Seinfeld

01:59:12 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[01:59:12] S1: Right. [01:59:13] S0: And I think it is true... You know, we think about this for acquired a lot. I think there's a business strategy angle to growing slowly through word-of-mouth. It makes you more durable when you grow slowly through word-of-mouth and have a core of extreme fandom versus quick mass exposure. It's like like the quicker you go up, the quicker you go down. Whereas I think Seinfeld taking four seasons across five years to break through is part of the durability. There was, like, a real core to explode out from. [01:59:50] S1: Absolutely. That is all true. And once you make the contest, you can't go back. [01:59:57] S0: Right. It's [01:59:58] S1: true. You gotta go to Thursday night. Yep. You gotta be in the big leagues. Yep. It is a landmark moment.

01:59:58 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[01:59:58] S1: true. You gotta go to Thursday night. Yep. You gotta be in the big leagues. Yep. It is a landmark moment. [02:00:03] S0: Okay. So I never understood why Thursday nights were such a great business before or why this was such a big deal for TV. People would always talk about the Thursday night lineup, and I grew up watching friends. When I watched Seinfeld, it was more in reruns because I was born literally the month that the pilot came out. So to me, the whole arc was basically before I was of Seinfeld watching age. I've now seen every episode, but mostly in reruns. So for me, Friends was the anchor NBC show on Thursday night, and I kinda knew Thursday was the biggest night. But why? Right? Why is it different than Tuesday? I get why it's different than Friday. Friday's a weekend. Saturday and Sunday are kind of about sports or going out or living your life, but, like, why are we discriminating between days of the week? It was your last chance to reach audience before the weekend. Yep. So if you're launching a movie that's gonna come out on Friday, you need to be advertising. If you're launching a product where you wanna drive people to stores over the weekend, if you're trying to hit consumer messaging before some set of weekend activities, Thursday night was your last shot at it, and it was the most important for recency bias to land a message. [02:01:10] S1: If you're NBC itself and you wanna advertise that week's NFL matchup, yes, it is the most important night. And the Thursday night lineup on NBC was more profitable than all of the other nights combined.

02:01:10 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[02:01:10] S1: If you're NBC itself and you wanna advertise that week's NFL matchup, yes, it is the most important night. And the Thursday night lineup on NBC was more profitable than all of the other nights combined. [02:01:30] S0: What? Yes. It's that outsized? [02:01:33] S1: Yes. It was that outsized. Now part of that too was just because NBC was such a powerhouse on Thursday night. That's where their marquee shows lived. But... Wow. Because you have [02:01:44] S0: the the same amount of ad inventory you are selling each weekday [02:01:48] S1: Yep. [02:01:49] S0: Night. And Thursday's rates were high enough that it dwarfed the sales for all those other nights. Wow. Yes. Combined. [02:02:00] S1: Yes. So Seinfeld moving into this hallowed time slot is huge. Huge. And, boy, does it work. So the first week that Seinfeld moves to Thursdays in February 1993. NBC, by the way, had had the Super Bowl in January 1993. They used promos during the Super Bowl to announce the Seinfeld move to Thursday night. So they went big. [02:02:32] S0: And had they coined it must see TV yet? [02:02:35] S1: No. So they rolled out that must see TV slogan for Seinfeld as the anchor moving into Thursday nights. [02:02:42] S0: And it was what? Seinfeld, Cheers had ended. So I guess Frasier was... The spin off was just starting. I think Wings [02:02:49] S1: Right. Mad About You. There's a whole sub drama of Wings was the golden child from the comedy department at NBC. So the the actual sitcom department, were they always trying to push wings over Seinfeld.

02:02:49 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[02:02:49] S1: Right. Mad About You. There's a whole sub drama of Wings was the golden child from the comedy department at NBC. So the the actual sitcom department, were they always trying to push wings over Seinfeld. [02:03:01] S0: But NBC did something really smart here branding the night as must see TV and creating, like, a network identity around NBC rather than just marketing the shows themselves. So you actually ended up with this affinity for the network. [02:03:15] S1: I mean, for me growing up, NBC meant something because of this. Like, none of the other networks meant anything. They just had stuff that I watched on them. [02:03:25] S0: And that continued. I mean, if I think about what came after Seinfeld, Friends, The Office Yep. In between the two, you had Will and Grace around the time of The Office, and later, you had 30 Rock, Parks and Rec. [02:03:36] S1: Yep. Yep. There was, like, this whole NBC comedy powerhouse. [02:03:41] S0: Yes. Yep. And a lot of it using SNL talent Yes. Which is also NBC. [02:03:45] S1: Which is also technically true of Seinfeld. Yes. So back to the the actual move here in February 1993, when Seinfeld moves from Wednesday to Thursday, the show's ratings rise 57%, and it goes from the forty fifth most popular TV show on air to the fifth in one week. Now, obviously, a huge part of that is the power of the time slot, but it's also, like, after the contest, it changes everything. You you can't go back.

02:03:45 · David Rosenthal, Ben GilbertPlay from here

[02:03:45] S1: Which is also technically true of Seinfeld. Yes. So back to the the actual move here in February 1993, when Seinfeld moves from Wednesday to Thursday, the show's ratings rise 57%, and it goes from the forty fifth most popular TV show on air to the fifth in one week. Now, obviously, a huge part of that is the power of the time slot, but it's also, like, after the contest, it changes everything. You you can't go back. [02:04:12] S0: And the thing that was shocking even to everyone at the network was if you put something after Cheers, it's gonna get good ratings. But it's gonna be a drop off from Cheers to that show. It's just a matter of how much drop off. Seinfeld actually gained audience over Cheers, that they retained the Cheers audience and then new people tuned in just to see the next Seinfeld episode. [02:04:34] S1: This this is the punch line. Mean, now here at the big leagues, first run, Thursday nights, it retains all the audience. And then by the end of the season, it's bigger. It's crazy. [02:04:46] S0: It's the new anchor show. [02:04:48] S1: It's the new king. [02:04:48] S0: Larry is, asked about this in 1993. The LA Times does an interview, because I think viewership hit an average of 30,000,000 viewers per episode by this point. And, Larry's quote is, this probably means that a catastrophe is imminent. Something terrible will emerge from this. I don't really know how to account for it.

02:04:48 · Ben Gilbert, David RosenthalPlay from here

[02:04:48] S0: Larry is, asked about this in 1993. The LA Times does an interview, because I think viewership hit an average of 30,000,000 viewers per episode by this point. And, Larry's quote is, this probably means that a catastrophe is imminent. Something terrible will emerge from this. I don't really know how to account for it. [02:05:06] S1: Oh, man. Oh, man. Well, a catastrophe was not imminent because, you know, the season continues. They just keep crushing it. The outing. Yep. Episode 17, not that there's anything wrong with that. Episode 20 is the junior mint. Oh, of course. Which really starts to foreshadow the absurdity that would come into Seinfeld in in later years. [02:05:26] S0: This is a great example of the concept of the episode is a joke in itself. Like, absurdity of Jerry and [02:05:34] S1: Kramer. Jerry and Kramer. [02:05:35] S0: Get invited to observe a surgery from, like, a balcony above the OR. And they're eating junior mints. And one of the junior mints gets fumbled and actually ends up falling into the patient. [02:05:50] S1: Oh, man. [02:05:51] S0: Which fun fact, using the cameras at the time, the cameras would not have picked up a junior mint, so they actually used a York peppermint patty [02:05:58] S1: That's right. [02:05:58] S0: For the slow motion tumble. [02:06:00] S1: Great trivia. Great trivia. [02:06:01] S0: Yes.