Peter, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Its really great to speak to you today. I thank you for asking, inviting. So youve written quite a bit over the years about about hollywood, particularly the movie industry. This book is a really wonderful tour of modern tevision and how it evolved into a medium for deep, provocative, original storytelling. Weve all become familiar with this term that were that were living through the golden age of tv with these shows like mad men and breaking bad and succession. And the list goes on and on. What made you want to tackle this subject now . And also with so much ambition and sweep, this is a book that spans several decades. Well, basically, because, you know, movies have declined. You know, theyve become you know, theyve become a monoculture here of superheroes. You know, basically through marvel, somewhat through dc and there was it just seemed to me that there was less and less interesting work being done in the movies. And a lot of the talent had migrated to tv. I shouldnt say migrated to stem. It was more of a stampede tv. So whereas, you know, movies had been elevated by this socalled auteur theory into an art form in the in the seventies. But now, now the whole story seemed to have flipped. In other words, it was tv that was the art form. And movies were, you know, sort of merely entertainment. So thats really the thats what prompted me to take take take tv on as far as the second part of the question goes, why several decades . Thereve been a lot of books on hbo, but hbo is on it. You know, hbo was the pioneer of the socalled golden age of tv, but it wasnt the whole story and other. Networks and producers carried on from hbo after hbo kind of slid a little bit in the in the mid nineties when did you detect that shift, that film was was no longer the auteur medium and it was television. When when do you think that started. Are you saw the first hints of that shift or. Gosh, i dont know. Its like superhero movie age, a superhero movie. Its hard to pin it down, you know, whether it was, you know, whether it was ritual, you know, which one it was spiderman, you know, iron man. I mean, some of them were good, actually. The iron man movies are pretty good. And some of the spiderman movies are great. Like, you know, any genre, there are good ones and bad ones, but on the whole it just got to be one after another after another, and there wasnt much else on and so that thats really prompted my move to tv. You know, i want to go back for back to the history again in a bit. But first i want to ask you a question about the here and now. So we we just saw in hollywood a pair of pretty bruising labor strikes by by writers and actors thats been resolved. But there was a lot of fallout, a lot of. Difficulty met by both sides for the for the talent. Certainly. And even you could argue for the Companies Going through this. Youve got big players like disney and warner that are under a lot of financial pressure now. And theres this feeling in hollywood that everyones trimming costs, reining in production deals. Its its a different environment. Are we was your book looking back at the golden age of tv, are we still in it . Is it ending . Is it over . Good question. Because when i started the book, it was supposed to be a tribute or a celebration of this new golden age of tv. But now its over the course of writing a book. It became not so new anymore. And now many, many people have pronounced the golden age of tv over peak tv dead. So its, you know, the the writing about tv is full of obituaries for this period. So i tried to, you know, this this change happened while i was writing it, and i tried to prepare for it. And i think i did basically. And i have a very i guess, you know, somewhat pessimistic or dark ending or the conclusion of the book, which tries to guess whats going to happen in the future. And its not a pretty picture, particularly, you know, im probably one of those people that said peak tv is over. So you can add me to that list of people that thats thats thats claim that, you know, hbo, you mentioned is a key, but its not the only actor and protagonist here. But you did start with hbo in this book. And most people now, especially if theyre younger, theyll think of hbo and theyll think of game of thrones and theyll think of succession. The white lotus, or maybe euphoria. But you start with a very different hbo and tell us a bit about what it was, this scrappy start up in the seventies and eighties. You spoke extensively to to michael fuchs, the executive in charge at the time. Just what was it like . What was their business at the time in the early going . Well, i mean, hbo, the whole rationale for hbo, which was the first cable channel, the networks had, the networks use that the Business Model that the networks used was this sponsor, avatar izing model, which meant that it gave advertisers enormous power over content. They didnt want their products. You know, curios and boy x and whatever else they were advertising. Aspirin took it to be adjacent to scenes of sex, violence and controversy. So they kind of imposed a bland purity, cynical fifties era model on tonto. And so even, you know, even married couples were not allowed to sleep in the same bed. They had to sleep in twin beds adjacent to each other. So hbo came along and it it it used a different it used a subscriber model, not a advertising model, which meant that subscribers free. We chose to invite hbo into their home and the hardware that enabled cable to, you know, spread across the country was privately owned. Therefore, the federal Communications Commission did not have any real jurist fiction over hbo or so. Hbo was allowed to do everything that the networks werent, namely sex, violence and controversy. And it exploited all three of those things to the utmost, you know, when you know, okay, just one more thing. And hbo very consciously rejected the networks and they wouldnt hire anybody who who had worked at the networks because they you know, they they cultivated the socalled, quote unquote, hbo way of thinking, which was anti network. And it was i see some parallels. I wonder if you agree between hbo breaking into original programing in the early going. It was a lot of it, correct me if im wrong, was showing movies. Old movies was a big part of of of what they did and going into original programing was sort of a risk and a bet and it felt very familiar to the netflix story. Many, you know, decades later, where netflix is showing you dvds and then decides to go into original programing. There was there is kind of it seemed to me theres a real parallel on the risk and that these outsiders trying to get into the inside hollywood game at the time. Well, yeah, there there is a there there is a bit of parallels involved between early hbo and netflix. But netflix went in with, you know, of fee first. You know, it just jumped into it. Whereas hbo is fairly cautious and they didnt have the money that netflix had to begin with. So thats why they relied heavily on, you know, on hollywood movies and and they were, you know, they were afraid to, you know, during fuchs is period, they were reluctant to get into original programing because, as fuchs said, their viewership was used to hollywood movies, which are highly polished, are highly, you know, highly professional, professionally executed shows. And they were afraid that if they got into original programing, there, their original shows would appear sloppy and unprofessional compared to the hollywood movie ive been showing, right . Yeah. And, you know, the the the history of of prestige, tv or whatever you want to call it, this, this era of great tv, a lot of people started with the sopranos. Youre careful here to note that you say it started with the show. Oz the prison show, oz, which was on hbo. What what was it about that show that was so groundbreaking that that made you focus on that as the starting point for everything . Well, you know, i think you have to go back to what, first of all, brooke was head of programing at that point. And i think you have to go back to what she told tom fontana, who was the showrunner of oz. He said, dont worry about making your character, your characters likable. Yes. So long as theyre interesting and relatable, theyll be relatable. And the other thing is what what is whats the biggest. No, no. Ive had a you know, for any showrunner on a new show, which is dont kill off your main character in the first scene or the First Episode. Yeah. So fontana proceeded to do exactly that. He had his main character, the lead character, burned to death in the First Episode of the first season. So he gave fontana an enormous amount of leeway and really unprecedented. Do whatever he wanted, and fontana took advantage of that and, you know, portrayed a really tough environment, which is, you know, inside of a prison. And i always use this example. One of the things that he did right away was he showed an aryan nation thug burning a swastika into the or the rear end of one of the other prisoners with a cigaret. You know, thats pretty tough stuff. And so nothing like that had ever appeared on network and that pretty much paved the way for the sopranos because after all, you could pretty much do anything. And it felt like this. What this executive, Chris Albrecht, had said about you dont need them to be likable. Just interesting does seem to be a this this antihero theme throughout television, whether its don draper in mad men or or or walter white or all these big these characters of television that people have come to love, theyre all flawed people that the audience is supposed to root for and that that really was not the norm at the time. Youre very youre very clear in laying out thats really the opposite of what network tv what i mean network tv heroes were heroes. They acted like heroes in our past. Theyre supposed to, you know, arrest people and bring them into, you know, to me, to be just, you know, to face a just punishment. And thats supposed to kill people, you know, kill criminals are framed frame innocent men or women beat them, you know, which is what happened routinely on, you know, on streaming, you know, on cable and streaming shows. And it was also i would just say the other thing that that stood out to me was the wire. And these all these shows that depicted institutions. I mean, you noted this in the book, the depiction of institutions on premium cable on hbo. And then later on on these other Cable Networks that were really high end, it was kind of more real and gritty. And what was depicting america as it is and not sort of in a in a lighter version of it than had been on network tv, whether its the cops or the mob or prison that that seemed to be did that was that something that was really hard to convince Television Executives to go a long way like we want to really show you what the police is like. We want to really show you what the you know, what prison life is like that that seems to be, you know, have been a leap for a lot of these these companies. Well, thats true. I mean, one, when david simon went to hbo to propose the wire and he was immediately, you know, met with a Cold Shoulder because hbo, his attitude was, what are we going to do, a cop show . When cop shows are all over the networks . And simons attitude was, well, the network cop shows, i idolized cops and demonized the poor. And he was kind of ripped sort of ripped the, you know, pull the curtain over on what the police were really like and went and and kind of rehabilitate the portrayal of the poor and show them to some degree as victims of the police. So he was going to turn the tables on the network cop shows, and that was certainly that instantly appealed to hbo and that took quite a bit of research. Right. I think you recount david simon. Was it was that he embedded with the police or he did. He did some like firsthand reporting to really understand what he was talking about. Right. Well, he was a journalist, for one thing, for the local when in baltimore and he knew a lot about police. And then he you know, he befriended a one of the cops who became his collaborator. And he also went on ride alongs with cops. A lot of these people who were not who wrote about cops or in a ride alongs and they would find that, you know, they couldnt use the material or that where they were they were confronted with on their work because it was to gravitate to, you know, to, you know, behave or of everybody, the cops and the you know, the criminals were both, you know, were just too wild for network, whereas they were perfect, perfect for cable. Yeah. Thats a theme in this book that i really love. Theres a lot of these characters who seem trapped in a network tv or in these with these rules. Jenji kohan, later the creator of orange is the new black. You talk in weeds involved. Which was she on weeds. I might be mixing that up. Yeah, thats right. Weeds. Yeah, but that was another example i thought was of these people that were like ahead of their time, but working for networks that wouldnt let them tell the the real material that was that was true to what they were seeing and thinking and feeling. So thats thats and thats fascinating. I want to shift gears a bit and just talk about a bit about the reporting of this book and how you went about it, because there are some really candid conversations in here. I mean, i talked to tv executives all the time. These are people a lot of these people have left their companies. Some of the in some cases years ago. But there are these candid discussions of being fired, the toxic atmosphere, the atmosphere at some of these companies that were producing great television. And and there was there was this one that stood out to me. It was a i think it was an amc executive who who talked about, you know, she had been fired and pushed out. And she said, may they all rot in hell or Something Like that. And i said, wow, this is not the kind of quote ive seen very often. How did you go about finding who you wanted to talk to and getting people to open up to that level on the record in a book like this about tv . Well well, you know, it was hard. I mean, a lot of people would not open up, you know, and a lot of people did not want to talk to me about this stuff. But, you know, you just keep calling and one person leads to another. Its like a daisy chain, you know . And if you got you know, you know, as i said, i think elsewhere you dont need that many. I mean, you sprinkle them across across the book, it seems like more than there are. But, you know, somebody like you know, especially if they left have left the business, like somebody like michael fuchs, this was his only hbo was his only job. And that was already, you know, 30, 40 years ago. So he is no compunction about saying what he feels. And hes very hes bitter about it still. Hes angry still. And that was true of a lot of people. You know, the one thing that youre citing as far as amc goes, the creative executives. So at amc hated the the finance guys, you know, that employed them. And that was pretty much across the board. So once, you know, one person on amc agreed to talk to me, then he or she would recommend somebody else. And it was, as i said, like a daisy chain. And it wasnt all that hard to get people to talk. It was amazing to see that some of this programing that that is really found fashionable now in tv history was created in almost in spite of dysfunction of workplaces at several of these companies. Thats the way it came across in your book. Yeah, well, its true. I mean. You know, the companies that it created, the some of these shows are pretty out to lunch but they you know, they employed a lot of extremely talented people who actually made the shows. You know, despite almost despite the companies they were working for. That was certainly true of amc. It also just seems like the job of being that tastemaker in hollywood who the kind of show picker, the person who greenlights the show and deals with the talent is is really a hard one to hold down. I mean, it looks like theres people always you got to watch your back. Someone always. Thinks they can do a better. Why is that . Why is that such a fraught, you know, job to do in in this business . Well, youre out there, you know, when youre picking shows and the shows either succeed or fail, you know, its evident to everyone, you know, and theres very little tolerance for failure because the shows are so expensive to produce. You know, when Chris Albrecht was black go at hbo, they hired four people to replace him, one for cable to replace one. And none of those people had any programing experience. So. Programing, you know, executives with experience and who were talented programing were extremely few and far between. And then as a result of that and this is a theme ive seen, this seems to be constant in hollywood, but you really highlight it. Theres this fear kind of a fomo in the television business, a fear of missing out on a hit that causes distorts peoples behavior once youve passed on mad men like hbo did, or, i believe, on breaking bad, they, of course, didnt get house of cards. There were some other examples you had in there. Maybe it was homeland that must do something to these people where makes it distorts peoples behavior that you dont you dont want to to miss out on things that makes you a it makes you say yes to things. Maybe you shouldnt as well. Yeah. I mean, when somebody from hbo that i spoke to called schmuck insurance. Right, right. Yeah. They would buy you would buy properties. First of all, to make sure that nobody else bought them, not necessarily to produce them. And you know, when hbo, you know, after all, like left and the Program Executives went on a buying spree and they bought practically every, you know, you know, they put on their contract prop practically every signature great writer, a playwright, whatever, you know, at that period at that time and none of these things, they actually produced, you know, they had a 5000, you know, at least contracts. And and they prevented what it did was that prevented all these people from submitting work to other other networks. Are there cable channels . So thats why they call it schmuck insurance, because you didnt want to be the schmuck that. Right. You know, that didnt buy mad men. And what amc did develop it. How did the talent react to that . You know, sitting on your script for years and pretending to do shows, alan hated it because it tied them up and tied their hands, you know, and mike white, who did the white lotus, you know, commented on the fact that hbo had tied up a couple of his properties and and he was on it was, you know, to as i said, to take them anywhere else. So weve talked we talked a lot about hbo basic cable, also was in the game here in in all through the the arts and through the 20 tens and producing some of these best known shows we know and love but and you talk about effects which in the early going had shows like the shield and damages and and there have been many more of the americans later on but but they they talked there was theres a showrunner you ta