Acquired
01:04:20 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:04:20] S1: Yes. Exactly. Just to just to prove your point, Ben, that nobody knows anything. That would have been the end, except that back in the late night and specials department at NBC, they keep thinking about this Seinfeld thing. I mean, they love Jerry. They wanna do something with Jerry, and they're like, yeah. I mean, everybody was worried it was too Jewish. It was too New York, but but I'll be damned if it's not funny. Like, it was just funny. [01:04:47] S0: And even though most people didn't like it, there was a small group of people who completely got it. Yep. It's like any successful startup. You're not trying to be a seven for everyone. You're trying to be a 9.9 for a very small group of people that you can then figure out how to get those super fans to tell their friends. There were people at NBC that were like, this is the future. This is what we need to do. We need to be in business with Jerry Seinfeld and this brand of comedy.
01:04:47 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:04:47] S0: And even though most people didn't like it, there was a small group of people who completely got it. Yep. It's like any successful startup. You're not trying to be a seven for everyone. You're trying to be a 9.9 for a very small group of people that you can then figure out how to get those super fans to tell their friends. There were people at NBC that were like, this is the future. This is what we need to do. We need to be in business with Jerry Seinfeld and this brand of comedy. [01:05:16] S1: And it was Warren Littlefield in primetime and Rick Ludwin in specials. And so the two of them come together, and they hatch a last ditch plan to give their little baby another chance. They decide, well, since we've been doing this out of specials, what if we just cancel one of the other one off specials that we were gonna do and use that budget to place an order, a season, quote, unquote, order for this show that we love. So they cancel one two hour Bob Hope special that they were planning to do on NBC that fall. And instead, they use that budget. They call up Jerry and Larry and say, great news. We are ordering a season of the Seinfeld Chronicles. Jerry says, great. What... What's the order? Four episodes, making it, I believe, the smallest first season order in television history. [01:06:19] S0: And didn't you talk to Warren Littlefield about this?
01:06:19 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:06:19] S0: And didn't you talk to Warren Littlefield about this? [01:06:22] S1: Yes. Yes. So the quote from Warren about how this conversation went down, he says, I called Jerry to tell him the good news. There was a long silence over the line. Jerry finally asked me, has any show in the history of television ever succeeded with just four episodes? And Warren says, I didn't know, and that's exactly what I told him. [01:06:43] S0: Probably not. If anybody knows, it's probably the head of primetime at NBC. [01:06:49] S1: Yep. Jerry's telling Larry in the background as they're having this conversation, and Larry famously reacts to this with, that's fine. I think four episodes is all I got in me anyway. It's the ultimate Larry David line. [01:07:02] S0: Larry David would go on to be the head writer of 135 Seinfeld episodes. [01:07:08] S1: Yep. Yep. So they've got the order. [01:07:12] S0: And Jerry has later said in other interviews that he and Castle Rock were looking around for other buyers because they assumed that NBC was out, which is a fair assumption. Fox actually made an offer and guaranteed 24 episodes, but Jerry wanted that NBC imprimatur of a real network. [01:07:31] S1: Was also a startup network at this point in time. It was not Fox that you know it today as a... One of the major broadcast networks in The US. [01:07:39] S0: Jerry has phrased it as it wasn't the major leagues Yeah. And I wanted to be in the majors. And so they went with NBC's four episode deal instead.
01:07:39 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:07:39] S0: Jerry has phrased it as it wasn't the major leagues Yeah. And I wanted to be in the majors. And so they went with NBC's four episode deal instead. [01:07:46] S1: Yep. So they get the order, and, NBC is like, we trust you. But there's some problems with this show. In particular, the worst scoring demographic in the pilot was women. Yep. Women don't relate to this show at all. And and usually, what we do here at the network is we just add a character from that demographic group to the episode. So I know you guys have got Claire, the waitress. [01:08:14] S0: She needs to be hanging out, a a member of the group. [01:08:16] S1: Yep. Which leads to the network's... I I think one. I think one good creative note in the history of Seinfeld, which makes the whole show work. You need a girl in this thing. But before we tell the story of Elaine, now is a great time to talk about our good friends at Anthropic. [01:08:37] S0: Yes. The makers of Claude. And, David, I wanna start with that research memo about the pilot. [01:08:45] S1: Yes. Viewers didn't really like the cast of supporting characters. They thought the scenes of Jerry and his friends just hanging around were boring. Not good.
01:08:45 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:08:45] S1: Yes. Viewers didn't really like the cast of supporting characters. They thought the scenes of Jerry and his friends just hanging around were boring. Not good. [01:08:53] S0: Yeah. But in 1989, they weren't wrong. I mean, there wasn't really anything to come back for yet. The show that people couldn't stop watching that it would eventually become was really built out over those nine seasons of shared history. So all the things you know, Vandelet Industries, Festivus Yes. Every single time that Newman walks in and goes, hello, Jerry, All of it gets so much funnier the more you see. [01:09:19] S1: Yep. And then Tropic just did the same thing with Claude. For most people, every conversation with an LLM has been like the Seinfeld pilot. You explain what you're working on, how you like things done, and the next time you sit down, it has no idea who you are again. Now their new memory functionality carries across chat and co work, So all of that accumulates no matter where you're working in Claude. And for teams in Slack, Claude Tag does this for your whole team. One Claude in the channel that's read every thread, knows the standing instructions, and can notice things nobody asked it about.
01:09:19 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:09:19] S1: Yep. And then Tropic just did the same thing with Claude. For most people, every conversation with an LLM has been like the Seinfeld pilot. You explain what you're working on, how you like things done, and the next time you sit down, it has no idea who you are again. Now their new memory functionality carries across chat and co work, So all of that accumulates no matter where you're working in Claude. And for teams in Slack, Claude Tag does this for your whole team. One Claude in the channel that's read every thread, knows the standing instructions, and can notice things nobody asked it about. [01:09:54] S0: So the value basically just keeps building the more you use it. A conversation with Claude isn't disposable anymore. It carries into the next one. And so if you wanna learn more about how Claude can help transform your chats into tangible, memorable work, check out Claude dot a I slash acquired. And if you are inquiring about enterprise usage, just tell them that Ben and David sent you. So adding Elaine. Yes. Arguably makes the show. Mean I Yes. When you watch the pilot, you're like, oh, yeah. There is a giant ingredient missing. And it's not just because the couch is weird and Jerry's apartment's weird and, like, there's an Elaine shaped hole in the show.