Robert Rose wrote…
In your post for 1/19/2010, I happened across the following sentence: "Lorne Michaels is, of course, the man who gave the world Saturday Night Live, which is one of the five-or-so greatest success stories in the history of broadcast television."
Wouldn't disagree with you there, but it prompts the question as to what else you'd put on that list? From various things you've said, I am pretty sure The Simpsons would be on that list, and with 32 seasons in the can (and I believe they were recently renewed for two more) that would be pretty hard to argue with. Johnny Carson's run on The Tonight Show seems another likely candidate — whether you'd include any or all of his predecessors or successors, I don't know. Beyond that, I'm curious to see what else you'd come up with. Feel free, of course, to go beyond five, if you have trouble narrowing it down.
Hmm. Well, The Simpsons and Johnny Carson were certainly successful. But obviously, I wasn't thinking of an actual list when I made that comment and a real list would require some ground rules. The entirety of CBS, NBC and ABC are three great success stories in the history of broadcast television.
I Love Lucy not only has set some sort of record for reruns but it led to Lucy and Desi having a studio of their own with financial interest in dozens of hit shows. All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show also led to many reruns and very successful shows. But now that I think of it, if you define "success stories" based on empires launched with one hit show, there are a lot of candidates so let's limit this to success of individual shows……
So you'd have Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons and The Tonight Show…and then I'd add in The Price is Right, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Today Show…
I suspect the most profitable half-hour of television ever produced is A Charlie Brown Christmas. Each year, some network pays millions to rerun a show that earned back its full cost of production in 1965.
Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Kim Kardashian and Simon Cowell are among the wealthiest folks in the world whose riches were at least rooted in the success of one TV show. I don't know to what extent their shows would qualify for such a list…and I really don't have a lot of interest in trying to define the parameters for such a list…and this is only measuring success by money. So this'll have to serve as my answer. I'm sure I'm leaving off dozens of contenders.
