The Experience

I more or less enjoyed my time as the Co-Executive Producer on this series. Not only was it on a broadcast network (CBS), but at the time it was the 8th biggest television series in the world. This created a lot of pressure at times because there was so much money on the line. The writers room had some long hours, and there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen when you factor in producers, studio execs, network execs, and giant star actors. But for the most part, the people I worked with were solid.

My only real issue here was the amount of politics that went on. Every showrunner has their own way of doing things, and most are pretty good. But some shows have a lot of what I’ll call baggage between the showrunners, studios, stars, etc. And this baggage can often disrupt the creative process. As it did here. 

But the single most important thing you must ALWAYS remember when you are working on someone’s show is this: 

It’s someone else’s show. Not yours. It doesn’t matter if they’re doing the job better than anyone in the history of television, or worse than anyone in said history, it’s their show, and your job is to serve at the pleasure of the President. You either get onboard and stay onboard for the train’s entire run, or you get off at the next stop. 

I got off.

Broadcast vs Streaming

When you’re on a giant broadcast franchise like this, it’s all about the money. And the money comes from following a formula. There are boxes to check with this type of storytelling, and while it’s not as personally rewarding as the creative freedom a streaming series allows, there was a challenge in the writing which I truly enjoyed – finding the authenticity in the story and characters despite having to write inside a box with so many rules. 

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