Desperate Networks

by Bill Carter

In the executive offices of the four major networks, sweeping changes are taking place and billions of dollars are at stake. Now Bill Carter, bestselling author of The Late Shift, goes behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of the television industry, capturing the true portraits of the larger-than-life moguls and stars who make it such a cutthroat business. In a time of sweeping media change, the four major networks struggle for the attention of American viewers increasingly distracted by cable, video games, and the Internet. Behind boardroom doors, tempers flare in the search for hit shows, which often get on the air purely by accident. The fierce competition creates a pressure-cooker environment where anything can happen . . . NBC’s fall from grace—Once the undisputed king of prime time, NBC plunged from first place to last place in the ratings in the course of a single season. What will be the price of that collapse—and who will pay it? CBS’s slow and steady race to the top—Unlike NBC, CBS, under the leadership of CEO, Leslie Moonves, engineered one of the most spectacular turnarounds in television history. But in this ruthless world, you’re only as good as last week’s ratings . . . .ABC’s surprising resurrection—Lost and Desperate Housewives—have brought ABC the kind of success it could only dream of in the past. So why don’t the executives responsible for those hits work there any more?The End of the News As We Know It—In a stunningly short period of time, all three of the major network news anchors—Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings—signed off, leaving executives scrambling for a way to keep network news relevant in an era of 24/7 information.Crazy Like Fox—They’re outrageous, unconventional, and occasionally off-putting, but more and more people are watching Fox shows. Most of all they keep watching American Idol. How did Simon Cowell snooker himself into a huge payday? Stay tuned . . .

Genres: Nonfiction, Tv, Pop Culture, Audiobook, Business, History

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

William J. Carter joined The New York Times as a national media reporter in 1989. In addition to his work for the newspaper, Mr. Carter has written numerous articles for The New York Times Magazine, including four cover stories.

Mr. Carter has covered the television industry for over 25 years. From 1975 until 1989, he was a television critic for The Baltimore Sun, writing four to six columns, reports and features per week, as well as a weekly television sports column. From 1973 to 1975, Mr. Carter was assistant foreign editor at The Sun, substituting at times as foreign editor, national editor and news editor.

Mr. Carter's articles have also appeared in TV Guide, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Newsday, Advertising Age, The Washington Journalism Review and Electronic Media.

He has been a guest on many television and radio programs including, 'Nightline,' 'Today,' 'Good Morning America,' 'The Larry King Show,' ESPN Sports Century, and The MSNBC News with Brian Williams.

Mr. Carter is the author of the 1994 best-selling book, 'The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno and the Network Battle for the Night.' He is also the co-author of the 1987 book 'Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC's Monday Night Football.' In 2006, Mr. Carter published the book 'Desperate Networks' a behind-the-scenes story of some of the biggest shows on television.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on August 31, 1949, Mr. Carter received a B.A. degree in English from The University of Notre Dame in 1971 (Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude) and an M.A. degree in journalism from The Pennsylvania State University in 1972. He is married and has two children.

(2006)

Reviews

[Faith Erin Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jerky Dudes Make TV Shows: The Book. :P

[Jay Rain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating - 8.8
An expose of TV's power brokers that provides fascinating insight into the decision-making process where programming is reduced to a crapshoot - the backstories of the hit shows was very interesting

Interesting to note that many of the executives are fairly young & there is a relatively short lifespan until they are given the golden parachute - an engaging writing style that has the 'insider' mystique

Interesting Thoughts
The old network structure of prime-time lineups designed to amass enormous amounts of viewers was under attack. Tivo machines (that allow viewers to forego commercials), the digitization of video signals (which will increase the number of channels available) and illegal downloads has made TV vulnerable

Desperate Housewives was pitched to NBC first

Thursday is the most important night in television

Survivor, CSI, American Idol were all pitched to ABC who passed on them

Fox could have had Friends but did not want to pay a $150M penalty fee

Jennifer Aniston was in a sitcom Muddling Through that did not get picked up (allowing her to move to Friends). Friends was originally called Six of One and Friends Like Us.

NBC was skeptical on ER and only before testing it four times did that commit

Leslie Moonves was hired to run CBS Entertainment in 1995 when they were the last place network. He was very big on casting and had to be involved in every decision

NBC was willing to cut Matt Leblanc if the cast did not accept a lower salary

Unresponsive Bystander Theory – the less people that are around an emergency the better the chance for assistance

Burnett was paid $35M per episode for the first season of Survivor

ABC lost interest in Survivor when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire became so popular

To fund Survivor, Burnett had to get advertising placement and set up a partnership company w CBS. This infuriated Moonves as he had to share ad revenue w Burnett which violated a sacred principle

Mike Darnell is the Head of the Reality Division and really scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find shows. One idea was to have a plane fly into a mountain. Temptation Island was a big success for him

ABC had first crack at CSI due to the Bruckheimer/Disney relationship

Moonves had William Peterson on payroll without a show. After Peterson met the creator (Zuiker), he was totally committed to the project

Chandra West being killed off in the first episode was Moonves’s idea

CSI lost its backing when ABC Touchstone had to drop out (could not support a show on a competing network). Alliance Atlantis was called in to be the backer

Jeff Zucker was named the new President of NBC Entertainment. His first decision was to supersize Friends to combat Survivor. NBC went through a period of zero pipeline which means they had to keep relying on Friends, Will & Grace and Frasier.

The most important segment is the 18-49 demographic

Marc Cherry was down and out when he committed to making a script that no one could walk away from (Desperate Housewives)

Networks pass on hundreds of shows every year - NBC passed on DH

American Idol was pitched to the networks a number of times, to no avail

American Idol was placed on the air because Liz Murdoch told her dad (Rupert) that he should

Simon Cowell was paid $25M for the entire first season. After the contract ended, he negotiated a contract for $8M per year

ABC tried to sign Trump to a reality show but the bureaucracy of the Disney relationship stifled creativity

The 10th season of Friends was an obscene amount of money - would no longer get picked up in Syndication so NBC had to pay WB $10MM per episode

Disney had tried to fire JJ Abrams many times as they felt he did not romanticize Alias

Lost and Desperate Housewives saved ABC; unfortunately Lloyd Braun was fired prior to the shows going on the air

JD Roberts had a chance to take over for Dan Rather. Instead it went to Katie Couric who became the first female anchor of news in the US

Conan and Jay Leno transition was interesting. Leno signed on for five more years and then Conan takes over

Dick Ebersol was instrumental in bringing football to NBC

[Troy Blackford · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely riveting account of the four major broadcast networks in disarray from the late Nineties through the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century. Bill Carter's smooth writing style takes you into the offices of all the top players, giving you unprecedented access to the behind-the-scenes dealings that made this era of Network Television one of the most ruthless and upheaval-laden. Absolutely 'unputdownable,' as the saying goes. Truly one to breeze through, it's too hard to stop reading.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly interesting because I was working in TV at the time and knew many of the players mentioned. Not a bad book, but so quickly out of date...

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much to say about this book!

First - the positive: As someone who works - and lives - in the television industry, I enjoyed this book. Bill Carter is a great writer and reporter. It's like he was present at every single important network meeting over the course of a few years. I'm impressed at his ability to get so much behind-the-scenes intel.

Now, the negative (and don't let this take away from the fact that I enjoyed this book, I just have a lot to say): Looking at this book 15+ years later, I can't help but think it it a missed opportunity. The TV industry changed - seismically - right as this book was being written & published. For example, SNL's "Lazy Sunday" sketch in 2005 became one of the first clips to go viral. At first, the network execs tried to pull those videos offline, until they realized that they were reaching a huge audience (and that was translating into renewed interest in the program).

This digital revolution is huge! And... there's nothing in the book that hints at this. The only time something like this is mentioned comes when Carter talks about how the execs decided to stick with "The Office" after learning that four of its episodes of the Office were in iTunes' top five for downloads.

That's my big problem - I just wish that Carter had waited a year or so (maybe until the 06-07 writer's strike) before coming out with the book. It would have been completely different - and so much more interesting on that level.

There are parts of the book that are dated, but that's not a criticism. In fact, it's rather amusing. For example, NBC exec Jeff Zucker congratulates himself for solving the situation with Conan O'Brien & Jay Leno (he was afraid that Conan was going to bolt for another network, so he promised Conan "The Tonight Show" five years down the road. Five years later, after the book was published, that decision totally blew up NBC late night -- a story chronicled in another excellent Bill Carter book).

Oh, and there's also the Zucker comment, after "The Apprentice" took over the Thursday timeslot once occupied by "Friends": "Who needs "Friends" when you have Donald Trump?"

(Of course, I know a bunch of people who, even today, would agree with that statement)

My only other comment is that the author was clearly infatuated with the show "Desperate Housewives" (I mean, check the name of his book), as so many pages are spent with him telling us how brilliant the script was, and he keeps going back to its development. The funny thing - of all the shows from the early 2000s, 'Housewives' really had the least impact on the cultural zeitgeist. Compare that to "Survivor", "American Idol", "CSI", "The Apprentice", "Lost", "The Office", "Grey's Anatomy", "Dancing With the Stars", "The Bachelor", "The West Wing" and so many others that we are still talking about today. All those get mentioned - in fact, there are chapters devoted to those first five - but Carter just kept going back to "Housewives."

Like I said, I had so much to say about this book. Of course, I think the big takeaway: there are so many executives who have become so incredibly wealthy because of decisions they made over what to air and when, and... they're totally lucky. A show like "Friends" falls in your lap and you look like a genius. The rest of the time you're trying to talk yourself - and advertisers - into watching "Joey".

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still Bill Carter which means picture perfect reporting and a narrative you can't put down. Problem here are there are too many characters and no clear beginning or ending to the story so its structure is a bit of a shapeless mess and ends like the cord being yanked out of the outlet. It's not as good as his two books about late night TV but still the work of one of the best minds writing about television today.

[Kym Masera Taborn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desperate Networks by Bill Carter

I finished another book. Anyone out there read it as well?

My primary memory of Bill Carter was when he appeared on Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast. SGC2C was brilliant. I miss it deeply. Bill Carter is best known for his two books about the “late night” wars on TV (specifically Letterman vs. Leno and Leno vs. O'Brien).

Desperate Networks came out in 2006 and covers the 2004-2005 TV season, and deals mostly with how Desperate Housewives and Lost got on air, how reality programming came to dominate network programming, and the decline of the NBC network.

2005 was a tough year for me, with Wes, my husband, passing away in April of that year. The time is still a blur to me so it was interesting revisiting the time through the prism of TV.

The book was all over the place, but I enjoy reading about TV, so I was able to keep my interest up as the narrative would skip abruptly between topics and move forward and backward in time with no real overall sense of direction.

This book shows how the sausage is made. I am always amazed at how many decisions are made without any real interest in reason, logic, or anything other than egotism and immaturity. [Tangent: I really enjoyed watching the Danish TV series Borgen for the same reason – it's all about making the sausage, but at least Borgen offers some hope and periodic insertions of reason and optimism].

It was fun reading about the backroom machinations, the clash of personalities, and how it is basically a miracle for anything to get on air, and even more so for it to be successful, intriguing, and satisfying. Made me appreciate Borgen and Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast more.

I am considering taking a break from non-fiction for my next book. Fiction world...here I come!

http://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Netwo...

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ohmigod, I freakin’ loved this book. You know it’s a good book for me when I want to read it with a pencil and highlight passages I like or find interesting in it. And this book I read with post-its! Don’t know why, I took them out before I returned it, but that is still a good sign that I really enjoyed it. It was about the change in the US Networks over the past 10 years, their heads of programming and the shows that they air. It was equally about CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox and how shows start at one network and end up on another. A true story that still applies to what is currently on the air. It was a really current up to date book. There was a passage on Les Moonves not wanting to pay the writers more (something that I still going on today, hence the Strike) and mentions of someone who is actually a producer here in New Zealand that I know of! A must read for anyone that loves tv today or wants to work in it.

Grade: B+

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book that provides an overview of the state of major networks from about 2003 through 2006. Mostly it's the story of the fall of NBC from its place of long dominance and the resurrection of ABC with Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Great mini-bios of people like Marc Cherry, Teri Hatcher and Jeff Zucker. The writing style is fast-paced but a little "inside baseball." It assumes a fair amount of knowledge about the structure of a network and its relationship to its corporate parent. If, like me, you only have a hazy understanding of these thigs, the number of people and relationships is hard to track. But I finished the book wishing it would just keep on going into 2007.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was suggested to me by a media CEO who was trying to help me in my new career. I can usually tell that non-fiction is good when I feel like recommending it to my dad... and he loved it, too. If you work or have ever wanted to work in the television industry, this is an essential read. I understand so much more about network television now than I did a month ago due to Carter's book. It's an adrenaline rush because you know most of the outcome and anticipate the big hits becoming big hits. And Carter manages to build suspense nicely by building up the story of a show without mentioning its name until the exciting punchline. My only criticism was that the style got repetitive after 300 some pages, but there's my impatience for you. I'm a fan.

[Debra Komar · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story, although its a little dated now. What worked so well with Carter's previous books like "Late Shift" was that the subjects were famous - Letterman, Leno etc. Here, the story revolves around behind the scenes players like Moonves and Zucker and its hard to work up the same enthusiasm for faceless suits. Many of the shows mentioned - such as Desperate Housewives or Lost - may have been huge when the book was written but they faded out the same way all hot series inevitably do. Even American Idol is no longer what it is portrayed to be in the book.

Carter's writing style is sharp and clean and he milks as much drama from the scenes as he can, given that the reader knows how it ends (even when the book was first released). Not his best, but still interesting.

[Sydney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a classic business tale of an industry leader that fails to plan for a day when the competition will emerge from behind and clean its clock. I loved the author's description of NBC's hubris during its post-Seinfeld, Friends halycon days and how reality television (yuch!) and programs like Desperate Housewives (yuch again!) stole the ratings rug from underneath its decade-long ratings reign. For non-entertainment-industry readers the book also offers a glimpse into how shows are pitched and selected for initial pilot production runs. As hard as the author tries to offer insights on the industry VIPS (Moonves, Zucker and Couric), that is the book's least appealing feature.

[Shant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really follow the subjects he wrote about, so I don't know if this tea is common, but it was pretty good. I thought it was going to go by slowly but I still finished it in 2 weeks.

I would probably rate it around a 3.5 if I could, if only because I didn't like the tone of the book. This sounds silly, but reading the WB and Nickelodeon books was refreshing because the people seemed to like their jobs for the most parts, and seemed sympathetic. There wasn't really anyone I rooted for in this book. Obviously that doesn't matter as much in nonfiction, but...

The last two chapters weren't really that needed.

[Laural · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's no secret I love television and I find it totally fascinating how the shows I watch came to be. This book is extremely readable with a flow of story, characters, and suspense, surely a byproduct of the author's reporting background. If anything, it made me feel like for the most part, I am way smarter than half the network execs out there! For someone who remembers the 2004-2005 TV season-the tumble of NBC, the rise of CBS, the smart shows of ABC, and American Idol domination-this is a great read.

[Robert H. Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must Read For Anyone In Media

The media landscape is changing faster than anyone can imagine. Network television is at the center the changes. Virtually nothing is as it was. Bill Carter makes sense of the changes and relates how and why some of America's most loved programming came to be and why it may very well not happen again. Television's back stories through the men and women at the top of the networks and how they fight, complete, and strive to win at all costs. Thus is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in media. It's a can't-put-it-down-book!!!

[Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The entertainment business is a collaboration between storytellers and salespeople, so it's no wonder a book about network TV from the mid-90s to the mid-00s is a story of one triumph after another. This book is valuable background information on how we got here, but I'd encourage readers to look at each network's average primetime ratings over the period discussed.

Also, TV writing is kind of annoying. What's the deal with the extended metaphors?

[Zel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very similar to that of the late shift and informs you of what happened to get a lot of the shows that are on the air now there. All of the behind the scenes happenings of the latest reality craze, the fall of NBC from it's Friends glory, the story of both Lost and Desperate Housewives getting on the air, etc.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not quite as juicy as The Late Shift, but still extremely entertaining. Carter's tales of the dirtiest, most intimate details of TV sausage-making leave you feeling like a true Hollywood insider. Fun stuff for media aficionados.

[Nightowltoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered how some shows ever made it to the air?

Desperate Networks is an inside look at the brilliant/boneheaded choices top executives at the big 4 networks made in the past few years.

Most surprising to me was that Lost was not entirely a JJ Abbrams creation, but rather started as idea an executive had on vacation and couldn't let go of.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carter is the master of this genre. This book was riveting even though I can admit there isn't much point to the whole thing. It's basically just a blow-by-blow of how your TV sausage gets made, and the peculiar Hollywood way in which a mixture of cleverness, happy accident, and blunder produce what goes on the air each year in the dominant American medium.

[Chris Leroux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carter has a natural knack for writing that is on full display here, making TV show development sound like an exciting, endless thrill ride. There's an over-abundance of material and stories; some feel fully developed while others seem to abruptly end without actually resolving. But when a book ends before you want it to, I see that as high praise.

[Jen Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more interesting to me because I work in TV, probably, but I suspect that other people might find this to be a really good read. It's quick and fun and all about how some of your favorite shows from the early 00's got on the air.

[Hannah Petosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Film & TV major, this book is crucial to the understandings of the development process within the television industry. I loved reading about the biggest executive named in television and how some of the most successful television shows came to be. Highly recommend!

[Ruth]

Fascinating. The author might be a little too enamored of certain of his subjects (Les Moonves, for one?).

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a book one would save from a burning building, but a fast read and an excellent primer for what is currently happening at the networks. What ever happened to NBC? It's in here.

[Jodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book, you start to wonder how anything good, interesting, or innovative ever makes it on TV. Great behind-the-scenes look at how TV really works.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly entertaining- reads like fiction.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great look into the television industry. Bill Carter's other books on the late night talkshow scene are great as well.

[David Akeroyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now I know what I always expected, Networks are run by idiots.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aside from the writing style of this book which I did not love, it covers the transition of TV into the early 2000s pretty well.