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Another TV staffing season is coming to a close as, one by one, writers rooms of new and returning series are convening to work on the 2011-12 orders. Overall, “it was a healthy staffing season,” one industry insider said, while another was lamenting the system, in which prospective writers meet on 80+ pilots in the run-up to the upfronts, only a quarter of which would make it to series and actually hire scribes.
Of the new series, comedies New Girl on Fox, Two Broke Girls on CBS and Apartment 23 on ABC were sought after by writers this year. Joining New Girl creator Liz Meriwether are Joe Port and Joe Wiseman as co-executive producers as well as J.J. Philbin and Josh Malmuth. Three established comedy writer-producers will work alongside Two Broke Girls co-creator/executive producer Michael Patrick King — Greg Malins, Jhoni Marchinko and Michelle Nader, all as consulting producers. On ABC’s Apt. 23, joining EPs Nahnatchka Khan and Dave Hemingson are Casey Johnson & David Windsor (It Takes a Village) and Sally Bradford as co-executive producers.
Writers seemed split on the drama side this year. “Some gravitated toward the big-idea, big-swing shows like Once Upon a Time, The River and Pan Am, others wanted nothing to do with them, opting to go for more standard procedurals like Person of Interest, Prime Suspect and Unforgettable,” one source said. “A lot of writers are thinking about job security.” Also of note is that Josh Friedman’s Locke & Key script was a favorite among writers looking for staff jobs this season despite Fox passing on the pilot.
Of the existing shows, top comedy Modern Family was naturally a top draw. Sex and the City alumna Cindy Chupack is a high-level addition for next season as a co-executive producer, with former Daily Show EP Ben Karlin on board as consulting producer. Fellow sophomore series Glee also made news this staffing season as the high-school dramedy assembled its first writing staff under co-creators/executive producers Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, with co-executive producer Allison Adler and consulting producer Marti Noxon among the additions. And NBC’s The Office, which is undergoing a creative transition following the departure of star Steve Carell, added several writers, Owen Ellickson as co-producer, Allison Silverman as supervising producer and Dan Greaney as consulting producer.
Several high-profile staffing hires were tied to overall deals. Port and Wiseman joined New Girl as part of a two-year overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV. Similarly, Friedman will serve as consulting producer on another new Fox series, drama The Finder, under a three-year overall pact with 20th TV. Reaper creators/executive producers Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters will be full-time consulting producers on Hawaii Five-0 as part of a two-year overall deal with CBS TV Studios. And Zack Estrin will serve as an exec producer on The River in a deal with ABC Studios, which also has an overall component.
There were a few in-demand writers this staffing season who landed multiple offers. Among them was Patricia Breen, who is coming off HBO’s Big Love. She opted to join the new ABC/Warner Bros comedy series Suburgatory. In a siminal situation, Amanda Segel (Nikita) went to CBS’ Person of Ineterest. Josh Bycel also had multiple suitors but ended up returning to ABC’s Happy Endings, which was picked up for a second season.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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I never see articles written about staffing, and I’m always surprised, because I find it one of the most interesting parts of TV. A staff can make or break a show; kudos to covering it.
Agreed that it is a great article. Staffing & writing is as important as casting. Would be interesting to see a final list. Kudos again and thanks for writing it.
Disagree. Isn’t this more of a plug than anything else?
I actually disagree. This is the kind of article that makes writers feel really bad, if they didn’t get staffed this season… Or jealous, if one of their friends got on a hot show… It highlights the competitive nature of it all and staffing season is full of that shit already. If people want to know who is on what staff, just go on Imdb. As informative as Deadline.com is, articles like this also make a lot of people compare and despair even more than they already do.
Also, who can tell what a “hot” show is, really? Unless something is already a hit, like Modern Family, we really don’t know what the future holds for these shows. Just like with movies, there are always surprises and letdowns when the shows premiere.
So deadline should not have articles that make people feel bad? Seriously? Grow up or find a better shrink. If you can’t handle extended periods of rejection, this business isn’t for you.
deadline is full of articles that make people feel bad and that is something that i personally don’t love about this site. i like the information part of it but things get really personal on here and you either love that or you don’t.
thanks for your advice about how to handle rejection, CMR, but i write for a hit show… i was just voicing the fact that this article rubbed me the wrong way. maybe you’ve never been a writer during staffing season and don’t know what that feels like. it’s a really brutal process and competitive enough and this article made some of my writer friends feel bad. and so i disagreed with the requests for “more articles like this! please!” i’m guessing you’re not a writer or you wouldn’t have been so cold about it.
A little pet peeve: unless there’s only one writer in that room (and presumably on that staff), you need to change your graphic. Just sayin’…
lol
Ironic, in an article about professional writing.
THANK YOU! Unfortunately I fear many people won’t even get what error you’re referring to.
Ditto.
I agree with Joe. We could use more articles about writing staffs. Great article, Nellie!
This is one of the more interesting articles I’ve read on Deadline. Thank you, Nellie.
Agreed. Thank you Nellie!
Kudos! Thank you!
Wow, Nellie. You’re really making me hot for you.
She is probably not interested in YOUR staff.
This process reminds me of the same old politicians bouncing around from elected position to elected position whereby nothing changes. It’s a shame new writers who haven’t been corrupted or spoiled by the system get a shot to bring new voices into the mix. What happens if the same talent-deficient people just keep working. I know this will get lots of hate but I really feel this way. I will watch some of these shows and recognize the names from other shows last year which weren’t very good either. But, honestly, the system is broken not the people working in it. I really, really wanna believe that the people that choose the writers to hire want good people. But they want to keep their jobs, too.
Now: let the hating begin.
Same writers?
Try same execs…
…same networks…
…same policy of by subverting good series ideas by forcing them to appeal to the lowest common denominators hoping to catch the broadest possible audience…
The writers are not the biggest problem with the system.
Signed, A Frustrated Writer Who Can’t Get Hired.
Moving on…
Or… signed, a working writer who is frustrated after years of being strait-jacketed by idiot execs and therefore knows what he is talking about.
Or signed a frustrated TV viewer who constantly sees the same names associated with different crap and would, for once, like a breath of fresh air?
Right Coast: You can’t tell a writer’s talents from looking at the finished teevee show. Seriously, you can’t.
A show on the air reflects the grimy pawprints of — no joke — hundreds of people. From network executives to executive producers to directors, actors, makeup people and the key grip, there are any number of exciting ways a show can be crappified by the time it reaches the air. I’ve had shitty scripts with my name on them in which hardly a word of my work remained (Thanks, Consulting Producer who rewrote me while undergoing a bitter divorce that made you hate women characters!). I’ve also had shitty scripts with my name on them in which I had only myself to blame. And I’ve had decent scripts that were fucked up by the director, or the actor, or, in one memorable incident, wardrobe (long story).
Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of talent-deficient writers working. But bad writers are like Canadians — it’s hard to tell that’s what they are until it’s too late. Just ask any showrunner who hired the writer whose name was on that AWESOME episode of that Emmy-nominated show last year only to discover that dood can’t tell a story to save his life, and that [Alan Ball/Matthew Weiner/Shonda Rhimes (pick one)]‘s paw scribbled the show that bore his name.
Totally agree with this. If you’re on a staff, and it is not your show, you contribute as best you can, but it’s the showrunner who is really deciding where the show goes, its tone, all creative decisions — and you have to go with that, whether you agree or not. That’s the job and that’s what you sign up for. If you want to write your own thing, stick with features. And even if the showrunner is right on, the network can totally fuck the show or a script up. So all these posts about writers on failed shows etc are pretty naive.
Every writer has their own agenda in a room and modulates according to the kind of environment the showrunner, other EP’s, and network have created. The problem is there’s this misconception that fresh, original ideas are just brimming from the minds of the young writers who just need one fair shot. Fresh, original ideas are coming from everybody at different times, and not necessarily with any regularity. The system could and should resemble the old apprenticeship model. Young talent should be recruited to the networks/studios, be given instruction and guidance from senior-level writers as well as marketing execs, actors, directors, etc. If the networks could resemble the collegial Hollywood of the golden era (and they really can, they control production and distribution here people) we’d have a lot less grumbling than we have in the Darwinian atmosphere we live in today.
Regardless, congratulations to all the lucky writers on staff this fall – remember us youngsters don’t all want to take you down so lend a hand if you can.
Yes, totally agree with this post, as a youngster/pre-baby (fetus?) writer.
Thanks Nellie for continuing to dig deep into the happenings of behind the scenes television! This is great.
Yeah, this is great, actually. Would love to see a more comprehensive version of this post, with all the writers rooms broken down. Who got hired on what show, for every pilot, at least as much info as is available…
interested to see when and where the “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” writers go when they move on. best in the business IMHO.
Not a word about SMASH? Quite an interesting staff, with interesting lineages. I don’t get it.
Not a word about Smash, why? Not because it’s not compelling. It is. Because this premise is flawed. These shows weren’t necessarily the “most sought after.” They were the ones from studios (Warner Bros and Fox) that were fat with writer deals they needed to charge off. I don’t want to be a hater, so I’ll avoid naming names. But several of the people Nellie listed are terrible writers who happened to have deals.
Smash is getting great write ups from the critics.
Smash is the best new show this year. And no, I don’t work on it.
As one of the writers who did get staffed this season, let me be the first to say the system is the worst. It’s 80 percent friends hiring friends, 10 percent total hack writers who got hot for some stupid reason or another, and 10 percent merit.
Still cashing my paycheck, though…
i believe it, this is why there’s little to no quality programming on the networks. although it means fewer jobs, they should start taking notice of shows that have 1 true showrunner and/or 2-3 writers, along with 6-12 episodes a season. the factory method is crap.
Thanks Staff Writer! Can I ask, though…which of these three percentage groups do you fall under? Just curious! Thanks!
Well nobody considers themselves a hack. And Staff Writer did close with the self-effacing comment “still” cashing the check. The use of the word “still” indicating that said writer has a certain amount of guilt for falling in a category other than merit. So Sherlock says, Staff Writer obviously was hired due to a friendship connection.
My opinion is always — doesn’t matter how you got there… As long as you prove worthwhile once there. Problem is — too many aren’t worthwhile, so the system as whole sucks ass.
Ha! Good question. Well the hacks rarely know they’re hacks so maybe I’m a hack. However, I moved out here knowing no one in the industry and have never got a job or even an interview through a friend. I just happened to get really really lucky that a showrunner picked one of my scripts out of the pile to read and liked it better than any of the others.
By the way, in terms of staffing, one of the the biggest problems is writers getting hired for writing a Modern Family or an existing show like that (often times with punch-up help from friends). Give me a break. If you can’t write a compelling piece of original material, you’re not bringing much to the table…
I appreciate a staffed writer saying so. I’m a working writer in late night but have been trying for years to crack the sitcom world and have made very little headway. I recognize that I’m lucky to even be working on ANY staff considering the job landscape, but every year it’s the same thing: I have samples I’m proud of, I get meetings and when the dust settles, so-and-so show runner has hired all their friends and the rest of the jobs seem to go to the same names who stumble their way from show to show. It’s even more frustrating because it’s a lot easier for a show to hire some 22-year-old Harvard grad than take a chance on someone like me, a mid-30s guy who has some great credits and pilot specs but lacks the requisite sitcom room experience. I’m too old for an entry level sitcom staff job but don’t have the experience for a mid-level producer spot.
I’m more frustrated than bitter, but I definitely feel passed over. Anyway, congrats Staff Writer. As you rise up the ranks, remember the break you got from a kindly showrunner who was willing to take a shot.
There ya go…I tell people all of the time…it’s who you know. I know a few writers on a staff that really don’t want to be writers but they are there to collect the paycheck. I won’t give up though but I’m glad it’s out in the open…it’s all about your FRIENDS not your TALENT!!!
Great, honest, funny post.
Congrats to one of the best writers/creative genius’ of our generation, Marti Noxon, on her new Consulting Producer position on ‘Glee’! I am a huge Marti Noxon fan! She is an amazing writer. Most of her episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, or any Whedonverse show, are my favorites of the 7 season series, which is also my favorite show of all time! I am a HUGE Whedonite first of all. Please check out Marti’s ‘I am Number Four’ & her upcoming remake of ‘Fright Night’.
For those who aren’t familiar with Marti’s credentials in the Musical genre, watch the infamous Buffy S6 ep ‘Once More with Feeling’ & ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’. Marti has a beautiful voice as well!
Congrats Marti!
twitter @AmyWhedonite ;P
Saw the Apt 23 pilot. Has some inspired moments in the margins (the looting of the business), but the leads – characters and casting – are unlikable and super mean. And the Dawson joke is gonna get old fast.
Two Broke Girls actually worked, had bite, but something to root for. And the girls are a good odd couple match. But the look and production design of the show is TERRIBLE. Not cheap and cool. Just ugly and oddly dated. Hope they change that b/c I want it to do well.
Bravo, “Staff Writer!” You deserve your job if for no other reason other than you just wrote the truth.
Here’s what I wish someone would write about regarding TV staffing:
Does anyone besides me believe that the TV industry is shooting itself in the foot by not making more room for lower level writers? Budgets are slashed, fewer writers are hired, higher premium are paid for the tried and (somewhat) true, nothing is left over for the lower level writer position which they pretend they are filling with “diversity.” I’m all for bringing new voices into the popular culture through diversity, and I do believe it makes good economic sense for the tv business to do so. But it also would make good economic sense to regularly open up avenues of opportunity for those who are simply the best writers out there regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, etc (or who’s assistant they have been). Out there working as a paralegal or a bartender is a John Wells or a David Kelley or Steven Bochco that is never going to be introduced to tv, who is never going to create that hit show that would generate hundreds if not thousands of jobs for people in the entertainment industry. The next Bill Lawrence will just have to go find something better to do with his time, because the studio would rather hire a mid-level producer who has failed upward on five failed shows (and pay the Producer three times as much) than hire young Bill, because Bill doesn’t have the experience and might require a little extra tutelage to get him up to speed. And of course no one has time to give him that tutelage because the staff is so small, and there’s not money left for him anyway because the upper level writers have huge quotes to maintain.
Bitter? Maybe. But I really don’t think this is about me. I’m certainly not the next John Wells. But he’s out there, not getting hired either. Television is aborting its baby writers before they even get the chance to be spanked in the ass and cry. Future Bill Lawrences and John Wellses will go off and be hugely successful doing something else, thank you very much. The TV Industry is the one that is suffering as a consequence.
Amen. Not to say that every frustrated baby writer deserves a shot (they don’t), but open staff writing jobs are damn near impossible to come by. It’s a shortsighted business decision.
Here, here.
You are 100% correct. And it’s the slow death of American TV.
The American system is controlled too often by FEAR (aka executives covering their asses by hiring mostly from credits and not talent), and GREED (upper level writer/creators with fat deals that don’t even leave room for any or very few lower level writers – and they then write all the episodes, too).
It’s no wonder that more and more shows are coming from Canada. The economics aside, that’s where much of the new talent is coming from – mainly because they actually have a shot at getting in the game and learning the ropes.
How do we fix this? Perhaps executives should read blindly (no names on covers)? That would really shake things up. Then they’d be on the hook for their choice instead of having someone to point to and blame.
Other ideas?
I think the ‘no names on covers’ is a great idea- in fact I know one showrunner who did that this year (Krista Vernoff, for her ABC pilot, which didn’t go to series, but still she deserves kudos)
I absolutely agree with this.
The thing is– when hiring a staff, the candidates’ skill at putting a script together (as much as one can even deduce that from submissions, which have usually been polished by friends, managers, etc.) is NOT the only important criteria. A writer’s personality: ability to work well with others, room etiquette, flexibility, dedication, desire to learn, adaptability, ability to echo the voice of that particular show–are equally, if not more, important than his or her sample. Especially since, as noted in these comments, the final scripts of shows are really up to the showrunners. What is not up to them is how their hires will gel or not in the room, how they will take direction, how dedicated they will be to making the show the best it can be. I think that’s a big part of why people hire their friends: i.e. usually people they have worked with before. They know how they are in a room. I can’t imagine hiring a staff of people based on their samples alone. (Not that I do the hiring…yet…but a gal can dream)
Staffs are shrinking, yes. And most are top-heavy. But the top-heavy part is nothing new. I think young writers have more opportunities to create content now — for cable, for the internet, for scripted reality, for video games. These opportunities were barely there/only percolating when I was starting to staff, back when.
Also, on the hopeful side, I know a bunch of writers, diverse and non-diverse, who have been staffed on their first shows over the past couple of years. The “best writers out there” tend to find work instead of “never being introduced to tv” as you are suggesting. I think REALLY GREAT work will always get noticed. Read the article on that self published young author in the New York Times magazine last Sunday if you need a little inspiration. She made it happen for herself instead of blaming the system.
Yo, Baby, Dead in the Water,
I couldn’t agree with you more. But the other side to this coin is that by virtue of the fact you WANT to be a writer, means you MUST continue to swim with the sharks. You have no choice, Pal. Good news is, the current hiring status quo for EP’s is the noose by which they’ll hang themselves. Eventually. But here’s the BAD NEWS: By the time THAT happens, you’ll be plowing back cocktails at the Polo Lounge, running your own show and only hiring producers to keep your ex-wife happy, your fat kids in private school and the network confident you know how to make a great fucking cheeseburger.
So quit bitching and hike your skirt up. We’re all in this wonderful business… together.
Good post, Baby, Dead in the Water. Spoken by someone who clearly knows the problem of the shrinking field, and its long term effect in creating less and less freshness and quality.
I’m SO happy for Patty Breen! I’ve been following her work ever since she was in finance, and I’ve always believed she would one day become The One To Have. Keep it up, Patty! One day I hope to have you.
I met some brilliant writers staffing my show this year. it’s kind of an odd position…you want the best individual writers, but the best overall room and chemistry within that room. You want people who are not as introverted as many writers often are, especially great ones, but you don’t want them to overwhelm the others with giant personalities that overwhelm the storytelling process. You want writers who are amazing and voicey, but not so much that they can’t write someone else’s show. I didn’t end up hiring anyone I know, even though plenty of my associates needed work. And I didn’t hire anyone based on a episode of someone else’s show: original material rules!
Don’t forget the creative (and great) hire of former Mad About You showrunner Victor Levin on Mad Men. Apparently he worked in advertising before joining the biz.
This is the only business that you get rewarded for your failure by getting another job. If you’ve written for 3 failed shows, you’re definitely getting a fourth, solely because you’re already a “writer”, a job that is hard to obtain. Almost impossible to obtain. Crazy.
It goes like this: If a network greenlights your pilot to series, you make a show for them. If it fails, they then offer you tons of money and a development deal to make another show. Why?! It’s so strange and makes no sense from a business or creative perspective. If you have a stock broker, and you gave him $500, and he lost it all, would you get a new stock broker, or keep that same one and give him even more money to invest? The networks keep the same stock broker.
And BABY DEAD IN THE WATER’s comment about how foolish it is in having so many producer-level writers on series this season as opposed to young, fresh staff writers is correct. And it’s strange, too, because you’d think a network or showrunner would want less “cooks in the kitchen” — that is, less folks with producer titles who believe they’re running the ship.
LET’S TOUCH UPON THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH OF QUOTAS, TOO: Networks try to fill quotas, all the time, and it’s never discussed. I’ve seen networks send out requirements such as “needs a minority” or “needs a female”, in discussing their writers! That is such bs. Age and ethnicity is 100% an issue in staffing writers, and it’s never discussed or touched upon.
AND FINALLY, AS FOR THE NEWBIE WRITERS NOT GETTING GIGS… It’s just odd, because sure, this town loves a hot commodity (so they say), but unlike, well, any other business that wants a fresh go-getter or fresh talent, writers offices are never filled with young bucks. The fresh go-getter lingers in assistant hell, and the writers just move from one show to the next, bringing with them the same tools and non-skills they used to get their previous series cancelled.
It’s a broken system, but no one will fix it because people are so grateful to get their jobs in this town, that once they have them, they don’t want to rock the boat and risk losing said job(s).
If you’re going to talk like you know something, actually know something. First, let’s take your ridiculous stock broker situation. If he lost your money in a year, you would look over their earnings over the past ten years. If they were profitable the last nine then you take another chance in year eleven. What you don’t do is give the $500 to some baby (not the E-Trade one) without any experience as a broker just because someone else had a “chance.” Lloyd and Levitan created BACK TO YOU before MODERN FAMILY – I think 20th and ABC are pretty happy about the second chance
And second, if you don’t think there are any young bucks in writers’ offices, you haven’t met me. Writers’ offices have assistants, too, douchebag. The jobs are almost as hard to get as staff jobs, but with the right connections, attitude and experience, it’s possible to get one. I’d like to think the same is true for staffing. Is there another profession in America where people think that most jobs should be given to inexperienced people?
A staff of a bunch of low-level writers will not write a quality show. That’s like saying the country should be run by a bunch of Sarah Palins
Touching on the quotas, Dan Harmon said in an interview on AV Club that Angela Bromstad mandated him to make at least half of his “Community” staff female writers…which I’m pretty sure is illegal, right?
Dan Harmon was quoted in Written By saying the same thing, he also said it was great for the show. The semblance of Diversity is never a good thing, but at this point getting a job through a diversity program, doesn’t seem any different than using a connection through a friend. It’s not better, but it’s no worse.
Diversity programs aren’t stealing new writer positions… those jobs wouldn’t EXIST without the diversity slot. Diversity slots (the few there are) are in ADDITION to the show’s writing budget, paid for by the network (ABC & CBS only, incidentally) as an effort to increase audience representation behind the camera.
Frankly, given that America is on the verge of becoming a plurality-white culture, whining that racial minorities are being allowed to write television seems to run exactly opposite the demographic trends. Shows that want to attract the 30% of Americans who are Hispanic might think about hiring a couple of Hispanics instead of more white Harvard & Yale grads.
“Diversity slots (the few there are) are in ADDITION to the show’s writing budget, paid for by the network”
Nothing in life is free. No matter how it’s couched in terms of how diversity slots are being charged off, OF COURSE they are taking away other lower level positions. I’m not arguing against the idea behind it, but let’s not claim it’s not taking away other jobs. Budget aside, showrunners only want a certain number of people in their writing rooms.
Is that why that show is so bad? I kid. I kid.
You are right but there is a reason for this crazy behavior. a writer who gets a pilot is rewarded form making it through the executive’s “system.” You take their stupid notes, their asinine, (and often racist and sexist) comments. You let them second guess your instinct, tell you which of their friends to hire on your show, laugh at their jokes and pretend you think they are smart and capable.
Their system to them is the TV process. When writer’s had power and respect, this was not the case. Now that corporate power controls everything, a writer who can turn out “product” for them is a commodity. It like being paid to be stupid. Executives only respect their “fake writer instincts.”
This is how shitty writers keep getting jobs and why the good ones struggle then go elsewhere. This is why Orci and Kurtzman are “producing” everything and why star-fucking gets shows on the air.
One network has bet the farm on their “system.” They have invested in hype.
They will lose.
I posted above in response to Staff Writer, but just wanted to say again how nice it is read everyone’s comments echoing my own frustrations about staffing. If given the chance, I would gladly take a low-level staff job at a lower rate, rather than lose out to a supervising producer who has lucked his way into a job at one failed show after another. Agreed that it is a crappy game, but one we are forced to play.
Also nice to read comments on this board where a writer can express his frustration without everyone else automatically assuming it’s coming from a bitter, talentless hack.
Good luck out there, everyone.
I agreed with Baby, Dead in the Water until I got to “the next Bill Lawrence.” That is something no one needs.