'Persistence pays off': Why 'Friends' is back for 10th season
By Scott Collins
LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- For much of last fall, it looked as if Jeff Zucker would soon find himself without "Friends."
The NBC entertainment president had struggled for months to bring TV's biggest comedy back for a 10th season. Time was running out; the producers were preparing for a May 2003 series finale, pulling the plug on a smash sitcom that had helped the network dominate Thursday nights for years. But Zucker balked at the price of a renewal. Warner Bros. Television, the studio that makes "Friends," was demanding a hefty 33% increase -- to $10 million per episode -- which would make it far and away the costliest half-hour on television. Warners knew how much the show meant to NBC -- and there was no sign the studio was prepared to back down.
Just before Christmas, of course, news broke that NBC would indeed bring back "Friends" for one more year, through May 2004. When asked by reporters last month how the deal happened, Zucker hailed the "great support" of Warners and added: "We spent a lot of time with the producers and a lot of time with the cast. ... I think persistence pays off."
That was putting it mildly. NBC's dogged pursuit of the show led executives, producers and cast through two intense months of hardball negotiations and last-minute, sometimes frantic concessions. The business odyssey began with what one executive described as "marching orders" from NBC chairman and CEO Bob Wright and concluded, after many fits and starts, with an eleventh-hour request from the cast for some trips on a corporate jet courtesy of NBC's parent General Electric. Meanwhile, the entire industry watched, with CBS chief Leslie Moonves even placing a $1 million gag bet on the show's return.
"There were many times when this thing died," one executive says, "and then it came back to life."
The high stakes for "Friends" shows just how much NBC has come to depend on the sitcom about six young Manhattanites that debuted in September 1994. In addition to its own performance -- "Friends" logged record ratings for the 2001-02 season -- the series girds the network's entire Thursday night schedule, driving viewers to such series as the sitcom "Scrubs" and Warner Bros.' aging drama "ER." And the significance of "Friends" has only grown as NBC has failed to deliver new monster comedy hits over the past several seasons.
In an age of such attention-grabbing reality shows as "American Idol" and "Joe Millionaire," the battle over "Friends" shows just how valuable bona fide scripted hits remain, especially when they deliver affluent young viewers and serve as bedrock for a network's schedule.
NBC and Warners declined comment.
The countdown to the deal started in mid-October, when Zucker flew from Los Angeles to New York. At that point, it looked as if "Friends" might really go away. At least three previous sets of talks about a 10th season had gone nowhere as Warners insisted on its $10 million price and Zucker insisted the network couldn't afford the figure.
Warners, in this case, had good reason for its stubbornness. The studio had made hundreds of millions of dollars by selling nine seasons -- 200 episodes -- of "Friends" to stations owned by Tribune Co. But Tribune didn't want to buy a 10th season of the show, partly because that would delay the start of a second syndication cycle that was scheduled to commence in December 2004. With the second cycle offering episodes to stations at a 40% discount from first-cycle prices of $3 million per episode, Tribune would pay dearly for the delay. (Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman declined comment.)
With Tribune having locked up syndication rights for the first 200 episodes through December 2011, Warners wasn't interested in footing any part of the bill for another season of episodes. A couple dozen or so episodes, even of "Friends," were not likely to command nearly as much per episode in the off-network market as a block of 100 or 200 shows.
So Warners, in effect, wanted NBC to prepay the studio's syndication revenue for the last season, which partly accounted for the large price increase.
Zucker repeatedly let Warners know that NBC couldn't meet the demand. But during his New York trip in October, he met at NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters with Wright, Andrew Lack (then NBC's president) and other top executives to discuss the "Friends" situation.
The attendees reviewed the effect of "Friends" on the NBC schedule -- and on the network's advertising revenue. The show did particularly well with affluent viewers aged 18-49 -- precisely the demographic NBC targeted and sold to advertisers. And through special advertising packages, "Friends" also enabled NBC to sell ad inventory on other lower-rated series at competitive prices.
Given the circumstances, $10 million per episode didn't seem so extravagant. Wright gave Zucker his "marching orders" to get "Friends" back for another year, according to one executive.
Zucker flew back to Los Angeles and set up a meeting in late October on the Warners lot. The top studio executives were there, along with Nancy Josephson, the ICM agent who represents "Friends" executive producers David Crane, Marta Kauffman and Kevin Bright. Zucker signaled that NBC was again ready to negotiate.
During the next few weeks, the network and the studio toiled away on the terms. By mid-November, NBC and the Warners negotiating team -- headed by Bruce Rosenblum, the studio's top TV executive, Warner Bros. TV president Peter Roth and WBTV executive vp Craig Hunegs -- had agreed on the $10 million license fee, removing a huge stumbling block.
Then came the hard part. NBC had to persuade the six cast members -- Jennifer Aniston (news), Courteney Cox (news) Arquette, Lisa Kudrow (news), Matt LeBlanc (news), Matthew Perry (news) and David Schwimmer (news) -- to return with no raise in their salaries. Since the start of the 2001-02 season, each had earned $1 million per episode.
Dealing with the "Friends" cast has proved a formidable challenge even for seasoned TV executives. On most television shows, even those with ensemble casts, one or two actors typically emerge as the star and over time bends the producers, network and other actors to his or her whims. But the "Friends" cast -- led principally by Kudrow and Schwimmer and, to a lesser extent, Aniston -- has moved in unique solidarity, giving them unprecedented clout. No cast, no show.
Zucker's predecessor, Garth Ancier, learned this lesson through experience. He once needed the cast members to do "gallery shoots" -- brief footage used for promotional spots. The shoots are a chore to actors, who sometimes have to show up on weekends to do them. Ancier thought he would warm each cast member to the idea by approaching them individually.
No dice. Whatever he had to say, the executive could say to the entire cast.
"If you try to approach them individually on a topic -- even a small one like shooting promos -- they band together and won't let you divide and conquer," Ancier said.
The actors approached renewal talks the same way. NBC gave the cast a deadline of Dec. 1 to indicate whether they would return. But the date passed with no answer. It soon became apparent that certain cast members -- especially Aniston, one executive said -- wanted to do just 12 episodes, or half the typical order (a rep for Aniston did not return a call). They also wanted a per-episode raise of about 10% over their current salaries.
"We fought to the death for 24 episodes," one executive said. But NBC and Warners figured 18 was better than nothing.
NBC flatly refused to budge on the salaries, however. That left the issue of the number of episodes. The cast wondered if they could do 18 shows over 20 weeks, rather than the 25-week schedule the network proposed. Executives explained that the writers needed the extra time to write.
Meanwhile, the entire TV industry watched the unfolding drama. CBS chief Leslie Moonves ran into Bruce Rosenblum, Warner Bros.' executive vp television, who soberly predicted that "Friends" would probably end in May. Moonves jokingly bet him $1 million that the show would be back. "And I'll also pay you a million dollars for it not to come back next season," Moonves added.
On the evening of Friday, Dec. 20, the cast was filming an episode. During breaks, they repaired to a cast-only "clubhouse" just off the soundstage. They tapped Bright as their liaison to communicate by phone with executives from NBC and Warners. It looked like 18 episodes or nothing.
Late in the evening, the cast wondered if NBC would agree to give each cast member some use of a corporate jet. While that perk is common in the film world, jet time is given to only the most powerful TV stars. But GE, which flies executives all over the world, negotiates discounted rates for such travel. NBC figured some plane trips were a small price to pay for the cast's return. In the end, the network agreed to give each cast member the equivalent of two round-trip domestic trips on a private jet.
Bright called NBC and Warners execs who were standing by. "That's it," he said. "We're done."
An NBC executive contacted Zucker, who had gone home after attending tapings earlier in the evening. Relieved, Zucker hung up and tapped out an e-mail to Wright in New York.
"Friends" was back.