Great Moments In Corporate Jackassery

Warriors, if there is one almost completely sure fire way to get a project approved, it is this…
Pitch building a mediocre product with half the budget it normally takes to build a mediocre project.

Do NOT, unless you are James Cameron, pitch an amazing product that costs more to build than a merely good product.

Quality doesn’t count. Costs do. Remember that.

The soulless, visionless, blue-suited zombies who run large corporations have had all willingness to take risks beaten out of them. The chance of a failure on their otherwise pristine records keeps them awake at night cuddling their teddy bears and popping Ambien.

Case in point…The TV show Southland, which just had its second season premiere on TNT. Amazing show. A clear candidate for best show on TV. I was watching it last night and thinking to myself, “Oh NBC, you couldn’t make this show a hit? Great acting, masterful writing and compelling characters that you love rooting for, while also dealing with troubling social issues of the day – You couldn’t figure out how to get people to watch that?”

The answer is no. Instead, they took five hours of prime time TV and turned it into something you could maybe see on a cable access channel, but with better furniture. Why did they do that? Why was Jay Leno occupying valuable prime time slots, where he was busy losing ratings to Seinfeld repeats every night?

Because someone at NBC thought he had a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to make high quality shows, which are expensive, it would be better to make a mediocre show for less money than it would take to buy a toupee for Jeff Zucker. Mathematically, it made perfect sense, even though the equation used to make that decision probably didn’t include NBC becoming a laughing stock.

That guy probably got a raise and a promotion. That guy is probably going to continue to make decisions like that, and he will always have an apartment on Manhattan’s West Side, a brand new BMW in the garage and his wife will always be hotter than yours. That’s what embracing low-cost mediocrity will do for you.

Meanwhile, watch Southland, before someone at TNT has the bright idea to cancel it and start running a puppet show.