Lilian Barrera 6509619
Producing A New Age Sitcom
Name: Lilian Barrera
Student Number: 6509619
Submitted to: Professor Gary Evans
Date: July 29, 2014
Course Code: CMN 4166 Y
School: University of Ottawa
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Introduction
The following is a short narrative story about the efforts made by a television producer, Ari Escarth, and his team of writers to create a “new age” comedy sitcom.
The story covers the discussions and arguments made in the brainstorming and researching sessions, that occurred prior to the proposal.
Ari Escarth is an executive producer and the leader of the team of writers and producers for CBS Television. They discuss plot ideas, character profiles and target audiences. Through their discussion, I, the author, will include the ideas learned in this course.
For further understanding of the goals laid out for writers, here is CBS
Corporation’s mission statement:
“Recognizing the power and influence a media company carries through its
various business units, including Network Programming, Network News, Local
Television and Radio Stations, Cable and Publishing, CBS has been on the
forefront of making diversity a reality through a wide array of initiatives targeted
to talent in front of and behind the camera as well as outreach to diverse
vendors and professional service suppliers. Our goal is to impact the industry.”
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Story
Ari Escarth was an executive producer for CBS, an American commercial broadcast television network. CBS at the time was airing Two and a Half Men, 2 Broke
Girls, Big Bang Theory, The Millers, Mom, and had just finished the last season of How
I Met Your Mother. Ari was asked to brainstorm the plot outline and propose a new hit sitcom series that would air in January 2016. So one fine morning in August 2014, he and his team of 14 writers and 8 producers and co-producers sat down and began the brainstorm for the next big comedy sitcom.
“Alright, folks. Let’s get started! We have until September 10th to submit the proposal to head office on what the next big sitcom hit is going to be about, and they want comedy. Something as big and successful as How I Met Your Mother. So think, think, think!” Ari cheered. The room broke into chatter as each writer tried to say their idea the loudest.
Liz Gellman, a writer in her second year with the company, looked puzzled and asked, “Well did they say who our target audience is?”
“Liz, it’s no longer audience but audiences!” said Darryl Scout, the office know- it-all. “You know that different viewers interpret media content differently. The
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audience has a relationship to the producers of messages, depending on their class, race, gender, age, etc.1
“There’s that plus the categories of distinction and definition of audiences: 1) level of activity, 2) space, 3) time constraints, 4) accessibility, 5) interaction, 6) proximity, and 7) concentration.2”
Ari sighed and broke the news, “They gave me a pretty broad market: American men and women, ages 18-35 years-old, and middle class.”
“Wow,” exclaimed Liz, “that is so broad. How can they expect us to please everyone?”
“Now, don’t get exasperated, Liz. NBC has done it before with Friends! We can do the same,” said Ari. “And Jenna pointed out the categories of distinction that will help us break down who this show will cater to. If they are middle class adults looking for a light hearted sitcom, we can assume they work grueling 9-5ers with little creativity in their day-to-day work, they have a short attention span, and a nice living room to watch this 20 minute sitcom in.”
“So we have to come up with the next Friends, right?” wondered Jinesh Desai, the rookie intern writer.
1 Mosco and Lewis: Questioning the Concept of Audience In Hagen, Ingunn & Wasko, Janet. Consuming 2 Audiences. “‘Desperately Cresskill, Seeking NJ: the Hampton Audience’ Press. models (pp. of31 audience-46) reception” (2009) In Gorton, Kristyn. Media Audiences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U Press. (pp.11-29)
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“Ari, why don’t we just work with the same premise as Friends and just update the current events, the fashion, the occupations, etc. to our current culture and customs?” inquired Zoey Murphy the co-producer.
“I think we should turn away from the over-used premise of a couple of friends living in the city and looking for love, etc. It’s so over-done! I know we want the next
Friends or How I Met Your Mother in terms of how popular it is, but I think audiences are searching for something that tests the boundaries and teaches open-mindedness!” exclaimed Ryan Song, the openly gay, Chinese writer.
“Why don’t we write a show with the two main characters who are powerful (as in they are executives in their organizations) gay men who are in love with each other and their struggle to come out of the closet and maintain their careers well and battle against homophobia? After all, we have One’N’Ten hounding us to change programs to feature more positive roles for LGBTQ youth and young adults,” continued Ryan.
“We are not sure if changes in content have come from the social action groups or the economics of changing audiences3. However, we do know that Orange Is The
New Black has really taken off and Netflix is raking in the money,” agreed Sarah
Jenson, the openly lesbian writer.
3 “The Role of the Audience in the Production of Culture”. (1994) In Ettema, James and Whitney, Charles. Audiencemaking: How the Media Create the Audience. Thousand Oaks: Sage (pp. 159-169)
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Roy Mulligan, the cynical science-fiction/fan-fiction writer, who had been sitting silently and seemingly absent-minded suddenly but actually intently listening to Ryan expressed his brilliant idea, “I think Ryan is really onto something good! Let’s put together the most cutting-edge sitcom in sitcom history! We shall have a spin-off/fan- fiction sitcom from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove! It’s going to be about the hilarious relationship between President Merkin Muffley and Soviet Premier Dimitri
Kisov after the nuclear holocaust forces them into quarantine.
“It’ll be set in that time period too: the sixties Cold War period. The leaders are implicitly homosexual in the film and I think we can bank on that premise. They will continue having a hidden romance while they deal with the issues of a post-holocaust civilization living underground for the predicted 100 years. We will continue to honor
Kubrick’s genre of dark comedy. Did you know that he found that the humorous things in media were the most truthful, like for example that the world’s superpowers would wipe out all human life because of an accident?4”
“Roy, I have to remind you that you don’t work for some independent film or television company. You know that CBS values diversity but I am not sure a proposal
4 Falsetto, Mario Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis. “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. Westport CT: Praeger, 2001
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for such a politically charged and controversial show will not be approved! Leslie
Moonves5 would definitely not approve,” exclaimed Ari.
“But we’d set it up so that the audience interprets it as a parody on the incompetence of our world leaders,” retorted Roy.
“Well, did you know that in fiction, audiences often deny the preferred interpretation and bring to it something entirely different from what we, the producers, intended?” Susana Diaz, the Latina associate producer, added.
“Who said that?” Darryl asked.
“Andy Ruddock,” replied Susana, “like he used the example of Top Gun to say that although they wanted the viewers to love the heroic American figure played by
Cruise, the audience instead saw it as a parody of masculinity with elements of queerness.6”
“Yeah, I read that article once. It’s similar to a theory put out by Michel de
Certeau in that there is a struggle over the show or movie’s meaning and potential meanings7. But Ruddock also said that’s more expected in content that has a political nature, like news. I don’t think it’s relevant to our topic. We’re gonna be fine,” Darryl explained.
“Not if we stick to the gay-president idea that Roy had,” Susana teased.
5 President and CEO of CBS Corporation 6 “‘Desperately Seeking the Audience’ models of audience reception” (2009) In Gorton, Kristyn. Media Audiences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U Press. (pp.11-29) 7 Audience Studies Reader. De Certeau, Michel. “The Practice of Everyday Life.” (pp.105-111)
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“We do need to include either a gay man or a lesbian woman as one of our main characters and make sure that we give him or her as much speaking time as all the others. Star Trek struggled to get a black woman on as part of the crew but failed to have a female second in command (it was the producers’ decision). Viewers who were gay looked at the program with the utopian fantasy of eroticism and romanticism.
They wanted many versions of utopia and withdrew when gay figures never appeared8.
We can’t afford to miss this market anymore, Ari. We will lose ratings,” pleaded Sarah.
“Yes, I agree, Sarah. We’ll definitely cast a gay man or lesbian or both, just not in such a political context. I don’t want to go into such a sticky area,” responded Ari.
“You know what? We need a sitcom in a different setting than those that we already have. We have lots of “at home” sets (like in Mom), “at a restaurant workplace” set (like in 2 Broke Girls), “at school” sets, “at a bar” sets (like in How I Met Your
Mother), but we don’t have anything set in a gym or fitness center,” Todd, the beefy fitness-obsessed producer pointed out. Everyone fell silent in thought.
“I like that idea! Six strangers brought together by winning free membership from a newly rebranded fitness center. They are looking for self-improvement and find friendship along the way,” Ari proclaimed.
8 Audience Studies Reader. Jenkins, Henry “‘Out of the Closet and Into the Universe’: Queers and Star Trek” (171-179).
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“Yeah, with that setting we can cater towards the reflexive self in many of our viewers,” agreed Zoey, “Just as an example of the way a show can cater to this, we can think of The Biggest Loser. The show encourages candidates to resolve crises of interiority and similarity and create a crisis of self that candidates must resolve through appropriate ways of bettering themselves. They confess, are tempted, make sacrifices, experience a revelation and are transformed9. This is a very profitable in this day and age, and I think we can adapt this theme to our sitcom.”
“We can base one of our characters off of The Sopranos’ Tony. It will totally appeal to our overweight male viewers who are also attempting to transform their bodies back into the cultural ideals,” explained Todd, “Fitness and appearance are the idealized definition of middle class masculinity. We can portray the complicated struggle between fatness and fitness, where fatness symbolizes the inability to attain the male ideal of the self-made man and society’s value of self-restraint10.”
“YES! You’re really onto something there, Todd! I have a title in mind already:
For the Greater Goods. It’s a twist on the saying ‘For the Greater Good’, but in this case ‘goods’ as in physical looks. That can be the name of the gym too,” Ari contributed.
9 Sender, K. The Makeover “Mirror Mirror the Reflexive Self”. (2002) New York: NYU Press. (pp.136-63). 10 Lavery, David, (Ed.)(2002). This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. Santo, Avi. “ ‘Fat Fuck! Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?’ Weight, Body Image, and Masculinity in The Sopranos’”
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“I loved The Sopranos. I think we should base him off Tony but with a twist. Let’s make him the Latino version of Tony. Italian culture and Hispanic culture have a number of similarities, such as the dependency between family members for each other and the stay-at-home custom for Latina and Italian mothers,” suggested Susana.
Laura Porter, the feminist writer in the group looked like she was bouncing on her chair with excitement. She was the expert on the topic of feminism and had a number of ideas about how to include its ideologies in light-hearted ways on TV.
“Mother roles have gained new fame in the recent decades, but we don’t want to overdo them, since we already have the show Mom. We can take notes from the show 6 Feet Under in how it avoids easy sentimentalism and resists legitimating traditional family values,” Laura explained. “The mother in the show lost her husband and was freed from her position as house-wife, we could mimic this with one of the female characters. Let’s call her Valeria. She’s a widowed Italian housewife whose husband left her enough money to keep her and their sons in a comfortable lifestyle, so she hires a maid and she can now afford time to go to the gym11.”
11 Gorton, Kristyn, Media Audiences. “Feminizing television: Mother Role in Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters.
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“Ooh! And ever since she’s become the head of the family, we can write her as a transgressive woman who sounds like a rough man, just like in the Sopranos!12” added
Susana.
Zoey then pitched in, “A white, middle class, educated woman who becomes head of her household and in control of her own body. Sounds progressive to me!”
“Why don’t we switch the Tony-ish fat guy to sound like a girly girl in contrast to
Valeria? And by the way, I thought of a perfect name: Julián.”
“Actually, I don’t think altering too much of Tony’s persona is a good idea,” disapproved Susana. “But I like the name Julián!”
“Okay everyone, let’s make sure we’re getting this down. We have a chubby
Italian widowed woman and an overweight Latino man. That makes two out of six. We want six main characters. Let’s determine the others,” brainstormed Ari.
“Well we certainly need a black guy or girl,” Todd reminded.
“Of course,” replied all the writers in unison.
“Let’s have a successful, well-built, young adult male,” suggested Roy.
“I don’t know,” wondered James Coleman, the African-American senior writer.
“The Cosby Show was great in that it was one of the first shows to include an entire
Black cast; but one of its biggest drawbacks was that the characters have an upper
12 Lavery, David, (Ed.)(2002).This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. Donatelli, Cindy and Alward, Cheryl “ ‘I Dread You’? Married to the Mob in The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos”
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middle class status, when in fact this is not for most blacks. I read an article by Jhally &
Lewis that called this out, and then they noted that it was a form of necessary illusion.
Blacks did not recognize themselves. Yet they appreciated the fact that the show provided role models for them, a type of hero13,” clarified James. “But we can succeed where the Cosby show didn’t. If we begin the show by illustrating his struggle as part of the lower class, then within 5-10 minutes show how he has a stroke of luck and genius, which lands him the job of being a gym owner, then we introduce the other characters we can really have something special,” concluded James.
“So he starts out with money problems. Like, his dad is an alcoholic and he has to take care of his three younger sisters with their own problems. However, throughout the course of the sitcom, he brings his family out of poverty because of the success with the gym,” added Ryan. “This is really coming together.”
“Let’s call him Jay G. because we can work off some of his mystery in a Great
Gatsby kind of way,” mused Laura, “Like, maybe that’s how he gained ownership of the gym—some rich old guy (who saw him like a son) passed on his asset to him when he dies of cancer or something.”
“Perfect! This is great stuff, everyone. Three down, three to go. Next up another female character. Zoey? Liz? Pitch in something,” demanded Ari.
“Well we can always throw in the staple fitness center slut,” thought Liz.
13 Jhally Sut and Justin Lewis Enlightened Racism
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“That is too cliché! Not to mention against feminism!” said Sarah angrily. “Why don’t we have an openly bi-sexual, Lebanese-American who has an interest in writing erotica fiction? That way we can keep the funny sex jokes in there, but instead of coming from some frat guy, they’re coming from a really open and confident woman of color?”
Laura goes on to describe the desires of this genre of women, “She can highlight a new age demand from women: equal sexual gratification. Black Lace, the erotica fiction publishing company, presents sexuality as a site of liberation for women who seek individual gratification. We can turn what is normally offered as a ‘private’ pleasure into something funny as the character opens up about her authorship in a confident and humourous manner14.”
Liz, liking Laura’s idea, pitches in some of her own, “How about the reason she signs up for a membership is because she is looking for ideas to write a new erotica fiction set in a gym in which her protagonists fall in love? Then throughout the course of the show she ironically does fall for one guy. The fat Tony-ish guy! And she writes about her relationship with him, ha-ha!”
“This idea is totally foreign to me,” said a puzzled Roy. “Why do women waste so much time reading those books?”
14 Audience Studies Reader. Sonnet, Esther. ‘Just a Book, She Said…’: Reconfiguring Ethnography for the Female Readers of Sexual Fiction. (pp.254-274)
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“Wow, Roy. You are one to talk. Don’t you waste tons of time playing those stupid sci-fi video games? Like that one you just started: Gears of War?” retorted Zoey.
“It’s not a waste of time, Zoey! It’s just a form of escape. Like being transported into another world. It get’s my creative juices flowing,” argued Roy.
“Well that’s exactly what erotica books do for women. Have you never heard of the research by Janice Radway on women’s romance novels?” quizzed Laura. “Let me guess, no.”
“Well, no, I haven’t” admitted Roy.
Laura sighed, “Radway discovered that women, tired of doing housework, wish to find an alternative to the physical and affective needs of their families. They need time and space of their own and don’t feel they have to tell husbands what they have done for the last 8 hours. What they are looking for is some sort of appreciation from their families and to enjoy the feeling of feeling good about something they have initiated. But this is not something you can necessary read/deduct from women reading romance in general. It needs to be taken with a grain of salt15.”
“Oh,” said Roy, looking mystified.
“Man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent woman still tied to her place as the bearer of meaning not
15 Audience Studies Reader. Radway, Janice “Reading the Romance Women Patriarchy and Popular Literature” (pp. 219-225)
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maker of meaning. Thus women who strive to achieve balance between the sexes a.k.a. feminists are frustrated by the phallocentric order16,” explained Sarah.
“Yeah!” cheered Laura, “I see you’ve read Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema’.”
“Alright, ladies. We’re going off on a really big tangent now. You’ve silenced
Roy and it’s clear everyone supports the idea you had for the second female main character. Let’s move on and choose the last two mains,” interjected Ari, trying to get the group back on track.
“We should include an attractive white male. Like as attractive as Zac Efron, for example. Then, just when our audience believes he is a Romeo, we prove that he’s actually a closet homosexual,” suggested Ryan.
“I don’t think we need another homosexual,” disapproved Todd.
“OF COURSE WE DO!” snapped Ryan. “It is only the lack of alternatives that forces people to go on supporting programs which do not acknowledge their existence!17” exclaimed Ryan, “And now that our competitors in the television program market have begun explicitly including LGBTQ personas, we will fall behind in the ratings if we do not include a main character in our show that fits these personas.”
16 Audience Studies Reader. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (pp. 133-142) 17 Audience Studies Reader. Woods, Gregory. “We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re Not Going Catalogue Shopping” (pp. 117-126)
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“The individual finds their place for imaginative provocation to be involved with their imaginary world. More choice and accessibility has enabled people to choose their preferred form, for their imagination18,” contemplated Darryl. He was, after-all, the writing crew’s psychology major.
“Alright, alright. Fit and handsome closet homosexual it is,” gave in Todd. “I say let’s call him Danny Foster.”
“We need one more girl now,” declared Ari.
“Let’s write in someone popular—someone like the Kardashians. We need to appeal to popular culture’s it girl!” professed Liz.
“No way! We promote diversity at CBS and I won’t stand to write in a character that represents such mindless conformists like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. Ugh!” countered Laura.
“There’s certainly a distinction to make between popular culture and mass culture,” explained Darryl. “Mass culture produces a dormant mass of people unaware of their class-consciousness. In the case of the Kardashians, their consumerist personalities encourage their viewers to sell their way into fame (which in her case she sold her body), whether they are able to afford such expensive commodities or not.
They thus are totally disempowered and helpless. Another approach is to see mass
18 Oddey, Alison and White, Christine. Modes of Spectating. Chicago: Intellet 2009. (p. 12)
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culture as a conspiracy by the dominant ruling class interested in keeping the working classes docile and diverting them with entertainment.
“On the other hand, popular culture is a site of struggle between dominant ideology and subversive ideology19. Think of when buying ‘vintage’ clothing became popular.
The working classes bought used clothing at the Salvation Army and made it popular on their own.”
“So Liz really wants to appeal to mass culture instead? Is that what you’re saying?” asked Jenna.
“Correct,” confirmed Darryl.
“Well thing is, we are catering to a diverse number of audiences with the five characters we just decided on. Why can’t we include one girly girl? Maybe she can embody a Barbie at 90% of her personality and the other 10% is her quirk? Perhaps she’s got a super genius scientist older brother whom has taught her a lot about quantum physics and she tried to hide it because she really just wants to attain the feminine ideals in terms of physical attractiveness,” argued Liz. “Through her we can explore the relationship between female spectators and Hollywood stars as feminine ideals20.”
19 Audience Studies Reader. Fiske, John. “Understanding Popular Culture” (112-116) 20 Audience Studies Reader. Stacey, Jackie. “Star Gazing: Hollywood cinema and female spectatorship”.
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“That’s really profound, Liz. I’m proud of you,” gushed Laura. “I can totally imagine a girl like Ariana Grande, who despite already being slim, shows up at the gym because she feels pressure to become thinner.”
“Her name will be Sophie Evershed. What does everyone think?” asked Zoey.
Everyone murmured in agreement.
“That makes six,” asserted Ari. “Everyone review and sign the proposal once Ed finishes transcribing the results of this brainstorming session. I’m very confident that the board will approve the proposal. From my point of view it is representative of CBS’s mission statement to nurture and promote diversity.”
With that, the group packed up and prepared to work up the plot synopses for the first five episodes, as per usual for the start of any new show.
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Conclusion
The purpose of this essay was to present the discourses of this course, CMN
4166—Audience Research in a creative manner. I hope the dialogues between writers and creators for CBS’s Television division has been an interesting insight into the work put into producing highly mainstream television programs that are consumed by a diverse audiences and an insight into the influence those programs have.
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Appendix
The following are some statistics that will put into perspective the kind of influence that a CBS television program has on an international public:
CBC Program Ratings
A 1.0 rating equals
1.158 Million
households, 1.2696
Million Adults (18-49),
640,020 Women (18-
49), and 629,400
Men (18-49).
Courtesy of tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com
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