Customer Reviews

Desperate Networks

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Long overdue, Bill Carter's new book Desperate Networks takes readers behind the scenes of America's television networks, a world of intrigue, competition, backstabbing, number crunching, demographic projections, and a money-making medium that reaches 90% of the American public. This is a world in which money is the driving factor rather than creativity, where ratings and formulas decide what shows make the schedules and how long they survive, and why some of the best shows fail and the worst thrive. This is a fascinating world, and Carter, TV critic for the New York Times, sheds light on it.

Carter gives many telling glimpses into the schizophrenic workings of network television. Carter details the struggle of American Idol to get on the air, and how Fox executives, who were totally resistant to the show immediately picked it up after owner Rupert Murdoch's daughter pushed for it. Marc Cherry and JJ Abrams, the creators of Desperate Housewives and Lost respectively, had to fight with ABC over everything from budget to casting. Over at CBS, Survivor's creator Mark Burnett ran into stumbling block after stumbling block in his effort to sell the show. CBS would only air it if Burnett found sponsors to underwrite the cost. Once he did so, and Survivor became a massive hit, CBS execs hit the roof when they realized their "safe and no risk" deal with Burnett gave him half of the ad revenue from future seasons. At NBC, Carter delves into the choas that followed the loss of Seinfeld and Friends and the inability of the network to recapture its lost audience. Carter's commentary on network pandering to demographics and audience surveys is also illuminating, as some of the most popular current shows are ones networks didn't want because they didn't fit the mold.

Carter also touches on the success and failures of ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC, the decline of the days of the iconic news anchor, the backroom deals and payoffs of the Leno/Letterman/Carson wars, and many other topics in bite sized vignettes. Full of juicy information, this book is more of a sweeping glance at the industry as a whole rather than an in-depth analysis, but makes for interesting reading nonetheless. Carter helps explain many of the questions you have every time you turn on your tv, and its name-dropping and inside scoop is sure to please. Worth a read.

A.G. Corwin
St.Louis, MO

In a fairly entertaining behind-the-scenes account of the major US networks' programming decisions, the author provides a glimpse of the inner workings of TV executives (and intentionally or not, doesn't necessarily show them to be geniuses). The initial discussions surrounding Survivor's introduction is perhaps the better written part of the book. Past blunders (always in hindsight, though) by all the major networks as discussed by the author is an interesting read as well. The "characters" themselves seem particularly myopic and is very difficult to believe these people shape what the rest of the world gets to watch on television. The book itself is well-written in an easy-going narrative style. A good read.

This was a really fascinating book. It started off slowly (the first pages were tedious) and the writing is disjointed. The author jumps from time period to time period and network to network almost convulsively. You'll be reading about NBC in 2004 and then next thing you know it's ABC in 2000 and then back to CBS in 2005.

That said, the story is compelling: networks passing on shows like Desperate Housewives, Simon Cowell doing American Idol in the hope of discovering talent for his record company. Careers depend on the ability to predict what the public will watch, and what they will and won't watch isn't as obvious as one might think, even to people in the business with years of experience.

If you have any interest in television, personal politics, or the fallibilities of corporate execs, this is an interesting read.

If you are like me and love almost all things television, this is an interesting look at what it takes to get shows on the screen and how networks battle for a particular show. Once you can get behind the long title, you'll learn so much that you probably didn't know before.
Apparently, Desperate Housewives was passed by NBC, CBS etc until finally someone at ABC gave it a go and look at what happend. Nobody at NBC or CBS would give Mark Cherry a go because he didn't have a reputation anymore.
He talks about how the people who 'green light' Lost, Grey's Anatomy were on their way out the door and almost fired when they stumbled across these now hits. How Friends' producers never wanted the show to be set around a coffee shop. They wanted them to be around a diner. How Jeff Zucker founded a show's supersizing.
This is a great eye-opening look at the behind the scenes moves that go on all the time that we are mostly unaware of. I really loved it and though it's a bit heavy at times, it's mostly really enjoyable and fun.

Bill Carter has spent years covering TV for the New York Times and in order to keep his inside sources, he needs to kiss up to them. This book is filled with inside stories gleaned from the first five years of the new millennium and some of the stories are interesting. But the writer has the bad habit of using over-the-top adjectives about the network bigwigs he is covering. The bigger the person in power, the bigger the superlatives used to the point of it being laughable.

In the end CBS chief Les Moonves, who is called "genius," comes across as inept and power-hungry. Once the writer's bias is stripped away the real story here is that those in charge of network TV have no clue how to program hit television shows. In virtually every case of a major success, the network leaders initially scoff at the program but then take credit when it becomes a hit. And none of these rich, elitist programmers seem to know what mainline American viewers want to watch.

Bottom line--the book has interesting stories for those who are addicted to how networks program prime time. But the author's writing style is stilted and lacks credibility. There are a number of factual errors and the reader should beware that what is presented as fact is actually the author's filtered view of an industry that he needs to kiss up to in order to keep his job.

I loved this book. Bill Carter is the best in the world when it comes to reporting the behind-the-scenes machinations of network television. He obviously had the extensive cooperation of Les Moonves, Jeff Zucker and other important players. As a result, you get rich, turn-by-turn accountings of such thrilling events as how 'Survivor' was born and how 'Desperate Housewives' made it to the screen. Carter captures the seminal moments when 'Survivor' and 'Housewives' creators Mark Burnett and Marc Cherry (respectively) finally break through, each overcoming very long odds. It's spine-tingling stuff.

'Desperate Housewives' is simply superb reporting from Bill Carter. Anyone with an interest in finding out how creative product goes from vision to reality will devour this book. It clocks in at a little under 400 pages...I'd be willing to read 800 pages of material like this from Mr. Carter.

New York Times reporter Bill Carter certainly knows the ins and outs of network television, as the depth of his research is quite impressive in this intriguing, often dishy chronicle of a year in the life of the big four networks. While the concept is worthy, the challenge with writing a book on such a lightning-in-a-bottle medium is to build an in-depth chronicle of how network decisions are made and how those decisions resonate beyond the ephemeral nature of television programming. This is where he flails because we really don't get a sense of timeless applicability to what he is writing here. What he does instead is show how the heads of each of the networks devised their primetime schedules during the 2004-2005 season.

Carter paints the inner workings of the industry as if setting Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in various executive suites. Why else would people gamble their careers on a company that only has a 20% chance of success season after season? There is plenty of interesting insight into current unexpected hits - "Survivor", "American Idol", "CSI", and "Desperate Housewives" among them - found their genesis in a pile of rejections from executives who didn't have the foresight to ascertain the public's appetite for them. If there is anyone that Carter deifies for his savvy, it is CBS' CEO Les Moonves who was responsible for the Eye Network's turnaround to ratings dominance despite the upstart performances of ABC and Fox of late. Most fascinating is his methodical role in merging of CBS-owned UPN with The WB to form the youth-oriented CW Network which according to Carter, is turning into a de facto CBS takeover.

For all his intensive research and rather dramatic prose, the author cannot do anything to make the book feel less dated given the transient nature of the business. He does not spend as much time in his 384-page book examining the more macro-level waves of changes affecting television such as the increasing erosion caused by cable and how the networks are now selling TV shows on the Internet and thereby altering the way people watch the programs that the networks so carefully schedule for traditional consumption now. Instead, the bulk of the book is spent on the corporate in-fighting and all the lucky breaks and myopic decisions that make the networks subsist in a cocoon of insular thinking. One can think of Carter's readable book as the prophetic vision of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" come to true life.

A highly readable and thorough survey of the current state of affairs in network television programming. The author was able to interview major industry figures who provide a rare insider's perspective. See how some of the few hit shows to emerge in recent years, like "Survivor" and "Desperate Housewives," did so almost *despite* the so-called expertise of network programmers. For anyone wondering where network television is going next, this is a worthwhile read.

A MUST READ for anyone who's in the television industry. It's a great read and great way to familiarize yourself with the big TV players in the industry.

Since I don't watch a lot of TV and have only watched one of the shows the book focuses on (heard of most of the rest of them though), I didn't expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did. However, it was a fascinating read of the inner workings of the television business.

It's written very well though one must question how the author obtained the information to say "so-and-so thought X" since he describes rather minute details of people's reactions and inner thoughts. I'm not sure he he did numerous interviews and then wrote them all up in a narrative or what but regardless, I took some of it with a grain of salt but enjoyed it all nonetheless.

It gives a good portrait of the minds of TV executives: they seem to be a hard hearted, shamelessly greedy, and self-absorbed bunch. When I watch TV now, I feel like a pawn in their game as what you're seeing on TV is not so much the idea of a writer as it is a pandering to advertisers.