There's nowhere you can aggregate more people in one fell swoop than a broadcast network; there's no place you can build a star quicker than you can on a broadcast network.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you're still in the broadcast business, you're still trying to reach tens of millions. You're trying to still aim for a broader audience, and I think that's a more difficult task to spread yourself across that audience, connect with them, as opposed to a very, very small, pinpointed audience. Difficult to do.
There used to be three networks, and now there are 40 million networks. There's a lot more competition out there, too. We would bring in 27 million people. Now, they're lucky if they have 17. I looked at the ratings, for the first time in 25 years, just to see, and there were 130 shows on. There used to be maybe 30.
I really think a good host is just a connector. I'm more traffic cop than star. My job is to get people on and off the program, and hopefully keep the audience entertained.
There are so many venues in which stars are exposed today, that we just know much more and the studios don't have the control over stars like they used to, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
One thing that I can tell you that we have not done very well is to build in broadcast capability into the network, and we don't take advantage of broadcast radio.
Obviously with the Internet and increased access to other means of watching shows, the audience has dispersed and is all over the place and that is a challenge.
The trajectory of nearly all technology follows this downward and widening path: by the time a regular person is able to create his own TV network, it doesn't matter anymore that I have or am on a network.
As I start to think about what I want to do next, there are eight or nine networks I would be thrilled to work with. I remember developing at FX and the executives there telling me, 'We don't want to do shows that 20 million people kind of like; we want to do the show that 2 million people really like.' That's such a refreshing thing to hear.
Television doesn't make stars. It's the written media, the press, that makes stars.
Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it.