Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.
And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.
As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled.
Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.
Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.
I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.
I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.
I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.
I hardly see myself as a futurist.
I honestly believe that anybody who does what I do and says they are not competitive is lying. You have to be competitive.
I think most people don't react well to being screamed at. It's counterproductive.
I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.
I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.
I was running Miami Vice, but it wasn't my show so I got to learn an enormous amount. You were basically getting trained to have your own show.
I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work.
If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.'
If you're going to vote on a television contract, there is a certain rationality to saying that the same structures that are applied to Health Plan participation should be placed on the right to vote on a strike.
It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.
It's a very competitive business. And everybody I know who does it is extremely competitive, but they show it or don't show it in different ways.
It's show business. No show, no business.
Now somebody comes on as a staff writer and the next year they've got a hot agent and then they're a supervising producer.
People do have viewing patterns, and you disrupt those at your own peril. That's something that everybody learned after 1988. The numbers have gone down every year since that strike. Big time.
People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.
T.V. has to be edited and scored and everything else, and if you don't like what you're watching it can be a very painful process.
The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.
The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.
The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.
The great strikes of the '50s and '60s were bloody and awful, but at that point there were only three networks. Everyone came back to work.
The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.
The margin notes are not for the writers, they go to the executive producer, and I try to make them short and succinct.
The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.
The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.
The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.
Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'
There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.
There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.
To quote General Patton, 'I don't like paying for the same real estate twice.' If it's not done, you say, 'This is not what we agreed on.'
Well, television has become an unforgiving environment and you don't get to make mistakes. That was the great thing about Universal in the old days.
When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?
When this strike is over, there will be fewer jobs. The people who were unemployed prior to the strike aren't going to be the first ones back to work.
You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, 'I'm on strike' than 'I'm unemployed.' And those are the people who vote for strikes.
Wolf attended the University of Pennsylvania.
Won the Emmy in 1997 for Outstanding Drama Series for "Law & Order."
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