You Can’t Be Serious(103)
* * *
On Thursday, October 17, the day NBC would air our fourth episode before moving us to their website, our wonderful makeup artist Michelle gently asked me, “How are you doing today? I figured things might be especially rough because of the Ad Age article…”
“What Ad Age article?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen it?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry…,” she said as she handed me her phone.
The advertising industry magazine Ad Age had published a piece about NBC’s marketing budget for the two new shows in its Thursday Night Comedy Block: our historically diverse Sunnyside, and Perfect Harmony, which had a talented but more-traditional cast dynamic. The article rightfully acknowledged that advertisers want higher ratings numbers than Sunnyside was delivering. Even though other shows also had historically low ratings that were only marginally better than ours, the business is a competitive marketplace. We were the lowest by a tenth of a point, so we had to go. That was all reasonable and logical.
But it was the final paragraph that seemed to sadly confirm what I had long hoped was merely my own paranoid suspicion—that the network had been undermining us all along.
“NBC,” Ad Age wrote about Sunnyside, “didn’t seem to be tremendously enthused about the project from the get-go.” In promoting Sunnyside on other networks, NBC spent $250,000; in promoting Perfect Harmony that number increased by 580 percent to $1.7 million. In promoting Sunnyside on its own stations NBC ran forty-three promotional spots; in promoting Perfect Harmony, 1,368 spots—an increase of 3,081 percent.
1,368 ads for Perfect Harmony. Forty-three for Sunnyside.
* * *
I’m passionate about what I do, so the truth can be tough to digest. The business of television is complicated, with numerous factors at play in determining benchmarks of success and viability, but there’s no parsing reality in this case. When someone chooses to provide 3,081 percent more resources to a project with a white protagonist than they do to a project with a protagonist of color… while measuring the success of both projects with the same scale… it is an example of systemic racism—the more diverse project has been set up to fail from the start.
After taking over our timeslot, Will & Grace aired to lukewarm numbers before repeatedly dipping to or under a 0.43 rating—lower than Sunnyside’s premiere.
Will & Grace was not pulled off the air.
* * *
Though things weren’t ending the way I had hoped, I was extremely grateful. I share my story not to shame anyone or place punitive pressure, but because of my genuine hope that the system in the industry I love so deeply can continue to improve. And looking around at the panoply of people who made my dream of Sunnyside happen felt powerful and remarkable. Even if just briefly, we were doing creative work the way we had hoped it could be done. Through our characters, we brought our communities to life. We created a vibrant professional creative space in which we didn’t have to explain ourselves. The opportunity NBC gave us and the skills I learned would make me a stronger artist and producer next time around. In any job, in any passion, things don’t always work in your immediate favor. As a creative, you have to take your experiences and figure out how to evolve; this opportunity allowed me that growth and gave me the strength of knowing what’s behind the curtain. The people who helped create Sunnyside—including those who allowed us to develop it at the network and physically produce the episodes—were some of the finest I’ve ever worked with in this business. It brought me a lot of happiness and artistic fulfillment. Most people don’t get to say that in their jobs! If you’re interested in seeing it, you’ll find a link at kalpenn.com.
1?He joined the ranks of Sonia Nikore and David Shore.
2?Maybe they called Joel directly, I don’t know!
3?Sorry we never made that happen, Zach.
4?Kris Eber is such a great line producer, he had saved so much of our budget from the earlier part of the season that we had enough money left over to shoot an entire additional eleventh episode. Miraculously, for much the same optics reasons, the network didn’t fight us on this.
5?https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200305/10532244040.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS
“You always exaggerate things, Kalpen.” That was my mom’s response when I recently checked in with my parents about my tumultuous teenage years, when it seemed like everyone was trying to dissuade me from pursuing the arts.
“I’m not exaggerating, I really want to know. After you and Dad worked so hard to build a life in America,” I asked, “how embarrassed were you when I’d tell everyone at those family gatherings that I wanted to be an actor?”
“Embarrassed. I don’t know how you get these ideas into your brain. If we were ever embarrassed by anything, it was your horrible haircut. Thank God you shaved your head after your Yale rejection.”
“I do admit the way I dealt with that was a little dramatic.”
“But we were never embarrassed by your interest in acting. We just didn’t know it was a real career somebody could have. We sacrificed so much to be in America, and we weren’t sure what the future was going to hold for you. We were scared.”