk away from the show because of it."

   16. BGBen Gilbert1:12:10

       And the way that they pulled this off is Elaine is a former love interest.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:14

       Yes.

   18. BGBen Gilbert1:12:15

       Like, they've already had a relationship, and it didn't work, and they broke up. And so viewers, you don't even need to take your minds there because we already told you it's not gonna work. There is one episode where they explore-

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:25

       The Deal, yes. [laughs]

   20. BGBen Gilbert1:12:26

       [laughs] Incredible episode. But then after that, the, the, I think that's the end of a season. They come back the next season. The whole thing is forgotten. They don't take it anywhere. These characters are not a love interest, period.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:38

       That episode, The Deal, where they, the two of them re-explore the romantic relationship, is even more subversive to the network because they do it, Larry, Larry and Jerry do that episode, and then they just never mention it again.

   22. BGBen Gilbert1:12:51

       Yes.

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:51

       There's no resolution. There's no they continued, they didn't continue. There's no development. There's no relationship. It's just, eh, that didn't happen.

   24. BGBen Gilbert1:12:59

       This show would go on to be number one by throwing out the playbook entirely and going straight off of the thing that Jerry and Larry wanted to make with no, like, reverence for the roles that you were supposed to do to get to number one.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:13:14

       Exactly. So th- this is why, you know, when I said that the Elaine character makes Seinfeld what it is. So w- what is Seinfeld? It is a merging of stand-up and the sitcom. Just like the whole development of the show, this is what it's leading to. Like a sitcom, Seinfeld the show has continuity of characters, places, relationships across episodes, across seasons, across years of the show. You get to know these characters, you know the apartment, you know the coffee shop

   26. BGBen Gilbert1:13:44

       You know George just can't help himself.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:13:46

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. BGBen Gilbert1:13:47

       Every time you can count on them to do the wrong thing, to see the temptation and to give into the temptation, and by creating these consistent characters, it helps have a framework for those jokes.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:13:59

       What does stand-up comedy not have? Continuity, consistency. That doesn't exist in the stand-up world. Okay, now flip it on the other side. Like stand-up, Seinfeld doesn't have any development of these characters and places and relationships. Jerry's always Jerry. George is always George. Elaine is always Elaine. You could tune in on any episode. There's no development of the relationship, the characters, they never learn anything. The places don't change. The apartment is the same. The coffee shop-

   30. BGBen Gilbert1:14:28

       Right, there-
10. 1:20:56 – 1:49:38

    Breaking through: summer after Cheers, data-driven defense, Season 2/3 craft, and network tension

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:20:56

       Especially with, you know, Larry running the show. Ah, so NBC amazingly does put it on the air, and, uh, the scheduling team comes to Castle Rock and to Larry and Jerry and says, "If you're willing to wait and have this run over the summer," you know, and summer is usually the traditional downtime for, for networks where they don't have first-run shows going.

    2. BGBen Gilbert1:21:20

       Mostly reruns.

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:21:21

       Yep. "We could run it after Cheers reruns in the summer." Now you might say why? Why is NBC, a broadcaster, doing Cheers reruns? The networks would get the right to rerun each episode once over the summer.

    4. BGBen Gilbert1:21:36

       And they would get the right to box out syndication for a certain period of time.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:21:40

       Yep. So Castle Rock and Jerry and Larry are like, "No brainer. We're gonna s- roll this thing after Cheers." Now in the meantime, throughout the spring of 1990, ABC had launched another show called The Marshall Chronicles. Nothing like Seinfeld, but everybody started worrying, "Oh no, if we now launch the Seinfeld Chronicles over the summer, we're gonna look like a me too about The Marshall Chronicles over on ABC." And so this is how the Seinfeld Chronicles gets shortened to just Seinfeld.

    6. BGBen Gilbert1:22:14

       Drop the the. It's cleaner.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:22:16

       [laughs] It's cleaner. Yes, yes. So Seinfeld goes on the air Thursday, May 31st, 1990, premiering after the summer rerun of Cheers, and critically, that very same month, Brandon Tartikoff leaves NBC. He was the head of the entertainment portion of the network, so he didn't run, like, sports or news or anything like that, but everything within entertainment, dramas, uh-

    8. BGBen Gilbert1:22:45

       Comedies, late night

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:22:46

       ... comedies, sitcom, late night specials all reported up to Tartikoff. His successor is chosen. Warren Littlefield, one of the two primary champions of Seinfeld, just became president of entertainment at NBC, which means that when it comes to the next critical decision point in the young Seinfeld show's life cycle here of whether it's gonna get an actual season in the fall, gonna get picked up for real finally, it's now Warren Littlefield's decision to make. So the new episodes air throughout June and July, and Littlefield, of course, he loves the show. He wants to support it, and Rick Ludwin, the specials department head, is right there, too, but they know they've got resistance in the network. And yes, Littlefield can make the decision, but they gotta build consensus here. So Warren pulls over a guy from NBC Research named Preston Beckman and says, "You know the folks at Nielsen, the ratings company? I want you to go talk to Nielsen and see if you can get custom reports made for each airing of these new Seinfeld episodes."

    10. BGBen Gilbert1:24:00

        Hmm.

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:24:00

        "And I want you to get reports by city, by metro area, for each of these episodes so that we can have some data of whether this thing only plays in New York or whether it's universal." So Beckman does. He goes to Nielsen, he gets these custom reports, and comes back. There is no difference in audience retention from the Cheers reruns to staying with Seinfeld in any major metro area. The same percent retain in New York as they do in Chicago or Houston or Seattle or San Francisco, and that percentage is pretty high. You know, it's not 100%. Nobody retains 100% from Cheers, but it's, like, high. Most of the audience that is watching the Cheers reruns sticks around and watches Seinfeld.

    12. BGBen Gilbert1:24:48

        Hmm.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:24:49

        So they're like, "Uh, all right." I mean, the audience is not big yet for this. It wouldn't be big for a while, but there's something happening here, and, and there is something universal to-

    14. BGBen Gilbert1:25:01

        Yes

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:25:02

        ... this show. It's not just New York where this is playing.

    16. BGBen Gilbert1:25:06

        Yep.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:25:06

        So end of the summer rolls around, and now the decision has to be made at the network. What is the fall lineup gonna be? What are the new shows that NBC is gonna pick up? And, uh, Warren has a, a quote that's in his memoir, which is great. He says, "I walked up to the scheduling board and grabbed the magnetic card that said Seinfeld. I took it off the fringes of the board where we had our backup shows, and I put it right smack at the center. This is our future. Rick Ludwin smiled." Now that's the way, uh, uh-

    18. BGBen Gilbert1:25:41

        [laughs]

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:25:41

        ... it's in the memoir.

    20. BGBen Gilbert1:25:42

        Success has many fathers.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:25:44

        [laughs] The reality is I think probably because of all the internal politicking and horse trading for The schedule for the fall of the new season, they end up only picking up Seinfeld as a mid-season replacement, so half a season. We'll give you 13 episodes, not a full season order of 22 plus episodes. We're not gonna run it in the fall, but we will slot you in when we inevitably cancel one of the other shows in the spring. It's a half-hearted pickup.

    22. BGBen Gilbert1:26:15

        So NBC comes to Jerry and to Castle Rock and says, "Great, here's a 13 episode order." Larry goes to Jerry and goes, "Ah, don't accept this. I'm out of material."

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:26:26

        Yeah. [laughs]

    24. BGBen Gilbert1:26:27

        Like, what, what, what else could we possibly do? I've already put- I, I've mined my entire life for all the best crazy situations that we could possibly put into these five episodes. I'm basically scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:26:40

        [laughs] Yes, yes.

    26. BGBen Gilbert1:26:42

        Obviously, that wasn't true because th- there was way, way, way more material that Larry would go on to create, but it is illustrative of, okay, they, they gotta bring in some fresh talent because these guys are not out experiencing the world anymore. They're heads down writing a TV show. They need writers who are out observing the minutiae of the world to come and work with them.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:27:05

        Yes, totally. It's also unbelievably unlikely that this happened. By the time Seinfeld gets picked up for this first half season order, it's over 18 months since they made the pilot-

    28. BGBen Gilbert1:27:21

        Right

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:27:21

        ... and over a year since the pilot aired. But because of the way it came up at NBC and through the specials department and the belief that these guys had in it to keep metering out little chances to it, it broke through.

    30. BGBen Gilbert1:27:36

        Yep.
11. 1:49:38 – 2:08:51

    The Contest and the Thursday-night coronation: standards battles, advertisers, and Must-See TV

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49:38

       Well, speaking of completely off limits, that brings us to the critical midpoint of the season where everything changes. Episode 11.

    2. BGBen Gilbert1:49:51

       Isn't The Outing also in season four?

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49:53

       Yes, but later, after episode 11.

    4. BGBen Gilbert1:49:55

       Ah, I see.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49:56

       Also so good.

    6. BGBen Gilbert1:49:57

       Not that there's anything wrong with that.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49:58

       Not as good as episode 11. Not that there's anything wrong with The Outing.

    8. BGBen Gilbert1:50:02

       [laughs]

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:50:03

       But it's not as good as episode 11, The Contest. So oh man, we've alluded to this, but for anybody listening who hasn't seen or heard of this episode, this is the master of your domain episode with the four characters making a bet to see who can go the longest.

    10. BGBen Gilbert1:50:25

        The episode opens, George walks into a diner- And the opening line that he gives Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer in the booth is, "My mother caught me."

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:50:37

        [laughs] I can't even keep it together just talking about the episode.

    12. BGBen Gilbert1:50:42

        They don't need to do much from there. They go the entire episode without saying what they are having a contest to try not to do.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:50:52

        [laughs]

    14. BGBen Gilbert1:50:53

        There's just this giant unstated elephant. You know exactly what the elephant is the entire episode, and yet it's perfect. It doesn't break any rules, but they break all this new comedic ground.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:51:08

        So apparently, like all or almost all great Seinfeld episodes, this actually also happened to Larry in real life [laughs]

    16. BGBen Gilbert1:51:17

        [laughs] Of course it did.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:51:20

        And Larry, even Larry was scared of this episode. He had been thinking, "Nah, we can't do it. It's, it's too much." But finally here by season four, they've got enough confidence and enough, you know, just no fear attitude. Larry's talking to Jerry and says the idea, and Jerry says, "That's funny. Let's do it." So they write the episode, the two of them, in secret. Usually what they would do in their office on the, on the set, the, Larry and Jerry's office that they shared together, is they had a, a whiteboard. So if you watch the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm that's in the office, you can see the whiteboard, and on the whiteboard they have all the plot points for all the characters and the candidates, et cetera, et cetera. So anybody could come in their office, the other writers, the NBC executives, they'd see what's on the whiteboard. They didn't put this one on.

    18. BGBen Gilbert1:52:13

        [laughs]

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:52:14

        They just wrote it in secret. I don't know if they put decoys. That would be even better. [laughs]

    20. BGBen Gilbert1:52:18

        Word did get out, though.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:52:19

        Well, so the story continues. So they have it in secret all throughout the writing process, and then it gets to the table read. So the way the week would work was the cast would do a table read of the script first, and then do some rehearsals, and then they would shoot the episode. This is pretty close to filming, like you're well into production week at this point. They bring out the script, and NBC is just like, "Oh my God." [laughs]

    22. BGBen Gilbert1:52:48

        We're gonna talk about the full schedule, the weekly schedule of making a Seinfeld episode in a few minutes, but know this, when you're at the table read, you are six days from shooting the episode for real in front of a live audience in studio.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:53:02

        Yep. You're pretty close to the point of no return, or as close as Larry and Jerry could engineer getting-

    24. BGBen Gilbert1:53:08

        Yes

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:53:08

        ... before revealing what they were doing. So the broadcast standards department at NBC, which is the in-house censor that is responsible for keeping all of NBC's programming up to broadcast standards rules, they of course hear about this right away. They're just losing their minds, and the woman who runs this department, her name is Dr. Roz Weinman, in New York, she calls up Warren and is just apoplectic, and Warren's like, "Well, it is Seinfeld. It's the guys. They don't say the word. It's funny." And somehow, I don't know if she was a fan of the show, if she got it, she said, "Well, all right. We're gonna keep a close eye on this. Like, we could pull the plug at any time, but in this case with this show, it might be enough that this show has a pact with its audience that we can get away with this." This is unbelievable.

    26. BGBen Gilbert1:54:05

        Because broadcast standards really has two jobs. One is, are we literally going to fall afoul of any FCC regulations where we will get in trouble as a network? Two is, is there gonna be any blowback on our network where it hurts our brand?

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:54:21

        Yep.

    28. BGBen Gilbert1:54:21

        People don't like us anymore, advertisers run, things like that. And if you're not running afoul of one, 'cause no words are coming out of your mouth, then it's really just about-

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:54:32

        The question is only number two, yeah

    30. BGBen Gilbert1:54:33

        ... right, do we think the audience will love or hate this?
12. 2:08:51 – 2:15:44

    How they made it: the brutal weekly production machine and live-audience feedback loops

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:08:51

       Yes

    2. BGBen Gilbert2:08:51

       ... 'cause he doesn't get credit for the tip, that's a thing from someone's life. You kinda need all this fresh blood to come in and get material. Okay, so- How did it work to actually produce the weekly Seinfeld episode? Thank you to Alec Berg and David Mandel for talking us through this. They were writers on the show, and then there's some great interviews with Jason Alexander that share a lot of the detail too. So the typical sitcom schedule would start its life on a Monday with rehearsals leading up to a Friday shoot. And on Seinfeld they realized, "Well, actually, we could start the week on Wednesday and shoot the following Tuesday. And when the actors go home for the weekend, that means we can get some extra time coming in and rewriting the episode to make it better." Which is fine since then they weren't married, they didn't have kids. Like, they had no personal life to speak of. They were obsessed with this, so that's just what they did. So day one, it starts with a table read. Everyone is there. There's producers, writers, NBC executives, Castle Rock representatives. And, uh, as Jason Alexander put it, they would then have a go big powwow after the table read. They would give their notes, then Larry would quit.

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal2:09:56

       [laughs]

    4. BGBen Gilbert2:09:57

       Then the notes would be thrown away, then Larry would agree to stay, and then he would come back tomorrow.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:02

       [laughs] Sounds about right.

    6. BGBen Gilbert2:10:04

       So that's day one. And the actors start trying to do some rehearsing, but it's all gonna change so materially, and they kinda know it, so they're not taking that rehearsal that seriously. It's just, like, familiarizing themselves with the material. So Larry and Jerry would then go do a bunch of rewrites overnight. The scripts don't really have stage direction. It's just dialogue, 'cause they're comedians. That's, that's what they write.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:23

       Right.

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:10:24

       And so then the actors had to figure it out. So Seinfeld had this really unique collaborative way where the actors would stay on set even when it wasn't their scene so they could work through it together, and they could trade. Say, "Oh, actually, I think it would be more funny if Kramer's at the fridge right now with the door open going through," or, or, then maybe George is, and, and try to figure out the blocking together.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:47

       Yep.

    10. BGBen Gilbert2:10:47

        So then day three, more full rewrite overnight, more rehearsing, still just internal to the team. The network's not there yet. The actors, they're there, the writers, Larry, Jerry. This becomes more or less the shape of the final script. Then at the end of the day, NBC and Castle Rock come in. They watch a full run-through. They give their notes. As Jason Alexander says, Larry would quit.

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:09

        Yep.

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:11:10

        Their notes would be diminished, and Larry would come back. Day four is camera block day. So this is when the cameramen come in and start learning their shots. Who's taking what? The episode is sort of finalized enough to figure out what shots do we need and which cameras are we assigning. And it's a very difficult thing, 'cause it's not like the four cameras just sit there and don't change. Let's say you're camera one. You're responsible for a wide shot. It comes off you and goes to camera three. You have five seconds to scramble, shift, zoom, get a two shot on two characters, 'cause then when it flips back to you, that's where you're supposed to be.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:46

        Yep.

    14. BGBen Gilbert2:11:46

        So it's this, like, real ballet and art. So they all rehearse as a unit, the cameramen and the actors, because the next day they're in front of a live audience.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:54

        Yep.

    16. BGBen Gilbert2:11:55

        On day four also, especially as the show got bigger and they were doing more on-location filming where they'd shoot outside the permanent sets, the, the coffee shop and Jerry's apartment, they'd do things like go to the fake New York street on a different lot to do the sorta outdoor street shots, or actual filming locations like the cemetery where George visits Susan.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal2:12:15

        [laughs] Oh, boy.

    18. BGBen Gilbert2:12:19

        Yeah. Then day five is rehearsal in the morning, then you bring in the live audience to film in the afternoon. They'd run the entire show in chronological order, and if there's any scenes that were not on those permanent sets, 'cause the audience is just sitting there in front of the coffee shop and Jerry's apartment in, in big bleachers, they would bring down a screen so the audience could watch a rough cut of what was shot outside. And that way they could record those laughs, just like we talked about earlier. If they didn't get a laugh, do you know about what they would do, David?

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal2:12:49

        Ooh, no, I didn't find this.

    20. BGBen Gilbert2:12:49

        If they, if it wasn't going as expected? Even with the live audience there, they would pause production. They would huddle all the writers and the actors and the director on stage. They would bring out a live band who there was just, like, waiting on set to entertain the audience. And they also had, like, comics and stuff warm up the audience.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:08

        Right.

    22. BGBen Gilbert2:13:08

        And they would huddle and try and figure out, like, a better joke.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:11

        Hmm. Yeah, why isn't this one hitting it?

    24. BGBen Gilbert2:13:11

        Or how to rewrite it live. The best example of this is in The Marine Biologist.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:17

        Yeah, yeah.

    26. BGBen Gilbert2:13:17

        So the episode is supposed to end with George walking into the ocean. And if you've seen this episode, that is not the end.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:24

        This is the best story.

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:13:25

        It's so good. They bring down the screen to show the on-location shot. George walks into the ocean. Audience is kinda confused. There's been, like, a lot of build-up, but the- there's no joke here. So they all huddle. They come up with this idea for George to have the additional scene in the booth where he does a monologue, and then, uh, he finally produces the golf ball out of his pocket, which is of course tying in a plot from earlier in the episode where Kramer's hitting golf balls into the ocean, and that golf ball turns out to be lodged in a whale's blowhole in George's storyline, which is why the whale needed a marine biologist in the first place that George was pretending to be. So-

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:57

        So good. It's so good

    30. BGBen Gilbert2:13:58

        ... Larry goes off after their huddle and he writes a full-page monologue on the spot, which Jason Alexander tells Larry, "Yeah, I can do that. I'm a Tony Award-winning actor."
13. 2:15:44 – 2:39:03

    The real money: syndication, Castle Rock’s sale, Larry’s exit, and Seinfeld’s perpetual cashflows

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:15:44

       Which is a good time to flip back over to the business side of Seinfeld. Because also right at this time, after the move to Thursday night, after the huge success, after the internet starts to come online, Seinfeld hits syndication.

    2. BGBen Gilbert2:16:05

       So Jerry's quote to the LA Times here is, "We'll be in syndication next year, and that will probably help us further, the same way it helped Cheers. Most people are still just now discovering our show. Most of the audience watching the show on Thursdays have not seen us before. They're new to us. There's 60-some odd episodes they haven't seen."

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal2:16:24

       Yep. Ooh, boy, and were those 60 episodes gonna be worth a lot of money-

    4. BGBen Gilbert2:16:31

       Yep

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal2:16:31

       ... to the, uh, ownership group that we discussed earlier in the episode. 'Cause Seinfeld is basically the most perfect syndication show ever created. Because of the no hugging, no learning element, no character development, no relationship development, you can tune in anytime to any episode in any order. Doesn't matter, you're gonna get a full entertaining experience.

    6. BGBen Gilbert2:17:00

       And because these characters are just kind of vessels that you don't really need to invest in their storyline, they're just, like, mirrors of the worst part of ourselves-

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal2:17:11

       [laughs]

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:17:12

       ... the situations provide the comedy. And so it's a very internationally relatable show, too, in a way that not all comedy has.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:17:19

       Yep, yep, totally. So why now, and what exactly is this business of, of syndication? There's sort of a magic unofficial number for TV shows back in this time of 100 episodes. That was when you entered into syndication.

    10. BGBen Gilbert2:17:34

        And the 100 episode thing kinda stems from you have a large enough number of episodes to demonstrate that people liked the show, and there was familiarity with it or you wouldn't have continued, and that there's a big body you can license-

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal2:17:50

        Yep

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:17:50

        ... to someone to show it. 'Cause they don't wanna buy your 10 episodes. That's not interesting. They wanna buy a big block of them. And so syndication, for those not familiar, is basically any time a show gets licensed to another distribution option besides the primary first-run TV network. And essentially those options are international, off-network-

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal2:18:09

        Yep

    14. BGBen Gilbert2:18:09

        ... which this is the biggest one for the longest time. I did not understand how this worked. When NBC buys a show, they're buying it directly from Castle Rock. But once that enters syndication and the reruns are going constantly, that has nothing to do with NBC.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal2:18:26

        Yes.

    16. BGBen Gilbert2:18:27

        That is just the local affiliates. And the local affiliates, you know, it starts with a K or a W, it's a four-letter station that's broadcast over the air in your city.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal2:18:36

        Yep, and it might be a NBC or an ABC or a CBS or a Fox station.

    18. BGBen Gilbert2:18:40

        Right.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal2:18:41

        But they only take the network's programming during primetime or sporting events, et cetera, et cetera.

    20. BGBen Gilbert2:18:46

        The rest of the time they have to go find their own programming. So either they need to make it, or they need to go buy it directly.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:18:54

        Mm-hmm.

    22. BGBen Gilbert2:18:55

        And there's, like, 1,000 of them. And so this is where Sony actually does something. This is where the distributor matters.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:19:01

        Yes, they earn their keep now. [laughs]

    24. BGBen Gilbert2:19:03

        For off-network syndication, what you're really trying to figure out is how many of these individually owned local TV stations are willing to buy my 100 episodes, and at what rate. And so that is, uh, how off-network works. Then there's off-network cable, same thing, but to cable stations. Fortunately, there's many fewer cable stations than there are local TV affiliates. And then in the far future, but it didn't happen yet, is, uh, subscription video on demand, or streaming, which would become a very, very valuable part of syndication. But the interesting thing about the TV business is just how large off-network syndication and streaming syndication could be relative to the original first-run business. Because if you think about what, what does it actually cost to make a Seinfeld episode in season one? Probably less than half a million dollars.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:19:54

        Yeah.

    26. BGBen Gilbert2:19:55

        Probably less than $400,000. You're not paying the stars that much yet. Production costs aren't actually that high. And so then what's NBC gonna pay for it? $300,000?

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal2:20:05

        Right.

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:20:06

        You know.

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:20:06

        80%-ish of whatever that number is. Not a lot of money.

    30. BGBen Gilbert2:20:09

        So let's look at season two, for example, 12 episodes. That probably cost somewhere in the $5 to $6 million to produce, which means that it's somewhere in the 4-ish million dollars for NBC to buy. It's actually, like, kind of a small thing. But those 12 episodes, when they're sold later in syndication, can fetch huge sums of money, especially if it runs for a long time, 'cause the rights can be sold over and over and over again. And the most important thing is that group, David, that you were pointing out, that sort of cap table of who owns the show, it's a totally different split from who makes the money the first time around.
14. 2:39:03 – 2:52:30

    Ending on top, the finale spectacle, and streaming-era reinvention of ‘retention IP’

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:39:03

       Just from the per episode fees. So all of this Leads here at the end of 1997 to Jack Welch inviting Jerry Seinfeld to brunch to discuss a hypothetical 10th season. Jack Welch-

    2. BGBen Gilbert2:39:24

       The CEO of the conglomerate General Electric, which is at the time thought to be the best run company in America, in the world.

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal2:39:32

       Yep, and I think the most valuable company by market cap in the world at this point in time.

    4. BGBen Gilbert2:39:36

       Hmm.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal2:39:37

       Yes. It is worth Jack Welch's time to take this extremely seriously and invite Jerry Seinfeld to brunch.

    6. BGBen Gilbert2:39:43

       And talk about a potential season 10.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal2:39:46

       Yes.

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:39:47

       But listeners, before we tell that story, now is a great time to tell you about one of our favorite companies, Work OS. You have heard us talk about this all season. Once you find product market fit, the fastest way to grow is up market, and enterprises won't buy your product until you have gotten enterprise requirements like single sign-on, SCIM, that's S-C-I-M, permissions, audit logs. Work OS gives you all of those as drop-in APIs.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:40:13

       But the twist now is that it's not just your customers' employees who need to get into your app anymore, it's their agents. Which brings me to Kramer.

    10. BGBen Gilbert2:40:23

        [laughs]

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal2:40:24

        In the classic season eight episode, "The Bizarro Jerry," Kramer wanders into an office and just starts working there [laughs]

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:40:34

        [laughs]

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal2:40:34

        ... without ever being hired. When he, Kramer, finally does get fired, quote, unquote, "for sloppy work," he says, "I don't even really work here."

    14. BGBen Gilbert2:40:44

        This, listeners, is the situation for most agents today. People just hand out shared API keys to an agent or borrow human login credentials with full permissions, but obviously with very little accountability. It's really not that different from Kramer managing to get an employee badge.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal2:40:59

        Yes. So Work OS built the right infrastructure for this, a sign-up form for agents. It's called auth.md, and it's an open protocol. You publish one plain text file to your domain. Auth.md tells any agent how to register, what your service offers, and what it's allowed to do. An agent reads it, signs up on the user's behalf, and walks away with its own access token, scoped exactly to what it needs and nothing more.

    16. BGBen Gilbert2:41:27

        A real world example is Neon, the database company that Databricks bought for a billion dollars. More than 80% of their databases are created by agents, not people. An agent reads neon.com/auth.md, spins up a database scoped to that project, and a human claims it later with one link.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal2:41:45

        Nice and clean, and much more secure.

    18. BGBen Gilbert2:41:49

        Auth used to mean proving you are you. Now it means proving your agent is allowed to do this specific thing as you right now with limits. That's how you get in the door with enterprises now, and it's why OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Perplexity, and hundreds of other AI startups build on Work OS. You can learn more at workos.com/auth-md, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal2:42:13

        All right. So Jack Welch invites Jerry to brunch at the end of 1997. They set it up in the then CEO of NBC, Bob Wright's apartment in New York City on the 38th floor of the Trump Tower. In attendance from the NBCGE side are Jack Welch and Bob Wright, the NBC CEO. Helping prepare for the meeting were Warren Littlefield, president of entertainment, and Don Ohlmeyer, who is NBC's head of LA operations, which is the, you know, location of the operations of the show of Seinfeld since it's filming in LA. Which I still can never get over that Seinfeld was filmed in LA, but...

    20. BGBen Gilbert2:42:57

        Even some of the exterior shots of the apartment are recreations of New York buildings in LA.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:43:06

        I know, I know. I don't like to think about it 'cause it feels wrong.

    22. BGBen Gilbert2:43:11

        Right.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:43:11

        So that's the GE NBC side. And then Jerry is obviously there, and George Shapiro and Howard West, the talent managers, agents are, are there too. They settle down to brunch, and the NBCGE team brings out slides, like presentation slides. Jack Welch starts giving the presentation to Jerry Seinfeld over brunch, [laughs] making a presentation arguing that the show has not yet reached its peak. It can go higher. It can get bigger. You can do more. Jerry, we have the data. The audience wants you back. It's not over. You haven't reached the top.

    24. BGBen Gilbert2:43:55

        [laughs] Wow.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:43:58

        Jack concludes his pitch to Jerry with this line. "You know, Jerry, I go all over the world. Everybody who talks to me, they only wanna know one thing. Is Jerry Seinfeld coming back [laughs] for another season?"

    26. BGBen Gilbert2:44:17

        And that line about it hasn't peaked, that is one of the things that is going through Jerry's mind, in addition to like exhaustion and having really not started his life because he's just been doing this for 10 years.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal2:44:29

        Yeah, he's 43 years old at this point in time.

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:44:31

        Right. There is the concern that the show will keep going past its peak, and he doesn't wanna see it. So the only way to go out on top is to go out before you reach your peak, 'cause you're not gonna time it perfectly.

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:44:44

        Yep. Yep, yep. All that's going through his mind. So Jerry starts demurring after Jack's pitch, [laughs] sales job here. He's not outright declining, but he's, you know, making noises. He's like, "Ah, gosh, I appreciate it, Jack, but I, I don't know that I really can, can keep it going." They say, "All right. Well, don't make a decision now. Don't make a decision now." The meal ends. Everybody stands up. Jack says, "Jerry, come over here for a minute. I wanna talk to you one-on-one." He takes Jerry Seinfeld to a corner of the room. Jack takes out a piece of paper, and he starts writing some numbers down on the paper. He writes down $5 million. 22. 22 episodes. $110 million. He hands it to Jerry. He says, "This is a firm offer for your salary for next season, $5 million an episode."

    30. BGBen Gilbert2:45:51

        If you come back and do a 10th season.

Episode duration: 3:50:19