Seinfeld - Full Episode (Audio)

1. 0:00 – 0:55

   Start

   1. BGBen Gilbert0:00

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

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal0:04

      No way.

   3. BGBen Gilbert0:05

      [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-

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal0:15

      Yes

   7. BGBen Gilbert0:15

      ... and don't 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 Rosenthal0:27

      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 Gilbert0:31

       ... 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, should 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.

2. 0:55 – 4:52

   Intro

   1. SPSpeaker0:55

      Who got the truth?

   2. BGBen Gilbert0:56

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

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:05

      Usually. The podcast about great business assets.

   4. BGBen Gilbert1:09

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

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12

      I'm David Rosenthal.

   6. 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.

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:59

      This show went off the air almost 30 years ago.

   8. BGBen Gilbert2:01

      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 Americans.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:14

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

   10. 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.

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal3:10

       Yep.

   12. BGBen Gilbert3:10

       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.

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal3:52

       Let's do it.

   14. BGBen Gilbert3:53

       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.

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal4:28

       Yes, Sierra helps the great companies of the world build better customer experiences and drive stronger business outcomes with AI.

   16. BGBen Gilbert4:35

       That's S-I-E-R-R-A, Sierra. So with that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies that we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David, where do we begin?

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal4:50

       [laughs]

3. 4:52 – 16:16

   Jerry Seinfeld's Stand-Up Origins (1954-1988)

   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 Gilbert5:00

      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 Rosenthal5:47

      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 Gilbert5:51

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

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal5:56

       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? And 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 on vinyl

   14. BGBen Gilbert6:28

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

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal6:37

       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.

   16. BGBen Gilbert7:14

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

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal7:19

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

   18. BGBen Gilbert7:22

       Yes. He basically said, "I had one goal. I mean, 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."

   19. 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.

   20. BGBen Gilbert8:40

       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.

   21. 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.

   22. BGBen Gilbert9:33

       Yep.

   23. 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. [laughs] Doesn't, uh, doesn't work out exactly as he planned.

   24. BGBen Gilbert10:17

       Which is the common experience in television.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal10:19

       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.

   26. 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 in 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.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal11:36

       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.

   28. BGBen Gilbert11:51

       Mm.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal11:51

       And people in cities all across America will know you. They'll buy tickets to your shows. Like, that's the way you hit it big in stand-up. So once Jerry is signed with Shapiro and West, they get him the big break, a spot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. So Jerry talks about this. He trains like he's training for the Olympics to go on for, I think it was five minutes, a five-minute set.

   30. BGBen Gilbert12:16

       And he always talks about how you're taking most of the best material out of your 40-minute set- To create that idealized six minutes to just put your absolute best foot forward.
4. 16:16 – 21:35

   NBC Pitches a Late-Night Special (1988)

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal16:16

      So Shapiro and West, his managers, are like, "Okay, Jerry's a big star. He's making tons of money. We're making tons of money as his agent. But, like, he can do more." They start going to NBC. In fact, George Shapiro starts writing letters, starts a letter-writing campaign-

   2. BGBen Gilbert16:37

      [laughs]

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal16:37

      ... to Brandon Tartikoff, who is the president of NBC Entertainment at the time, saying, "You've got this guy, Jerry, this comic. He's regularly coming on The Tonight Show. He's doing great. Don't you think he needs a show of his own?" Jerry actually has a great quote on this. He says, "Imagine you have this kid who's been on The Tonight Show for, like, 30 times, and on Letterman 30 times. He's on your network all the time. Presentable fellow, seems to do well. Nobody ever thought, 'Why don't we talk to this young man? Maybe we can do some business, do a show.'" So finally, in November of 1988, Shapiro succeeds in convincing Brandon Tartikoff and the powers that be at NBC that, "Okay, maybe we should consider this, this Jerry guy."

   4. BGBen Gilbert17:21

      Yep.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal17:21

      So they schedule a meeting to discuss it. But it's not with NBC's comedy department. So the comedy department at NBC means sitcoms. They control all the sitcoms. They're not thinking of Jerry as sitcom material. They're thinking of him as late night material, where he's obviously already doing great. Can he do specials for us, which is the direction this ends up going? And, you know, I think probably in the back of their minds, they're also thinking, like, "Hey, can, can this guy be a, be a host?" You know, Johnny Carson's getting older. It would be a few years later that Johnny would retire, and then there's the whole, you know, Jay Leno, David Letterman drama-

   6. BGBen Gilbert17:59

      Yes

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal17:59

      ... and the succession. But, like, this is a couple years away. You know, maybe Jerry Seinfeld deserves to be in this mix.

   8. BGBen Gilbert18:05

      You mentioned specials. There were network comedy specials. Like, Bob Hope would get these specials where he would go and do these routines. So it wasn't like, "Hey, we're gonna pitch you a whole new format called Jerry Seinfeld does stand-up on TV." That was a thing.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal18:18

      Yep. So on November 2nd, 1988- At 5:15 PM, local time in Los Angeles, NBC finally takes the meeting. And Jerry shows up, George Shapiro, the manager's there, Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, Warren Littlefield, who's head of prime time for NBC, and then Rick Ludwin, who heads the specials department, the variety and specials department that they're thinking about Jerry for. So Jerry says of the meeting, "We sat in there, we chatted about, 'Oh, what do you think you wanna do? Would you be interested in a talk show?' And we kinda settled on doing a special in the Saturday Night Live time slot one week when Saturday Night Live wasn't airing." So NBC says, "Come back with a script for what you wanna do for the special, and we'll make it."

   10. BGBen Gilbert19:05

       I always like when they ask Jerry, "So what, what do you want out of this meeting?" And he has some comment like, "Oh, I actually hadn't really given that thought. Uh, success as a comedian is getting this meeting."

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal19:16

       Right.

   12. BGBen Gilbert19:16

       "So I'm, I'm like in this room. I'm excited to be in this room with you right now." [laughs]

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal19:19

       "I'm just happy to be here." [laughs]

   14. 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-

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal20:02

       GE, like Jack Welch-

   16. BGBen Gilbert20:03

       Yes

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal20:03

       ... GE, General Electric, yeah.

   18. BGBen Gilbert20:05

       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.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal20:22

       Yes.

   20. 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.

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal20:57

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

   22. BGBen Gilbert21:04

       Yes

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal21:04

       ... the other networks and NBC before this point in time, they were just like, "We're, 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-

   24. BGBen Gilbert21:22

       [laughs] Yes

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal21:23

       ... uh, you need a corporate strategy.

   26. BGBen Gilbert21:24

       Yes.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal21:25

       It's tied to revenue and profits and-

   28. BGBen Gilbert21:27

       Yes

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal21:27

       ... everything that GE does.

   30. BGBen Gilbert21:29

       So the perfect thing to do is sign Jerry Seinfeld to a development deal.
5. 21:35 – 35:04

   Enter Larry David (1988)

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal21:35

      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'll... Just come back with a script, we'll 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 scriptwriting 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.

   2. BGBen Gilbert22:25

      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.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal22:36

      As Jerry was coming up as a kid out of 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.

   4. BGBen Gilbert23:20

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

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal23:23

      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.

   6. BGBen Gilbert23:54

      That's right.

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal23:54

      It was, this is-

   8. BGBen Gilbert23:55

      It was an SNL knockoff, right?

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal23:56

      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]

   10. BGBen Gilbert24:20

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

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal24:22

       Yep, yep. They also can't get the best talent out of New York who's interested in this kinda 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've 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.

   12. BGBen Gilbert25:41

       [laughs]

   13. 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-

   14. BGBen Gilbert25:51

       Which he does, and th- you might-

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal25:53

       And it works

   16. BGBen Gilbert25:53

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

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal25:59

       Yeah.

   18. 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.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal26:14

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

   20. BGBen Gilbert26:20

       [laughs]

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal26:20

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

   22. BGBen Gilbert26:24

       Yes.

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal26:25

       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.

   24. BGBen Gilbert26:51

       And he turned out to be a genius.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal26:53

       A genius.

   26. BGBen Gilbert26:54

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

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal26:57

       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.

   28. BGBen Gilbert27:07

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

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal27:11

       Yep, I think she lasted two or three years, but they bond over, you know, not getting any airtime 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."

   30. BGBen Gilbert27:34

       Hmm.
6. 35:04 – 52:45

   Fin-Syn Rules & The Castle Rock Deal

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal35:04

      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-

   2. BGBen Gilbert35:31

      [laughs]

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal35:32

      ... from actually owning the content that they broadcast on the networks, a set of rules called Financial Interests in Syndication or Fin-Syn.

   4. 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, 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.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal36:26

      Mary Tyler Moore. Yep.

   6. BGBen Gilbert36:26

      Yes.

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal36:26

      Or Desilu of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

   8. BGBen Gilbert36:29

      Yes.

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal36:29

      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-

   10. BGBen Gilbert36:43

       That's right

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal36:43

       ... 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."

   12. BGBen Gilbert36:56

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

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal37:02

       Way more. Way more money in TV

   14. BGBen Gilbert37:03

       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.

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal37:13

       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.

   16. 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 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-

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal37:53

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

   18. 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.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal38:07

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

   20. BGBen Gilbert38:10

       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-

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal39:03

       Hmm

   22. BGBen Gilbert39:03

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

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal39:08

       Ah, I didn't realize-

   24. BGBen Gilbert39:10

       This is back in the '60s

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal39:10

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

   26. BGBen Gilbert39:15

       Yes.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal39:15

       Ah.

   28. BGBen Gilbert39:15

       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 Fin-Syn, and these rules prevented the networks from owning a financial interest, which mostly meant from participating in the future syndication-

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal39:42

       Yeah

   30. 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.
7. 52:45 – 1:04:24

   Making the Pilot & Test Screening Disaster (1989)

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal52:45

      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 either 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 Gilbert53:09

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

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal53:13

      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 Gilbert54:31

      [laughs]

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal54:32

      ... 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 Gilbert54:57

      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 Rosenthal55:10

      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 Rosenthal55:26

      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 Rosenthal55:39

       Yep

   12. BGBen Gilbert55:39

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

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal55:43

       Yes

   14. BGBen Gilbert55:43

       ... 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 Gilbert56:02

       So they sorta sail through NBC here.

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal56:04

       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 Rosenthal56:28

       Yep.

   20. BGBen Gilbert56:29

       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 Rosenthal56:50

       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. 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.

   22. BGBen Gilbert57:27

       He was about to win a Tony a month later.

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal57:30

       Yes.

   24. BGBen Gilbert57:30

       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.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal57:46

       Yes.

   26. BGBen Gilbert57:46

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

   27. 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.

   28. BGBen Gilbert58:06

       Kessler? Is that right?

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal58:07

       Kessler, yes. Kessler.

   30. BGBen Gilbert58:08

       He's like, "Oh, I don't wanna make it too on the nose, and also if we call him Kramer, then like we're gonna have to pay this guy-
8. 1:04:24 – 1:10:17

   Rick Ludwin Saves the Show (1989-1990)

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:04:24

      That would've been the end, except that back in the late night and specials department at NBC, they keep thinking about this Seinfeld thing. I mean, they love Jerry. They wanna do something with Jerry, and they're like, "Yeah, I mean, everybody was worried it was too Jewish, it was too New York, but, but I'll be damned if it's not funny." Like, it was just funny.

   2. BGBen Gilbert1:04:47

      And even though most people didn't like it, there was a small group of people who completely got it.

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:04:53

      Yep.

   4. BGBen Gilbert1:04:53

      It's like any successful startup. You're not trying to be a seven for everyone. You're trying to be a 9.9 for a very small group of people that you can then figure out how to get those super fans to tell their friends. There were people at NBC that were like, "This is the future. This is-"

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:05:11

      Yep

   6. BGBen Gilbert1:05:11

      ... "what we need to do. We need to be in business with Jerry Seinfeld and this brand of comedy."

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:05:15

      And it was Warren Littlefield in primetime and Rick Ludwin in specials. And so the two of them come together, and they hatch a last-ditch plan to give their little baby another chance. They decide, "Well, since we've been doing this out of specials, what if we just cancel one of the other one-off specials that we were gonna do and use that budget to place an order, a season, quote-unquote, order, for this show that we love?" So they cancel one two-hour Bob Hope special that they were planning to do on NBC that fall, and instead they use that budget. They call up Jerry and Larry and say, "Great news. We are ordering a season of The Seinfeld Chronicles." Jerry says, "Uh, uh, great. What, what's the order?" Four episodes. [laughs]

   8. BGBen Gilbert1:06:12

      [laughs]

   9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:06:12

      Making it, I believe, the smallest first season order in television history.

   10. BGBen Gilbert1:06:19

       And didn't you talk to Warren Littlefield about this?

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:06:21

       Yes, yes. So the quote from Warren about how this conversation went down, he says, "I called Jerry to tell him the good news. There was a long silence over the line. Jerry finally asked me, 'Has any show in the history of television ever succeeded with just four episodes?'" And Warren says, uh, "I didn't know, and that's exactly what I told him." [laughs]

   12. BGBen Gilbert1:06:42

       [laughs] Probably not. If anybody knows, it's probably the head of primetime at NBC.

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:06:49

       Yep. Jerry's telling Larry in the background as they're having this conversation, and Larry famously reacts to this with, "Ah, it's fine. I think four episodes is all I got in me anyway." [laughs] It's the ultimate Larry David line.

   14. BGBen Gilbert1:07:01

       Larry David would go on to be the head writer of 135 Seinfeld episodes.

   15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:08

       Yep, yep. So they've got the order.

   16. BGBen Gilbert1:07:11

       And Jerry has later said in other interviews that he and Castle Rock were looking around for other buyers, 'cause they assumed that NBC was out, which is a fair assumption. Fox actually made an offer and guaranteed-

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:24

       That's right

   18. BGBen Gilbert1:07:24

       ... 24 episodes. But Jerry wanted that NBC imprimatur of a real network.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:30

       Well, Fox was also a startup network-

   20. BGBen Gilbert1:07:32

       Yes

   21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:32

       ... at this point in time. It was not Fox that you know it today as a, one of the major broadcast networks in the US.

   22. BGBen Gilbert1:07:38

       Jerry has phrased it as, "It wasn't the major leagues-"

   23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:41

       Yeah

   24. BGBen Gilbert1:07:41

       ... and I wanted to be in the majors. And so they went with NBC's four-episode deal instead.

   25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:07:46

       Yep. So they get the order, and, uh, NBC's like, "We trust you, but there's some problems with this show. In particular, the worst scoring demographic in the pilot was women."

   26. BGBen Gilbert1:08:02

       Yep.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:08:02

       "Women don't relate to this show at all. And, and usually what we do here at the network is we just add a character from that demographic group to the episode. So I know you guys have got Claire, the waitress."

   28. BGBen Gilbert1:08:13

       She needs to be hanging out, a, a member of the group.

   29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:08:16

       Yep, which leads to the network's, I, I think one, I think one [laughs] good creative note in the history of Seinfeld, which makes the whole show work. You need a girl in this thing. But before we tell the story of Elaine, now is a great time to talk about our good friends at Anthropic.

   30. BGBen Gilbert1:08:37

       Yes, the makers of Claude. And, uh, David, I wanna start with that research memo about the pilot.
9. 1:10:17 – 1:28:41

   Adding Elaine & "No Hugging, No Learning"

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:17

      adding Elaine-

   2. BGBen Gilbert1:10:19

      Yes, arguably makes the show. I mean-

   3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:21

      Yes

   4. BGBen Gilbert1:10:21

      ... 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 Rosenthal1:10:28

      [laughs]

   6. BGBen Gilbert1:10:29

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

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:10:31

      [laughs] 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 Rosenthal1:11:30

      It's Sam and Diane in Cheers.

   10. BGBen Gilbert1:11:32

       Yes.

   11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:32

       It's Ross and Rachel-

   12. BGBen Gilbert1:11:34

       Yes

   13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:11:34

       ... 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 Gilbert1:12:09

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

   17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:14

       Yes.

   18. BGBen Gilbert1:12:14

       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 'cause we already told you it's not gonna work. There is one episode where they explore it.

   19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:12:24

       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 Rosenthal1:12:37

       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 Rosenthal1:13:13

       Exactly. So th- this is why, you know, when I said that the Elaine character makes Seinfeld what it is, 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 Gilbert1:13:43

       You know George just can't help himself.

   27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:13:45

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. BGBen Gilbert1:13:46

       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 in 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.

   30. BGBen Gilbert1:14:27

       Right, they're-
10. 1:28:41 – 1:35:56

    Season 2 & Defying Network Notes (1991)

    1. BGBen Gilbert1:28:41

       So what were these sorta early episodes? What did, what did season two have in it?

    2. DRDavid Rosenthal1:28:45

       There's some good stuff in there. They do The Revenge where George quits his job and then comes back the next day like nothing happened.

    3. BGBen Gilbert1:28:51

       I guess Larry found some more stuff, uh, in his life to mine for material.

    4. DRDavid Rosenthal1:28:54

       [laughs] Yes. They do The Jacket, which is one of my personal favorites.

    5. BGBen Gilbert1:28:59

       Oh, where Jerry has to flip the suede jacket inside out-

    6. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:02

       Yes

    7. BGBen Gilbert1:29:02

       ... to go out in the rain and then-

    8. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:04

       With Elaine's terrifying father, yeah

    9. BGBen Gilbert1:29:06

       ... won't walk with him.

    10. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:07

        Another episode that happened to Larry in real life.

    11. BGBen Gilbert1:29:10

        'Cause Larry was dating Richard Yates' daughter.

    12. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:14

        Yes.

    13. BGBen Gilbert1:29:14

        And the character is based on Richard Yates.

    14. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:16

        Yes, just like Elaine's dad in the TV show.

    15. BGBen Gilbert1:29:18

        Oh, I see.

    16. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:19

        And then the big moment, the Chinese restaurant. That's in that first half season.

    17. BGBen Gilbert1:29:26

        They never leave the lobby of the Chinese restaurant in this entire episode. That must have been so frustrating for the network executives to get the script and be like, "Are you kidding me? This is a single set sitcom? And not only is it a single set, you're not even gonna use the set that we built you on the soundstage? You know, this isn't free. Like, we have to build a completely new restaurant set for you to go shoot this episode in."

    18. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29:49

        And it's totally absurd what you're doing.

    19. BGBen Gilbert1:29:51

        And basically nothing's gonna happen all episode 'cause it's just people making phone calls from a payphone, getting mad at the guy who won't let you get a seat. Is there really enough to move the story forward here in 22 minutes? And it turns out it was brilliant.

    20. DRDavid Rosenthal1:30:03

        Yeah, a defining moment for the show, but this episode in production, NBC is freaking out about it, so they consider shutting down production that week-

    21. BGBen Gilbert1:30:12

        [laughs]

    22. DRDavid Rosenthal1:30:13

        ... of the show, which they would do from time to time with other shows. I mean, the relationship usually of the network with the show is the network can do whatever they want, and they don't like something, they, they shut down production that week. So Rick Ludwin goes out for a walk with Larry around the lot and explains, "Hey, we got some concerns about this one. What are you guys doing?"

    23. BGBen Gilbert1:30:37

        And the network has real-time data coming in from their ad sales force because they're talking about episode plots to advertisers, trying to get them hooked on advertising, and [laughs] imagine you have to arm your sales force with the whole episode's in the lobby of a Chinese restaurant.

    24. DRDavid Rosenthal1:30:55

        Right.

    25. BGBen Gilbert1:30:55

        It's not good for NBC. [laughs]

    26. DRDavid Rosenthal1:30:57

        Well, foreshadow, imagine you have to arm your sales force with the whole episode is about being the master of your domain. [laughs]

    27. BGBen Gilbert1:31:05

        [laughs] We'll get to that one in a minute.

    28. DRDavid Rosenthal1:31:08

        But yeah, so the ... You know, Rick takes Larry out on this walk around the lot, and Larry just blows up. He just lets him have it. He's like, "This is what the show is. This is, this is my vision. If you don't like it, I quit. Fine. You don't wanna make it? Show's over." And nobody did this. No creator would ... You know, usually the network says, "We don't like it." "Oh, okay, whatever you want."

    29. BGBen Gilbert1:31:27

        It's interesting 'cause, like, this is why Seinfeld succeeded, but the lesson here isn't be a blowhard and abrasive to everyone and insist that your vision is the correct vision and take no notes ever, dot, dot, dot, success. That's not ... Uh, for most people in most situations, that is failure, but it just so happened that these two were comic geniuses and w- and were right and then absolutely worked their tails off to refine these stories with a team of writers. To produce just some of the absolute funniest material ever seen on television at the time. But like, what is the lesson?

    30. DRDavid Rosenthal1:32:04

        You hit the nail on the head. I, I was actually talking to, to Warren, to Littlefield about this when we, in research, 'cause I sort of asked, you know, nobody ever made a show like this again. Why not? It was so clearly successful. It was the right way to do it. And you know, there's all sorts of reasons, bureaucracy and people's careers and politics, et cetera, et cetera. But he also made the really good point, like not every creator is Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. Like, if you're gonna let a genius be a genius, you need to be sure you're working actually with a genius. [laughs]
11. 1:35:56 – 1:45:11

    The Structural Mechanics of Seinfeld

    1. BGBen Gilbert1:35:56

       but there's a lot of, uh, structural things about the show also, like the interwoven plot lines, that make it unique and that are difficult to pull off, and that were just novel. So a typical sitcom that has a two-act structure has seven scenes. That's it, in 22 minutes. Seinfeld, first of all, was two to three times as many, so you'd have 14 to 25 scenes per episode, but they just threw out the act structure.

    2. DRDavid Rosenthal1:36:26

       Right.

    3. BGBen Gilbert1:36:26

       Plots often don't resolve-

    4. DRDavid Rosenthal1:36:27

       Right, there's not acts. Yeah.

    5. BGBen Gilbert1:36:28

       Yes. On the set, they... Actually, Larry originally wanted it to be single cam instead of a multi-cam setup to basically resemble a movie. And for anyone who's unfamiliar, multi-cam is sort of a proscenium style show where you have sets and you have four cameras, and they're all catching the same action. You might be able to get away with only running the action once, 'cause you're catching it from every angle, and you're just lighting it. It's gonna be really bright, but you're lighting it from every angle so that any of the four cameras at any given time kinda works.

    6. DRDavid Rosenthal1:37:01

       Yep, it's like theater.

    7. BGBen Gilbert1:37:03

       Single cam is, uh, probably more expensive, 'cause you have to run the action multiple times. You probably have to re-light it every time you're shooting it from-

    8. DRDavid Rosenthal1:37:11

       Yep

    9. BGBen Gilbert1:37:11

       ... a different angle. So if you're shooting character A and then the next run-through you're gonna shoot character B, there's a pause and re-light step. It has kind of a more cinematic feel. NBC was able to push back enough to say, "We're not doing single cam for this show." But they brought in a lot of single camera elements to it, so it, it did have more filmic lighting. It often used a pretty high number of location shoots for a sitcom, where they would-

    10. DRDavid Rosenthal1:37:37

        Right

    11. BGBen Gilbert1:37:38

        ... actually not shoot it on the stage that had the sets that were pre-built for Jerry's apartment, for the coffee shop.

    12. DRDavid Rosenthal1:37:44

        Think about the number of Seinfeld scenes that are out on the street, or in Central Park, or in an airport, or in some other location.

    13. BGBen Gilbert1:37:51

        Right, and that adds all this expense of packing up the whole cast and crew and getting them out there, especially when you're, you're shooting every week. They borrowed a lot from cinema that was uncommon on TV at the time. It's not overacted. I think in a lot of sitcoms, when I watch them today, anything pre-Seinfeld, I'm like, "Oh my God, it's so overdone." Like, stop selling me on your fake emotion. Seinfeld is not that. In fact, Jerry can barely act, and he's laughing through the entire thing, but since it's the situation that's funny, it totally plays, and I think Jerry's chuckle kinda like is a cue for you to laugh along with him.

    14. DRDavid Rosenthal1:38:23

        Yeah. Oh man, the scenes with, uh, Jerry Stiller, who plays Frank Costanza, George's dad, are just, they're so good. All the other actors are just, they're cracking up and you can tell.

    15. BGBen Gilbert1:38:33

        God, he's so good, Jerry Stiller. There's no artificial laugh track, so this is like a purity thing for Larry and Jerry as stand-ups. If they didn't earn the laugh, they're not putting a fake laugh in.

    16. DRDavid Rosenthal1:38:45

        Right, fr- from the live audience that was there, uh, recording.

    17. BGBen Gilbert1:38:48

        Every single laugh you hear on Seinfeld is the live audience laughing at that joke.

    18. DRDavid Rosenthal1:38:54

        Yes, even for the scenes that were recorded offset, they would play them on video screens to the live audience when they were there for the taping, and then record the laughter from the screens.

    19. BGBen Gilbert1:39:06

        Yes, which has two jobs. One is record the laugh, but two is they need to know if those jokes are funny, and they need to change the episode-

    20. DRDavid Rosenthal1:39:14

        Right

    21. BGBen Gilbert1:39:14

        ... if it's not. It's like a real-time feedback mechanism because these guys come from stand-up.

    22. DRDavid Rosenthal1:39:19

        Yep, exactly.

    23. BGBen Gilbert1:39:21

        And then the last one that I didn't really realize until last night, I was w- watching a bunch of episodes and, uh, my wife and I were talking about this. It was kind of this light bulb moment for me. Seinfeld episodes are not live camera switched. They are edited in post.

    24. DRDavid Rosenthal1:39:39

        Hmm.

    25. BGBen Gilbert1:39:40

        So normally what would happen is at a sitcom, you'd be sitting in a proscenium, there'd be a live audience, the actors are on the stage, there's someone at a control board saying, "Camera A, camera B, camera C. Okay, now back to camera A. Camera B, go in for the two shot. Great, cut to camera B." Like, they're- they're directing it.

    26. DRDavid Rosenthal1:39:56

        Right.

    27. BGBen Gilbert1:39:56

        In Seinfeld, they- they do some live switching, but that's kinda to get a feel. All of the real work is done in post, which gives them the flexibility to do two things. One, to make all the cuts much tighter. The scenes can be shorter, and you can get more scenes in and more situational jokes. And two is it lets you tell jokes you couldn't otherwise do. So if you think about the episode, The Contest, where David, you- you-

    28. DRDavid Rosenthal1:40:24

        [laughs]

    29. BGBen Gilbert1:40:24

        ... mentioned, uh, being master of your own domain. Th- there is a joke-

    30. DRDavid Rosenthal1:40:28

        [laughs]
12. 1:45:11 – 1:57:09

    Season 4 & "The Contest" (1992)

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:45:11

       All right. So here we are now in the fall of 1992, heading into season four, the second full Seinfeld season. The show is this cult hit.

    2. BGBen Gilbert1:45:22

       It's maybe a little more than that. Season three averaged 18 million viewers per episode.

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:45:27

       Yep, but it still hasn't cracked the Nielsen Top 30.

    4. BGBen Gilbert1:45:29

       Which is crazy, though. I gotta interrupt you. The 18 million, that's not in the Nielsen Top 30? Today, you would never, ever, ever see 18 million people watching a single thing, no matter how good a show is, other than, like, NFL and NBA games. I mean, there were four networks. That's what you watched.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:45:47

       No internet, baby.

    6. BGBen Gilbert1:45:49

       No YouTube, phones, podcasts, short-form video. I mean, cable had just started coming up, but most of America's attention is still on one of those four broadcast networks in primetime. So 18 million viewers an episode not cracking the top 30 is nuts.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:46:04

       I mean, I think we're still a year away from the Mosaic web browser, right? 1992?

    8. BGBen Gilbert1:46:10

       Yep.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:46:10

       Yeah. There's no competition.

    10. BGBen Gilbert1:46:12

        Yep.

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:46:13

        It's a great time to be in television.

    12. BGBen Gilbert1:46:15

        Yep.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:46:16

        Meanwhile, though, NBC, the network, has a problem because Cheers, the anchor of its whole comedy lineup, is on its final season, and Warren and the whole crew, the executives there, don't know what they're gonna do to replace it. So Time Magazine ran an article from this time, "NBC, the one-time kingpin of primetime, has seen its fortunes turn sour almost overnight. Its biggest hit of the '80s, The Cosby Show, took an early retirement last spring. The network's last remaining top 10 hit, Cheers, will call it quits at the end of this season. Highly regarded younger shows like Seinfeld have not lived up to ratings expectations. The network is desperately in need of a miracle." And then on top of that, so Seinfeld is running on Wednesday nights currently. Here going into season four. ABC, a competitor, moves their big new comedy hit sitcom, Home Improvement, to compete directly against Seinfeld in the Wednesday night slot. So for the first time, Seinfeld not only, you know, has to prove that it can get a bigger audience, but it has to do so against a big challenge, a direct competition in the same time slot from another network.

    14. BGBen Gilbert1:47:45

        Yep.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:47:45

        And, uh, Home Improvement kicks its butt.

    16. BGBen Gilbert1:47:50

        Yep.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:47:50

        So by mid-season, Home Improvement is pulling 28% share of audience in its time slot, and Seinfeld is down at 17.

    18. BGBen Gilbert1:48:01

        Not great, and doesn't feel to me like the future of the network. I mean, the 17%, if you're thinking, ooh, 17% versus 28%, they're, like, a close second or something like that. They got so much of it for free.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:48:13

        Yeah.

    20. BGBen Gilbert1:48:14

        It's like if you're gonna turn on your TV, there's four options more or less that people are actually watching in this time slot, so it should be very competitive.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:48:21

        Yep. Larry and Jerry, though, and especially Larry, they don't care. Like, they're not making the show for the ratings. So this season, season four, they just go on, like, a, an all-timer. So they start with, I, I think the first season-long meta arc ends up becoming a show-long meta arc where they have NBC, a fictional NBC, ask Jerry in to pitch a TV show-

    22. BGBen Gilbert1:48:52

        Called Jerry

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:48:53

        ... called Jerry. [laughs]

    24. BGBen Gilbert1:48:55

        They went with his other name.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:48:56

        Yeah, with his other name.

    26. BGBen Gilbert1:48:56

        They didn't wanna call it Seinfeld.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:48:57

        And he and George come up with the idea of a show about nothing to pitch it to NBC. That's the first episode of season four. That then continues off and on throughout the whole season.

    28. BGBen Gilbert1:49:07

        And the off and on is important because each of these episodes still can stand on its own.

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:49:13

        Right.

    30. BGBen Gilbert1:49:13

        You don't have to be invested in the story, the multi-episode season-long arc, in order to get it.
13. 1:57:09 – 2:07:28

    Moving to Must See TV Thursdays (1993)

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:09

       So right after this is when NBC makes the decision. They say, "All right, this is magic. We were right about this show, that it's just special. We're gonna have to bet on this. We're gonna make this our future. We're gonna move it to Thursday right now. We're gonna air it after Cheers, and then when Cheers goes off the air after this season, Seinfeld is taking our top slot."

    2. BGBen Gilbert1:57:36

       If it performs. This is-

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:37

       If it performs

    4. BGBen Gilbert1:57:38

       ... the audition.

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:38

       Yep, yep.

    6. BGBen Gilbert1:57:39

       Which of course, Larry David, he's furious about this.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:43

       [laughs] Yes, yes. [laughs]

    8. BGBen Gilbert1:57:45

       His quote is, "If they didn't watch us on Wednesdays, I don't want them watching us on Thursdays." [laughs]

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:51

       [laughs]

    10. BGBen Gilbert1:57:51

        We've earned this weird niche audience that is our people, and you're just about to, like, blast us out to the mass public?

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal1:57:59

        Yeah.

    12. BGBen Gilbert1:57:59

        Just gonna go right from Cheers into Seinfeld?

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal1:58:01

        Yeah.

    14. BGBen Gilbert1:58:01

        They're gonna get hit by a mental bus.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:58:03

        Ugh. Yes, famously, that was Larry's reaction, and equally famously, this is why they were such a great partnership. Jerry's response to NBC about the move to Thursday night was, "Thank you very much. We will take the new time slot." [laughs]

    16. BGBen Gilbert1:58:19

        Yeah, good business decision.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:58:20

        Yes, yes.

    18. BGBen Gilbert1:58:22

        It is interesting thinking about Larry's reaction here. So part of it is, like, just this purist, 'cause he's a purist in so many ways, and he's got the element of George Costanza. He's not as pathetic as George is.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:58:34

        No.

    20. BGBen Gilbert1:58:34

        I think that's a fair... George, they've amped up the pathetic dial to 11, but he does have the sort of, uh, duality in him that George has, which is thinking he's the greatest thing to ever walk planet Earth. And George is not, but Larry kind of is, but coupled with extreme self-consciousness, self-loathing, and self-doubt.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal1:58:55

        Yes.

    22. BGBen Gilbert1:58:55

        And so to tell Larry David, like, "We're gonna promote you to this giant spot," it's like, "No, no. I- if people truly loved us, they would have sought us out and found us. I don't need these people who aren't gonna do work to watch my excellent-"

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal1:59:09

        [laughs]

    24. BGBen Gilbert1:59:10

        "... perfect television show."

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal1:59:11

        Right. Ugh. [laughs]

    26. BGBen Gilbert1:59:14

        And I think it is true. You know, we think about this for Acquired a lot. I think there's a business strategy angle to growing slowly through word of mouth. It makes you more durable when you grow slowly through word of mouth and have a core of extreme fandom versus quick mass exposure. It's like the quicker you go up, the quicker you go down, whereas I think Seinfeld taking four seasons across five years-

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal1:59:43

        Absolutely

    28. BGBen Gilbert1:59:43

        ... to break through is part of the durability. There was, like, a real core to explode out from.

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal1:59:49

        Absolutely. That is all true. And once you make the contest, you can't go back.

    30. BGBen Gilbert1:59:57

        [laughs] That's true.
14. 2:07:28 – 2:15:44

    Anatomy of a Production Week & The Harvard Lampoon Writers

    1. BGBen Gilbert2:07:28

       going really well, but what's going on inside is basically killing the people who are making it.

    2. DRDavid Rosenthal2:07:35

       Yeah.

    3. BGBen Gilbert2:07:35

       I mean, the, the obsession that is going into this, the, like-

    4. DRDavid Rosenthal2:07:39

       The intensity

    5. BGBen Gilbert2:07:39

       ... every word and the writing and the rewriting and this obsession with the, the joke. Nothing else matters. It is these, like, r- real auteurs that attracted other people as psychotic as them to obsess with them. And they needed to because at this point, Jerry and Larry, after five years of existing in writing a television show, they're not experiencing the real world anymore, so they need to keep bringing in young writers because they need to mine those people's brains for stories that happen to them. They need to find, like, mini Larry and Jerrys who still live in New York, hopefully, so they get some element of that. But what ends up being an amazing bed to recruit from is the Harvard Lampoon, where it's these young comics, super smart, except that they actually are experiencing the world.

    6. DRDavid Rosenthal2:08:33

       [laughs]

    7. BGBen Gilbert2:08:33

       So every year for a while, they were bringing in a completely fresh crop of writers 'cause they would basically steal all the best material from everyone's life and then move on to the next one. I mean, Festivus was a thing from someone's life. George's whole thing about is he gonna put a tip in the jar when they're not looking-

    8. DRDavid Rosenthal2:08:50

       Yes

    9. BGBen Gilbert2:08:50

       ... '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.

    10. DRDavid Rosenthal2:09:56

        [laughs]

    11. BGBen Gilbert2:09:57

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

    12. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:01

        [laughs] Sounds about right.

    13. BGBen Gilbert2:10:03

        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.

    14. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:23

        Right.

    15. BGBen Gilbert2:10:23

        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.

    16. DRDavid Rosenthal2:10:46

        Yep.

    17. 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.

    18. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:09

        Yep.

    19. BGBen Gilbert2:11:09

        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.

    20. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:45

        Yep.

    21. BGBen Gilbert2:11:45

        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.

    22. DRDavid Rosenthal2:11:54

        Yep.

    23. BGBen Gilbert2:11:54

        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.

    24. DRDavid Rosenthal2:12:14

        [laughs] Oh, boy.

    25. BGBen Gilbert2:12:18

        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?

    26. DRDavid Rosenthal2:12:49

        Ooh, no, I didn't find this.

    27. 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.

    28. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:07

        Right.

    29. BGBen Gilbert2:13:07

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

    30. DRDavid Rosenthal2:13:10

        Hmm, yeah, why isn't this working? Yep
15. 2:15:44 – 2:28:36

    The Syndication Cash Cow (1995)

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:15:44

       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 Rosenthal2:17:10

       [laughs]

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:17:11

       ... 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 Rosenthal2:17:18

       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 Gilbert2:17:33

        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 Rosenthal2:17:49

        Yep

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:17:50

        ... to someone to show, '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 Gilbert2:18:26

        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 Rosenthal2:18:35

        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 Rosenthal2:18:40

        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 Gilbert2:18:54

        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 Gilbert2:19:02

        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 Gilbert2:19:54

        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 Rosenthal2:20:04

        Right.

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:20:05

        You know?

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:20:05

        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 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.
16. 2:28:36 – 2:42:13

    Larry Leaves, Cast Salaries & Season 9 (1996-1997)

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:28:36

       uh, then the next year, in 1996, Larry leaves the show.

    2. BGBen Gilbert2:28:42

       Honestly, it's hard to blame anyone after walking through the intense pace that they'd been working at for six years now.

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal2:28:49

       Well, yes, and yes, I think that is the reason Larry left the show. He was totally burned out. He'd gotten married at this point. He was ready to move on with his life. But putting that aside, now that you know the economic history of the show, Larry leaving in 1996, of course, makes sense.

    4. BGBen Gilbert2:29:09

       Right. Why stay?

    5. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:10

       Everybody just got the payday in 1995 from syndication. He's in the money, and he's not just in the money with a one-time payout now. He's in the money forever.

    6. BGBen Gilbert2:29:20

       And it's not like he was making a lot, I don't think. Again, we have no access to these private contracts, but in general, a non-acting creator lead writer is not drawing a giant paycheck-

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:34

       Right

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:29:34

       ... on a per episode basis in making a show, that, you know, you own the show, so you're expected to make your money on the back end, which is gonna happen whether or not he makes any new episodes.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:45

       Again, to use a startup analogy here, this is like the company went public, and the lockup ended.

    10. BGBen Gilbert2:29:50

        Yeah, that is the right way to...

    11. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:51

        Yep.

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:29:52

        Yep.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:52

        Yeah.

    14. BGBen Gilbert2:29:52

        There's a lot more value you could build, but eh, other people can build it too.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal2:29:56

        And they will, but you're gonna have a life-changing event.

    16. BGBen Gilbert2:29:57

        Yes. But for the show, this is brutal because everyone else was kinda just a input to Larry in the writer's room, and Larry was like, we heard him referred to as the CPU.

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal2:30:09

        Yes.

    18. BGBen Gilbert2:30:09

        You know, he would be the one that ultimately would come in on weekends, do the rewrites. You could get a script m- most of the way there, and you could always be confident that Larry would make it great. Without Larry, they need an entirely new process.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal2:30:22

        Right. And like Jerry was there as the, you know, co-processor, but he's also starring in the show. [laughs]

    20. BGBen Gilbert2:30:27

        Oh, Jerry was not available to play Larry's role, 'cause-

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:30:31

        No

    22. BGBen Gilbert2:30:31

        ... you can't have a lead writer who is also running the whole show as producer and the lead actor, and, you know, doing all those rehearsals that we talked about. So what this leads to is more people are involved in the writing process, and they just need more hours. So now all the writers are coming in on weekends, not just Larry like the old days. And when we were talking to Alec Berg about this, who was a writer on the show, he told us that, uh, he looked at his calendar at one point and realized that he had come into the office every day for some amount of time for 56 days.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:31:02

        Yep. Yeah, what was the story? Like, they would go watch the Super Bowl, and then they'd all g- all go back to the office after?

    24. BGBen Gilbert2:31:07

        Yeah, Jerry would rent a suite for everyone at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and then back to the office.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:31:11

        Yeah. So it's a Herculean task after Larry leaves. Castle Rock and, and by extension, NBC, keep upping Jerry's salary, like the amount that he was being paid per episode for all of his duties, first to $500,000 an episode, and then by the ninth and what would end up being the final season of the show, to an unprecedented million dollars per episode.

    26. BGBen Gilbert2:31:38

        Per episode.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal2:31:39

        Per episode. [laughs]

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:31:40

        For one person who also owns the show.

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:31:43

        Who also, yes, gets all that back end that we were talking about.

    30. BGBen Gilbert2:31:47

        The tenor of my voice should not be anything around, like, surprise or didn't earn it, but it's just, like, to underscore these are separate things, getting paid as the person making the show/acting in it and the ownership.
17. 2:42:13 – 2:55:04

    Jack Welch's Brunch Offer & Jerry Walks (1997)

    1. DRDavid Rosenthal2:42:13

       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...

    2. BGBen Gilbert2:42:57

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

    3. DRDavid Rosenthal2:43:05

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

    4. BGBen Gilbert2:43:10

       Right.

    5. 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.

    6. BGBen Gilbert2:43:54

       [laughs] Wow.

    7. DRDavid Rosenthal2:43:57

       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?"

    8. BGBen Gilbert2:44:16

       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.

    9. DRDavid Rosenthal2:44:29

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

    10. 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.

    11. 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 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." [laughs] 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 five million dollars. 22. 22 episodes. $110 million. He hands it to Jerry. He says, "This is a firm offer for your salary for next season, five million dollars an episode."

    12. BGBen Gilbert2:45:50

        If you come back and do a 10th season.

    13. DRDavid Rosenthal2:45:53

        Jerry is already the highest paid TV actor in history at one million dollars, and Jack Welch is handing him a piece of paper. Not, not, not just like GE executive Jack Welch, Mr. Operational Efficiency, Six Sigma black belt-

    14. BGBen Gilbert2:46:09

        [laughs] Yes.

    15. DRDavid Rosenthal2:46:10

        "People are replaceable," go listen to our Home Depot episode about how cost focused Jack Welch and GE is, is making Jerry an offer, a firm offer to five X his already record salary.

    16. BGBen Gilbert2:46:24

        That $110 million is 11% of NBC's total profit for the year-

    17. DRDavid Rosenthal2:46:30

        Yes

    18. BGBen Gilbert2:46:30

        ... that is being offered to him.

    19. DRDavid Rosenthal2:46:32

        As salary to Jerry.

    20. BGBen Gilbert2:46:34

        Yes.

    21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:46:35

        Not as like budget for the show.

    22. BGBen Gilbert2:46:36

        Who already has the back end in the show.

    23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:46:38

        Yep. This is how valuable Seinfeld is to NBC, to GE. So Jerry says, "Well, all right, thank you. Um, I'll get back to you."

    24. BGBen Gilbert2:46:48

        Keep in mind, listeners, th- that Seinfeld is the only show in history from this last season to ever command over a million dollars a minute for advertising rates, a feat only previously accomplished by the Super Bowl.

    25. DRDavid Rosenthal2:47:01

        Yep. Yep. So the group disperses, and Jerry says to Howard and George, "All right, let's go for a walk." They go for a walk in Central Park. They stop and they sit down on a bench at 81st Street and Central Park West, and Jerry looks at George, looks at Howard and says, "Guys, when I was 21 years old, I sat on this same bench with my dad when I told him that after college I was gonna go into standup comedy as my career, and he thought it was a great decision. He backed me all the way. He said he wished he coulda done it. [sighs] So what do you think we should do?" Howard looks at Jerry and he says, "Gosh, if it's me, I'd love to do one more season."

    26. BGBen Gilbert2:48:01

        Hmm.

    27. DRDavid Rosenthal2:48:01

        George looks at Jerry and he says, "If it's me, I think it'd be great to go out while we're on top." Howard says, "You're the guy making the show. It's your call." Couple days later, December 26th, 1997, day after Christmas, The New York Times runs an article.

    28. BGBen Gilbert2:48:27

        Oh, they run this article on A1-

    29. DRDavid Rosenthal2:48:31

        Yes

    30. BGBen Gilbert2:48:31

        ... in the top left corner of the paper.

Episode duration: 3:50:18