Um, probably none, right? Writer Stephen Falk wishes he could say the same thing. But instead we’ll just have to appreciate his insight and learn from his experience:
Advice To Young TV Writers (but really: What Happened To My NBC Show) – by Stephen Falk
Hey, you aspiring TV writers. It’s a hard job to crack into, but if you’re good enough and driven enough, it will happen for you. Don’t give up!
For if you work hard enough, someday you too may work on your own show for a year — from pitch to outline to script to pilot to the triumph of being picked up to series: the Golden Ticket. Then you might move across the country to actually make the show, hire a hundred actors and writers and crew members, and then in the middle of editing the 4th episode, get your show abruptly cancelled via late-night Friday phone call from Los Angeles. Then the fun part: you get to walk in shock back to your office — abandoning the confused editor waiting to lock the episode — and personally call all the actors and writers and crew and inform them the proverbial plug has been pulled and they no longer have a job, sorry. You will talk them through the tears and confusion — attempt to ameliorate the soon-to-be full-blown PTSD taking root already in them, all the while pre-knowing yours will go untreated and indeed sneak up on you weeks later. Do you clean out your office now? Do you wait — ? Shit! But first you better go see about that one prop for episode 5 you had to approve — oh, yeah. None of that matters. Everything has stopped. This is the moment after the 10.0 earthquake. Suddenly, nothing is the same. You don’t have a show anymore. Twenty minutes ago it was what took up 17 hours of your day. 24 hours of your mental real estate. It literally doesn’t exist anymore. The frozen people of Vesuvius had more warning than you did.
If anybody ever had great credentials for a book about comedy – what it is, what it ain’t – Dan O’Shannon, Emmy winning showrunner of MODERN FAMILY, former showrunner of FRASIER, former executive producer of CHEERS is the guy. His approach – analyzing the “comedic event” as opposed to examining joke structure, makes you wonder why anybody ever even thought of looking at what’s funny another way. To O’Shannon, context is everything…and he’s convinced me of it too.