The Showrunners: A Season Inside the Billion-Dollar, Death-Defying, Madcap World of Television's Real Stars

by David Wild

A backstage look at the world of television discusses the writers and producers who run the shows, following a group from the last television season, discusses the successes and failures, and shows the creative forces behind Friends, and other shows. Reprint.

Genres: Tv, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[Muffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was basically fine. Some interesting interviews, some very dull ones. Very little valuable insight from the author himself. I really enjoyed him asking NewsRadio cast members if Paul Simms was a good leader and all of them basically saying No but he’s a good writer.

[Zack]

Portrait of TV at a Crossroads (20-Year-Old Spoilers)

What's most fascinating about David Wild's chronicle of the 1998-1999 network TV season is what he missed, or at least what happened after the book was published. Example: Roughly one full page is devoted to a new show that premiered midseason and changed all the rules, THE SOPRANOS. Wild was smart enough to know it was worth writing about it, but there's no way he could have known just how much it would change the style and possibilities of what you could do on TV -- and how it would hasten the erosion of the world he chronicled.

Taking place the season after SEINFELD left the airwaves, THE SHOWRUNNERS follows nearly a dozen TV creators at various stages of their careers. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND and WILL & GRACE enjoy the fruits of going from under-the-radar to solid hits. The teams behind FRIENDS and PARTY OF FIVE deal with maintaining their buzz while launching new shows; meanwhile, NEWSRADIO creator Paul Simms deals with doing a new pilot just as his initial show suffers from the death of Phil Hartman and continued network waffling. And so it goes.

It's a snapshot of one of the last times that scripted network shows were a potentially billion-dollar business, and some of the biggest moments happen almost between the lines. In a throwaway moment, the FRIENDS team note some of the VERONICA'S CLOSET writers have left for other projects, including showrunner Amy Palladino; that project would turn out to be GILMORE GIRLS. THAT '70s SHOW launched in the season covered here, but only one of their (unnamed) stars is mentioned briefly at a big launch focusing on Jennifer Love Hewitt's PARTY OF FIVE spinoff, which crashed almost immediately. There's even some irony in how CUPID creator Rob Thomas winds up picked up to run David E. Kelley's private eye show SNOOPS, given that a few years later he'd create VERONICA MARS.

As the book ends, you could come away thinking that SOUTH PARK was on its way out, that Norm MacDonald was on his way to a long career as a network sitcom star, that UPN's then-vaunted DILBERT animated series might become a hit. THE SHOWRUNNERS illustrates just how random the TV business is, and how for those who actually make the shows, it's just about doing the work day after day. Today, cable and streaming have eaten away the network audience; just a few months after the period covered by the book, WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? would launch the first salvo of reality TV that would replace sitcom blocks and anchor dramas as "Must-See TV." Again, it's a great shapshot of an era -- but it'd be great to see an update.

[August Bourré · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting behind the scenes look, but would have been a lot better if a) Wild had stayed more focused on a single show or team, and b) been less impressed with his own cleverness, which is not actually a whole lot of cleverness. He seemed obsessed with making pointless, shitty Clinton jokes that came off like rejects from a Leno monologue (which says something about how bad they were), and whoever let this go to press without cutting them was a complete moron, as they had sweet fuck all to do with the rest of the book's content and dragged the quality of the book down considerably.

But still, when Wild shut up and got out of his subjects' way, it was quite a fascinating book.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it was undoubtedly timely and edgy when first published, looked at through the jaded filter of another decade of broadcast history this reads as a sweet, almost innocent tale about life behind the scenes for TV producers.

Most entertaining as nostalgia, the discussion of then current TV shows that are now either syndication staples or long forgotten failures makes this an entertaining read - although one that may not be an comprehensible or as enjoyable to anyone under the age of 30 who didn't experience the season in question (1998-99)first-hand.

[Madeleine]

I read this for the "NewsRadio" chapter, which was the only segment that really interested me. If I hadn't lost this book, I'm sure that photo of the whole cast situated around a photo of Phil Hartman would still break my heart over and over.

[Dan Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zippily written and fully capturing the end of a certain era in American TV (even if nobody knew it was the end of said era at the time), this is an entertaining read if you're interested in showbusiness past or present.