"Ted Sarandos"

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Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, we've been doing this podcast for quite a while now, and we're always kind of reminded of people who come on and kind of maybe for the first time listener don't quite understand the format that we've created And I just kind of like to take this time and explain to you.

Speaker 1 Are you sound like a pilot on an airplane? Like, hey, everybody, I just want to let you know we're approaching Chicago. Oh, Hara.

Speaker 1 I just thought I'd take it down because of the energy that they're about to be smacked in the face with by you. Your energy couldn't be lower.
You're so low, you'd have to rally to die at this point.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. I'm trying to balance this out, Will.
I'm trying to balance this out because you are high on energy 24/7.

Speaker 1 So I'm just going to keep it like here because these people don't know what they're in for. Welcome to Smartless.
Welcome to Smart Last. Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 1 Smart

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 1 Jason and I are in a fight, apparently.

Speaker 2 So Will is, Will's doing a project.

Speaker 2 He's in Atlanta. What?

Speaker 2 So he's in Atlanta because I'm also in Atlanta working when I'm there, when I'm working. Right now I'm not.
I'm in Los Angeles. But so Will, Will said, so I'm going to be doing a project in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 Jason, where are you living? And is it a good spot?

Speaker 2 I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's a great apartment building. So you should get a place there.
So he gets a place there.

Speaker 1 In the same building.

Speaker 2 In the same building. Now, Will, Will is an attractive man and needs no help from anyone.

Speaker 2 Yet he is super passionate about keeping a fellow near him that is an artist with a comb, I guess, and you feel that you need some sort of hair help. So he's got a guy with him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, listen, listener.

Speaker 1 That's not me. He travels with a groomer and an assistant.

Speaker 2 No, I'm talking. So he's got three people with him living in Atlanta.
And guess what? It's too crowded to live in the apartment with these three guys.

Speaker 2 So while I'm out of town, he asked me if he can use my apartment.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you know who gave me the keys? You know who gave me the keys? Yeah.
Jason's Atlanta assistant. Because he's got a few.
In every city, every port he lands. he's got one hearing.
By the way,

Speaker 1 let's not get into the fucking assistant shit because your assistant... Do you want to tell me? Do you want to tell a listener? This is a work program.

Speaker 2 I am trying to help out.

Speaker 1 Doing your laundry is work. No.

Speaker 1 Guys, can I just... You open up a fucking Pandora's box, baby, and you'll never come in.
In the gay world, in the gay world, they're called travel companions.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 So Will's a little top heavy on the travel companion.

Speaker 2 So he needs to get away and stay in my place while i'm out of town and guess what this guy does he starts taking snappies of little areas around my apartment and throwing them up on a group chat snappies yeah

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 i showed you bateman's fridge so embarrassing and it looks like it honestly it was just different colors of like different flavored waters that have no sugar obvi yeah and a couple other waters and then like half a yogurt and sugar makes me puffy will and i i sent a picture to jason and to jimmy to kimmel and molly and to thoreau saying just in case you guys are worried that jason doesn't live like a total psycho in atlanta

Speaker 1 and then i took a picture this morning because i was up there this morning what were you doing up there this morning because you don't like to crack

Speaker 1 your treadmill buddy i was using your treadmill have you noticed that the monitor on your treadmill is a little like shaky when you run yeah exactly it's noisy can you fix that especially when you're heavy so so i go up there it doesn't shake that much when i'm on it I look in the cupboard and it looks like a hospice, like somebody's dying.

Speaker 1 They're in their final days. And it's just, it's like seated crackers.

Speaker 2 Did you put that picture up on the chat too?

Speaker 1 I'm saving that one, motherfucker. Oh, God.
I'm saving it.

Speaker 1 And you know what? I thought, I thought, maybe I won't do it. But after this on-air barrage.

Speaker 2 Have you stayed off my toilet? Have you stayed off my toilet?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I haven't taken a day. By the way, if you have your own apartment, what are you doing in Jason's apartment?

Speaker 2 I told you, he's got travel companions.

Speaker 1 So they stay there with him. Exactly.
I've got my buddy Eli, whom you know. Yes, I know.
So I've got Eli with me, who's my pal and also works with me.

Speaker 2 Some of us know how to travel alone. I've been there for 10 years alone.
Okay. Sometimes I like quiet time.

Speaker 1 You'd like to be alone without people and include your family in that. You want to be alone.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and your hair's not that complicated. Send Eli home.

Speaker 1 Looks good, though, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it looks great right now. He's nowhere near you, right?

Speaker 1 He's right outside. Are you kidding?

Speaker 2 Did you do last looks for this little?

Speaker 1 No. You know what I did?

Speaker 1 I was working this morning doing some voiceover, and then I went up to your apartment and I worked out, and then I took a shower and I came back here.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to, right after this, I'm taking a snooze. Uh-huh.
Another one.

Speaker 2 In my bed?

Speaker 1 How many channels do you get on that cable? Because I haven't cranked that up yet.

Speaker 2 More than you've got at yours.

Speaker 1 You got the full package? Yeah, you bet you got it. I bet you got a pretty full package.

Speaker 2 That was my handle in high school.

Speaker 1 Sean. Yeah.
We have a guest here, and it's Jason's guest, and let's get to him. So stop interrupting, please.
Stop interrupting. Sorry, sorry.

Speaker 2 All right, listener.

Speaker 1 God, if Bamin's such a baby about his apartment.

Speaker 2 Shut your mouth, or I'm going to take my key back. Listener, we're going to have a conversation.
Yes, I've written this. Listener, today, comma, listener, comma, we're going to have a conversation.

Speaker 2 Shut up. We're going to have a conversation with somebody who you've never met, but you live with.

Speaker 2 A person you count on for your routines, your moods, your link to some of your closest and most intimate relationships.

Speaker 2 Someone who, if he drastically changed the way in which he did his job, it would unsettle your emotional well-being and also the health of the financial markets.

Speaker 2 He loves sandcastles, ham radio, taxidermy, and hand gliding.

Speaker 2 He's got a very recognizable laugh, so shut up.

Speaker 2 He's recently converted from Virgo to Capricorn, and this is his very first interview here in the United States.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our friend and your housemate, co-chief executive officer and chief content officer for Netflix, Theodore Anthony Sarandos Jr.

Speaker 1 Come on, Teddy. Hey, Teddy.

Speaker 2 Oh, God, I couldn't believe you started laughing.

Speaker 1 I saw Will stop there for a second, like, why is that so familiar? What does that sound? Ted, it's so nice to see you. Hey, Sean, how are you? I'm good.

Speaker 1 You know, we had a dinner a long time ago, Ted, long, many, many years ago, at our mutual friend John Davis' house, which he's the best. And

Speaker 1 he, I said to you, I go, gosh, it must be so annoying. You must get so many people that come up to you on a daily basis saying, Hey, what about this for a show? What about this?

Speaker 1 Constantly pitching you anything and everything for Netflix. And you said, Yeah, well, you know, it's part of the job, but you know, it's what it's what it is.
And I go, wow, that must be something.

Speaker 1 And then literally, maybe two minutes later, I go, Hey, Ted, what about this?

Speaker 1 I got a thing.

Speaker 2 No, I was going to ask you about that, Ted, because you're so you're so you know i mean you listener can just hear his laugh you're such a personable warm person doesn't throw up any sort of like uh barrier like uh please don't come talk to me you're you're always very sort of inviting i can't imagine that it was bigger and better than that as far as your warmth before you became the man running the world.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 has that lessened?

Speaker 2 It has to, hasn't it, to keep people away?

Speaker 1 Someone asked me before, you know, what I get to do is big and there's a ton of things to do all over the world and someone asked me what i like the most about it and weirdly the thing i like the most is sometimes the thing i like the least which is being pitched i mean i actually the best part of the day sometimes is hearing an incredible pitch it's almost like decadent almost that this is my job is to be told a story to.

Speaker 1 Now, it's not great if I'm in the middle of dinner with my wife at a restaurant and people do it. And that happens a lot.

Speaker 1 And I kind of feel for people that I I think that someone gives them the really bad advice, which is, hey, if you ever see a person who buys TV shows,

Speaker 1 you may never see them again. So do it now.

Speaker 1 Just pitch them. Just get in there.
Get it out. Get the idea out there.

Speaker 1 So to that, so you started, and we can kind of get into the history and the history of Netflix a little bit and your history with them. And I know that you've grown with the company.

Speaker 1 What was the first year, do you think, that you started hearing pitches on a regular basis? And how did it increase in volume? Like, did it pick up steam really quickly?

Speaker 1 Well, the very first pitch was literally someone walking out of the door at the end of a meeting. And it was the guys from MRC who we were meeting with.
MRC also produces Ozark, Jason, baby.

Speaker 1 What a show. Yes.
What a show. Oh, you like it? Yeah, have you seen it? Oh, God, you got to catch it.

Speaker 2 No comment from you, Sean.

Speaker 1 Got to catch up.

Speaker 1 Well, we were meeting with them about buying the rights to a movie.

Speaker 1 And literally, while they're walking out of the door, they say, hey, by the way, we're going to make a new TV show, take it out to the market called House of Cards.

Speaker 1 And it's got Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey and Bo Willemont, this Oscar-nominated guy, wrote these three amazing scripts. And David Fincher is going to direct the show.
Are you interested? No. And

Speaker 1 yeah. So, and I just, you know, it was funny.
I had known the original House of Cards from seeing it on DVD, actually, from the BBC.

Speaker 1 And we had been talking about someday getting into original content and making original shows for Netflix.

Speaker 1 So I said, wow, if there's ever a moment to step in, if there was ever an unbelievably perfect packaged show, it'd be this one. It's a great concept.
It's really great scripts.

Speaker 1 And then basically they asked us about hearing the pitch and we pitched them. Wow.
So that was something that you and Reed had talked about doing down the road.

Speaker 1 And then they kind of dropped it on you and it sped up your process a little bit. Yeah.
I mean, we knew we'd do it at some point. I was always a little nervous that we'd wind up doing it small.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like people want to get their, you know, dip their toe in, and then it's all original programming doesn't work because this show didn't work. And you went the other way.

Speaker 1 I went the other way, which I said, if it doesn't work, it's got to, I mean, let's eliminate that we made the wrong choices because this show was great.

Speaker 2 And in order to compete with the other potential buyers, you guys had to really come over the top because, as I think you've said before, like there were a thousand reasons for David and MRC to not do it with you guys.

Speaker 2 So you had to come in with two seasons, $100 million, and kind of make it undeniable. All the creative freedoms and autonomy that you guys have

Speaker 2 justifiably become famous for.

Speaker 2 And was that the moment when Netflix was most exposed as far as like, we're going to do it, let's do it now, a big outlay of cash. And if we make it through this transition, the wins at our backs?

Speaker 1 The main one, Jason, is that we thought about there's going to be a couple of things that we thought about when we thought about should we make original programming for Netflix. A big one was

Speaker 1 if everybody has all the same stuff,

Speaker 1 then it's going to be just a big race to the bottom and it's not a very interesting business.

Speaker 1 And how do you distinguish, how does any network distinguish themselves from the others is by their programming.

Speaker 1 And at the time, we were just by kind of buying everyone else's reruns and putting them on Netflix. So this was like, at some point, we're going to have to do this.

Speaker 1 And the other one was, if we believe that the world we live in today, where there's an HBO Max and a Disney Plus and a Paramount Plus,

Speaker 1 all those people are not going to want to sell us their programming anyway. So we better start getting good at it now.
You knew that was coming. Even though

Speaker 1 you were in business with those people, you knew that there was going to be that tipping point where it was going to go the other way and that they were no longer, and you were going to be their competitor.

Speaker 2 The foresight is amazing.

Speaker 1 And so you guys, of course, have always been a subs business subscribers. What was your subscriber sort of approximately like when you first started making house of cards to today, for instance?

Speaker 1 Whatever's public, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. No, what's interesting about it is we started in the world, some people don't know this, but mailing DVDs around.
Right.

Speaker 1 So, we were a DVD-by-mail service before we were streaming content.

Speaker 2 Sean, you're still doing that, aren't you?

Speaker 1 I still have a couple that haven't returned. You still got a couple? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 they're coming. They're coming.
I'll send you a courier over to pick them up. Thanks.

Speaker 1 So, then we started offering the streaming content to our DVD subscribers for free. And then later on, we separated the two businesses.

Speaker 1 But it was before we started doing any original programming, we had about 25 million subscribers who were taking DVDs and streaming.

Speaker 1 And then today we're at 204 million. Wow.
204 million worldwide. Yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, but is the math, I mean, I'm not a smart guy, and I don't need the boys chiming in on this. There it is.

Speaker 2 If there's 7 billion people on the planet, and you guys are effectively, as a result of your success, effectively a utility now, if there's 7 billion people on the the planet, even half of those people you would think would need the utility of basically television, if you guys are only at 200 million now and it is such an incredible success story, the growth potential for your company is

Speaker 2 you can't even quantify it, right?

Speaker 1 And Ted, before you answer that, just how does that feel? You guys are making incredible content and Jason has now dubbed you a utility. Go ahead.
You're like the fucking water and sewer.

Speaker 2 Well, could you have a, would you be more successful than being something that people rely on like electricity or water?

Speaker 1 I mean, or like your TV. I mean, like TV is today.
And I think there's about a little more than a billion pay TV households in the world, the people who pay in some form for subscription television.

Speaker 1 And there's about more than 3 billion people with a mobile phone who watch content on their mobile phone around the world.

Speaker 1 And they're paying for a subscription and they're watching content on a screen. So when you think about addressable world, we're only about 10% there.

Speaker 1 And then the other pieces of it will, you know, will keep growing in terms of the way you use Netflix today. A lot of people share their accounts with other people and all those kind of things.
So

Speaker 1 at about 200 million people, we might have about 400 million watchers

Speaker 1 today. Wow.
Now, in the 70s,

Speaker 1 especially on CBS, they had Saturday night. They had the foresight to, everybody used to watch TV on Saturday night.

Speaker 1 Like it was like, you know, the New Heart Show or something like that, or Carol Burnett. It was like this massive, crazy lineup and the whole nation was watching on Saturday nights.

Speaker 1 Then the networks had the foresight to go, oh, wait, everybody's now slowly going out on the weekends. They're not spending as much time at home at night on the weekend.

Speaker 1 So they had the foresight to change programming in that way to the week, right? To the middle, to the regular.

Speaker 1 And then what I think I keep coming back to is, like Jason said, the foresight to know, to actually shift the human behavior, the watching behavior of the audience to now

Speaker 1 consume the way we consume entertainment like how describe that like for house of cards was it originally just like well we have to get into original programming so let's just do one a week like whose idea was it like wait a minute let's shoot the whole thing great i love i love this answer i i dealt this answer tell them

Speaker 1 this is the happy accidents of happy accidents uh because

Speaker 1 I never even thought about it, Sean.

Speaker 1 When we finished the season, we were getting ready to launch, somebody said, how are we going to put it out?

Speaker 2 They're already done shooting both seasons of House of Cards.

Speaker 1 Not both, but they'd shot out the entire first season. And we had a meeting saying, well, okay, well, how are we going to release them? And I go, how do you mean?

Speaker 1 And they're, well, you know, one a week, four a month. And they said, well, I don't, everything on Netflix, we got it a season after it was on TV before, and we put up the whole season.

Speaker 1 So I said, well, we can't have one show, one episode a week and everything else all at once. Let's just put it up all at once and see how people watch it.

Speaker 2 And you were seeing the data on your service that people are watching multiple episodes of those full seasons that they they were pulling down.

Speaker 1 And some people watched two, some people watched three, but nobody watched one. Like nobody watched one a week.

Speaker 2 And you had to have a conversation with Stevie Van Zahn at Lilyhammer before this, correct?

Speaker 1 Or was it afterwards?

Speaker 2 And tell them how that went.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Lilyhammer was actually our first original show that launched on Netflix. Our first deal was House of Cards, but talk about getting a great pitch.

Speaker 1 I get a phone call from an agent who said, would you take a phone call with Stevie Van Zahn? Yes. Out of the blue, yes, exactly, yes.
And so I get on the phone with with Stevie. He's in Norway.

Speaker 1 And he went to Norway to produce this Garage Band album.

Speaker 1 And somebody approached him with a script for a show about a guy who's just like his character, Brother Sopranos, who goes to Lillehammer, Norway to be in the witness relocation program.

Speaker 1 And he goes, yeah, I'm on board. And he does it.
He plays this character. He produces the show.
And they didn't give him very much money. It's Norway.

Speaker 1 And he was trying to get a soundtrack money together to put music on the show.

Speaker 2 You got all the fish he could handle, though, right?

Speaker 1 Got a great fish deal.

Speaker 1 Complimentary.

Speaker 1 Three bandanas. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But no, but by the way, no trailers in the middle of winter for Italy. They had to like knock on doors and ask neighbors if they could use their houses.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 But anyway, so he tells me about the show, and I go, Great, can you send me a script or some? He goes, we're finished. I'll send you the whole show.
So he said the show, we loved it.

Speaker 1 And we did this deal to put it on. And then when we told him how we were going to put it up all at once, he goes, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We just spent nine months of our lives making this show.

Speaker 1 You're just going to dump it out all at once. And I go, yeah, just like an album, just like an album.
Yeah,

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Speaker 1 So, Ted, kind of getting back to, I don't know, do you guys still have, is there still the DVD business at all? Or is that?

Speaker 1 There's a few million people who still take DVDs.

Speaker 1 I'm guessing it's, you know, parts of the country that don't have fast broadband or people of a certain age that are unlikely to adapt to new things.

Speaker 1 And then maybe even for hardcore, like if you're a real crazy deep movie lover, they still have everything ever published on DVD on that service. Right.
Oh, wow. Okay.
So that's where you start.

Speaker 1 So you started,

Speaker 1 and you had started before Netflix, you were in the video business as well, right? Home video, yeah, back in the old video store and home video distribution days. Oh, right.

Speaker 2 You and Quentin Tarantino worked out well out of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that

Speaker 1 video store nerds. So you started that, and then you come onto Netflix, and you continue in distribution, and it becomes distribution of DVDs.

Speaker 1 And then quite quite sort of organically, and kind of by mistake, I know that you guys had this plan, but that just kind of happened. You start getting into content

Speaker 1 and you start being sort of the gatekeeper of all this content for Netflix and making all these decisions. And you're a guy who has a really strong,

Speaker 1 strong sort of encyclopedic knowledge of film and television. You know,

Speaker 1 I don't think there's ever been a time where I've referenced something where you haven't gone, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you'll list like everybody who's in it.

Speaker 1 And so you went from that, and then you became the guy who started to greenlight all these like really great shows, these really top, like, you know, quality programs and movies.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, Netflix makes original movies.

Speaker 1 What was that shift like kind of going from distributor to sort of content provider and really overseeing all this great, you kind of backed your way into becoming a creative in a way.

Speaker 1 And that's usually the length of abatement question. Yeah.
I know, that's true.

Speaker 2 That's from using my apartment, I guess, is catching.

Speaker 2 So you became the maker and not the seller.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was, you know,

Speaker 1 in all fairness, I, we failed miserably at it first because we did a thing back when we were just doing DVDs where I took a bunch of money that we could barely afford and started a label for Netflix called Red Envelope Entertainment.

Speaker 1 And that was

Speaker 1 that the porn name? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 That is a good porn name, too, though.

Speaker 1 But this was basically foreign language films and documentaries, indie film, and some live stand-up stuff that we recorded only for DVD to put it on Netflix as exclusive content.

Speaker 1 Was that Live at the Purple Onion? Was that part of that? Yeah, that was Zach Alfanakis.

Speaker 1 So we did, one of the first things we did was a documentary with Patton Oswald called The Comedians of Comedy.

Speaker 1 And it was a documentary about their comedy tour of Patton, Brian Possane, Rhea Bamford, and Zach Galfanakis, who I was a huge Galfanakis fan. And I didn't know anyone else who knew him at the time.

Speaker 1 I remember you were, and that you're not now. I remember that.

Speaker 1 I said it in the past tense. Hey, Zach, if you're listening, Ted hates your shit.

Speaker 1 But in the middle of the production of the doc,

Speaker 1 Zach came in with this idea of a comedy special, which was basically going to be like a fake documentary about him traveling to do his show. And it was so, the pitch was so crazy.

Speaker 1 And I said, look, we don't really do all this yet. I'll tell you what, I'll do.
I'm going to give you $100,000 $100,000 and a camera and whatever you bring back, I'll put on Netflix, I promise.

Speaker 1 And it was Zach Galvanica's live at the purple onion.

Speaker 2 Wow. Now, now, you know,

Speaker 2 you are nowhere near a doormat, nor the people that are on your team. But that sense of

Speaker 2 creative latitude and

Speaker 2 freedom is something that you have been really consistent with. And your place is known for giving that kind of autonomy to the creatives.
And it's a great recruiting element.

Speaker 2 It's a sincere position that you take. Like if we're going to hire creatives, let's let them do the creative work.
It seems like such a common sense policy and position.

Speaker 2 Why is it that you think it is so rare in the industry?

Speaker 1 I think, you know, it's an offshoot of the executive philosophy at Netflix, too.

Speaker 1 You know, hire the best people and give them the tools they need to do the best work of their life and then get out of their way.

Speaker 1 It's just something about human nature that people feel like they need to add value to everything, no matter, you know, if they do or not.

Speaker 1 And I think the idea, and I would always, I have a lot of friends like you guys who tell these horrific stories about network notes for television shows.

Speaker 1 And I always think, man, if I was ever in that role, I'd hate for people to be talking about me like that or my company like that.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking about this idea, like, who has a better idea of what's funny than the funny person you hired to make this show? Right.

Speaker 1 Right. It's such a common sense concept.

Speaker 1 And by the way, do you ever have this fear that you're going to become, that Netflix, once you guys become, you're very successful now but you become so successful that you end up becoming like the status quo that that starts happening always the culture at netflix is that something you have to kind of stay on top of always i i don't i don't imagine any of the folks we're talking about wanted to end up doing this right i think there's something they made a left somewhere where they should have made a right right and i'm constantly thinking about how do you make sure we keep that spirit alive how do we make sure one i had somebody who made a documentary film for us recently who made one back in those early red envelope days And when they came in, they said, I have to tell you, Ted, it felt about the same, which was a huge compliment.

Speaker 1 I just said I'd love to hear it. Ted, I don't know if you remember, you and I had a conversation, we can use this or not, but about somebody that we both know who was working for you.

Speaker 1 And I said that this person comes from that world. They had come from a more standard studio world and network world.
And you had said, I said, is it tough?

Speaker 1 Do you have to kind of break them of those old habits? And you said, yes.

Speaker 1 I do. Absolutely.
Yeah, you do, absolutely.

Speaker 1 And I do think it's one of those things where it's like, I've had someone on our team basically say something to the effect of they couldn't get into the writer's room to meet with the writers.

Speaker 1 And I said, well, this showrunner must not think you had much value. So that's really on you.

Speaker 1 That's really on you. You really have got to.
Wow. Because I've never met a creator yet that didn't want to have a great collaborative.
conversation. Right.

Speaker 1 That really didn't want to figure out, is this working?

Speaker 2 But there is that dynamic where a creative person will quickly sense whether the note is coming from a place

Speaker 2 where they're sort of assessing a false negative on what you're doing because they're giving you a note to try to get you to do it the way that they had always imagined it would go, as opposed to the note coming from a place of trying to help you do what they think you're trying to do.

Speaker 2 Right. So it comes from a place of helpfulness is the good note as opposed to conformity, which is the bad note.

Speaker 2 And it really is consistent over there with you guys.

Speaker 1 It's great. We'll go super meta, talk about one of your other episodes, but the interview with Ron Howard, I loved that.

Speaker 1 And I thought what his comment was, is that I'm not looking for a different idea. I'm looking for a better idea.
Yeah, right. That's great.
I love that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I got that for you. Yeah, because different is disruptive.
Better is additive.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 2 Because there's a million differences. You know, they're all good.

Speaker 1 What is your opinion about? I would love to hear your opinion about the network system because it seems like the pilot system is kind of broken and like

Speaker 1 so listener pilot is sort of like the audition episode and if everybody likes it then they order more episodes yeah sean how could you leave that out sorry tracy sorry tracy usually you're i can't believe you'd be so irresponsible so sorry that's from my sister in wisconsin um

Speaker 1 so so because the business model i don't understand explain it to me and and and where you think it's going and it is it just like a a cycle that can't be broken at the networks where they shoot all of these they spend all this money shooting all of these pilots or buying these scripts and then they make 10 pilots and then they pick one and then that one doesn't work and then and and now the audience is now on to them now the audience i feel for and it seems like for sitcoms especially they'll put like two or three on if they don't get a number they'll pull it off so the the audience goes i'm on to you if you're not invested how do you expect me to be invested that's why i'm going to netflix because netflix is invested yeah a lot of these tools that were built, I think we're all like figuring out safe ways to say no.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, and I feel like I'm always trying to figure out how can we possibly say yes to this. How can we figure out how to make this work?

Speaker 1 And I think the pilot, you know, again, for the audience, they shoot one episode, they test it with sometimes like 15 or 16 people. And if they didn't think it was funny, they don't do it.

Speaker 1 And I felt like, well, that seems crazy. Who are these 16 people? And that's just a weird offshoot of the way they test screen movies.

Speaker 1 And they all just go to a shopping mall and find 100 people who have nothing to do but go sit inside of a movie theater.

Speaker 1 And then those 100 people decide the fate of this sometimes $100 million investment. That seems insane.

Speaker 1 So I feel like what we can do is say, let's bet on the creatives. Let's bet on ourselves.
When we say yes, you know, we may say yes to a full season or we may say yes.

Speaker 1 to a little bit more development, but I never want to do like a pilot and then see how that thing works. Cause I just see how our own shows evolve from the first episode to the last.

Speaker 1 If you watch a, you know, the famously, the Seinfeld didn't, you know, it took four years. Cheers.
Cheers. Mary Tyler Moore.

Speaker 1 James Brooks said that Mary Tyler Moore was not Mary Tyler Moore for four years. Yeah.
Right. And there's that kind of,

Speaker 1 and I think that Jason and Sean will agree with me. They've probably been part of shows before that are, you just preemptively disagree.
Yeah. Wow.
Both of you. Sean and I both passed.

Speaker 1 That there's this kind of, there is this sort of adversarial relationship between creatives and the networks often until you kind of prove it and you become a big success.

Speaker 1 And then even then, then they're playing catch up and it's like, now we're going to fuck the studio and we're going to try to get more money. There's never a great dynamic there.

Speaker 1 It's always adversarial. And of all the shows, every time I've worked with you guys, whether it was on Arrested or Bojack or Flate or whatever, there's never that relation.

Speaker 1 That relationship is always really solid. You're regarded as a partner, truly.
And I don't even mean that in some sort of BS fucking way. I mean that for real, like, hey, let's check with Netflix.

Speaker 1 And the notes that come from you guys never come like, hey, man, you guys have, it's always like, hey, did you guys think that maybe blah, blah, blah. You go, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
No, I think it's, I just feel like it scales better. It lasts longer.
Because remember, I came into this business as a fan. Yeah.
I didn't grow up in the business. My dad didn't do this.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm still a fan.

Speaker 2 I also think the audience might get a sense that there is,

Speaker 2 you know, the fact that there's no ratings

Speaker 2 and that you guys,

Speaker 2 for many probably great reasons, keep all of that information in-house. You don't share it with any of us that make stuff for you guys.

Speaker 2 You'll imply, you know, it's kind of doing well or not doing well, perhaps, but it's really sort of like if it's not doing well, it's gone. But if it's doing well enough to stay on, it stays on.

Speaker 2 There's no sort of teeth gnashing about, oh, the ratings were up or down today or tomorrow. There's sort of a, all of that kind of nonsense is taken out of it.

Speaker 2 And things just really exist on the merits, which I think the audience picks up on as well.

Speaker 1 And sometimes, you know, relative to what it costs to make a TV show or a movie, sometimes you don't get enough people to watch it.

Speaker 1 And eventually, if you do that too often, you don't have enough money to make new shows. So the balance of this is just relative to what it costs, can we get people to show up?

Speaker 1 Maybe what's unique about this relative to TV is, you know, it costs X amount of money to make a half hour of network television, and everyone has to like it.

Speaker 1 And this has got to be like, you know, we can make a show for a couple hundred thousand people if it's economically sensible we can make a show for a hundred million people um if it's economically sensible one thing that we get to look at sometimes that's super helpful is among the people who push play so there's a million reasons that sometimes the show just doesn't connect with the public and nobody everyone missed a great show but among the people who push play did they like it And did they like it enough to watch the whole thing?

Speaker 1 Did they watch four episodes in one night because they couldn't go to sleep because they loved it so much?

Speaker 1 Those are really positive signals, even if the big audience didn't show up in the first season that we used to make that second season decision.

Speaker 1 So, Ted, so like a lot of your competitors, I remember a few years ago when they first started making noise about, to Jason's point, about not releasing your numbers.

Speaker 1 And there were a few people who ran other networks who were almost beside themselves about the fact that you wouldn't release it.

Speaker 1 And we know that because what they actually said publicly, they were almost beside themselves. Can you imagine how they were privately? Yeah.
And they were so pissed.

Speaker 1 And your language in dealing with it was so great because you were just like, yeah, I know people are mad, but we're just not going to do it.

Speaker 1 And how did that feel to you? Well, the funny thing was it wasn't, we were not trying to be secretive in it.

Speaker 1 I just don't think it's an apples to apples thing when we say how many people watch a show on Netflix versus how many people watch it on the network and on day one.

Speaker 1 So if you're selling advertising for a movie that's going to open this weekend, how many people saw your your ad on Thursday night is hugely valuable information.

Speaker 2 And it correlates to the fee you're going to charge

Speaker 2 Crest toothpaste to run your 30-second ad. If it's on a show that's watched by 30 million people, you're going to have to pay X for that 30-second ad.
10 million people, it's Y. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And because our business doesn't, we're not selling toothpaste for crest,

Speaker 1 it's irrelevant in the same way. So over time, I think there is a measurement of, is this show relevant to the culture?

Speaker 1 Are enough people watching it for me to think about it?

Speaker 1 And so and that's how you see us being much more open about, you know, in the first 28 days, X millions of people watch this show and that show, because I do think it's a bit of a cultural measure, not a business measure.

Speaker 2 But also, even practically speaking, for you guys, when you're hearing that pitch, you can go back to your office. You can say, okay, so this is a show about auto racing in, you know, Iowa.

Speaker 2 And you can look on your, right? I mean, it's a great show already.

Speaker 2 And you can look at your internal metrics and you can say,

Speaker 2 how many of our subscribers love stuff about Iowa and cars? And you go, well, that's a million people. And so a million people paying $17 a month for the subscription.

Speaker 2 Would that justify the presumed budget of this show? I mean, I know it's not as simplistic as that, but that's kind of at the core of what you're trying to

Speaker 2 manage in your mind about whether to make the investment in the show or not, whether it's right for your subscribers or not, correct?

Speaker 1 All those indicators, yeah. And then every once in a while, something just comes out of the blue, like a Queen's Gambit.

Speaker 1 Nope, there was no data that says chess lovers and this period chess piece is going to

Speaker 1 be the most watched show on television. By the way, Ted, Queen's Gambit was great.
I could have used less chess.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? That's your note? It was a little heavy on chess. It was a little, was a little, honestly, and I didn't know until the last episode it was about chess.
You didn't even realize.

Speaker 1 No, I was like, what is this game? And then I bought a board and I'm in. Now I'm in.
I play it. Now you're all in? I play it out.
It's kind of like checkers, right, Sean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it says a little bit checkers. It's on the the other side of the checkerboard.

Speaker 1 Just flip it over. Like the underworld and stranger things or whatever it is.
Okay, so my question is

Speaker 1 back to my kind of original thing. So in your opinion, how long do you think the network system can sustain itself before what happens? Before, I don't know.
Like, what do you think about that?

Speaker 1 I think the inevitable thing that happens is... Everyone starts bringing their original stuff to their streaming services.

Speaker 1 That means they're not going to put it on the network and it's just going to be a race to the bottom. It's going to be sports and news.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And, you know, and you saw Amazon bought Thursday Night Football or is buying Thursday Night Football.
Yeah, so what does that mean?

Speaker 1 Like, so when I, so NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, what's going to happen to those channels and those networks? I don't know. I mean, what?

Speaker 1 We have to go. Okay, good night, everybody.

Speaker 1 One way to think about it is if you watch,

Speaker 1 I'm a big fan of, we watch a lot of home and garden TV in our house. I'm very embarrassed by the number of hours we spend spend doing this.

Speaker 1 But if you watch it right now, you'll see they just launched their own service called Discovery Plus. That's a little pitch for them.

Speaker 1 And they have turned their network into a Barker channel for that service. They're basically every minute you watch a Discovery Network on TV, they're saying, don't watch it here, watch it there.

Speaker 1 The one blessing that we've had in our business, in our professional existence, is we've never had to manage ourselves out of anything.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like we didn't have to like, how are we going to replace our movie theater business? We didn't really have a business of people playing the theater.

Speaker 1 yeah so for us we've been say just go where the audience is and we were able to do it pretty nimbly all these companies make all of their money on advertising and cable television fees uh are going to have to replace that with the revenue on their services and in in kind of some balanced way or they're going to end up in these weird places.

Speaker 1 And anyway, I think they'll navigate it fine. But it just, these, these changes don't come around very often.
Yeah. I mean, this is the first big change since cable TV years ago.

Speaker 2 How have you noticed personally, to the extent you're comfortable revealing,

Speaker 2 in and around the community, how has it evolved socially when you are at a function or a dinner with one of your colleagues that happens to be heading up, let's say, one of these broadcast networks,

Speaker 2 some of the places where you represent a threat to their existence early on. Now, actually, you guys have become such leaders that it's actually buoying the whole industry and changing the model.

Speaker 2 And people are having

Speaker 2 these pluses, right? These streaming services as offshoots, and it's really elevating some of their business models.

Speaker 2 Are they now less sort of

Speaker 2 confrontational, for lack of a better word? And are they more sort of deferential?

Speaker 1 He wants to know if people are hissing at you at parties.

Speaker 1 Are they friendlier now?

Speaker 2 How do you feel about all that stuff? What's it feel like out there?

Speaker 1 You guys know this town, not to my face.

Speaker 1 But you can sense it.

Speaker 2 You're really in touch and a sensitive guy. I'm sure you can see how it's kind of ebbed and flowed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this person X, it was particularly annoyed by the existence of Netflix and all the changes. And, you know, basically, we didn't have to put out ratings.

Speaker 1 And why would they put someone from a Netflix show on the cover of a magazine? No one knows who's watching. I mean, you say these things very publicly.
Right. And he was very upset about it.

Speaker 1 Which the irony is this person X now runs a network doing exactly that. Yeah, the comments didn't age well.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But what was really the funniest story for me in my time in the business is there was a party, one of these night before the Emmy Awards parties, And there was two parties going on next door to each other.

Speaker 1 And one of them was the big industry party, and the other one was just for this person's network and their, and their talent.

Speaker 1 And when I walked, of all people meeting, I was walking in the party, I went left instead of right and walked into their party. And they're all, you know, the biggest stars in town.

Speaker 1 So I thought, this is the big party. And, and it was their private party.
And as I'm walking around, I come to the realization, oh, this is his party.

Speaker 1 His party. So I like, it was almost like an episode of I Love Lucy.
I'm trying to sneak out the side door so no one sees me in there.

Speaker 1 And then I walk around behind the outside of the party to walk out, but I walk out across this big glass wall where he is making a speech. And I'm literally walking behind.
Oh,

Speaker 1 his nightmare

Speaker 1 came true.

Speaker 1 And person X, by the way, is so talented. I mean, there's

Speaker 1 incredible decisions. But that brings me to like the fact that you, again, talking about like the foresight into this new world of programming with Netflix.

Speaker 1 And then you see things like Quibi or other people trying to push those boundaries further by thinking about what's next.

Speaker 1 And I know you probably hate this question, but to the guy, you that thought of this whole thing that changed the world, do you have any kind of what's in your crystal ball next?

Speaker 1 Like what in the world is next? You know, it's funny. Every couple of years, we're doing that thing that we didn't do before.
So we started off making our first year out, right?

Speaker 1 We had House of Cards, Lily Hammer, Arrested Development. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What a show.

Speaker 1 I say both words, by the way.

Speaker 1 Oh, you do that now because you know Ricky. You know Ricky.
Ted knows it makes Ricky Gervais so crazy when I say arrested.

Speaker 1 It makes him fucking nuts.

Speaker 1 And Hemlock Grove, right? So

Speaker 1 that was our big lineup.

Speaker 1 And then after that, we started, you know, know we didn't do any unscripted we didn't do any animation we didn't do any feature film and we didn't do anything uh outside of the united states or not in english so over the next every two years or so since that launch in 2013 we've expanded to do all those things and now we are you know producing uh 200 million dollar feature film uh we're doing local language shows and about we have about 200 uh local language original shows premiering this year what i wanted to get to that's been a big part of your expansion well two things.

Speaker 1 One was when we started making arrested development, and Jason, you remember we all went out to Las Vegas to make this announcement. It was very weird.
We didn't really know each other, Ted, at all.

Speaker 1 I mean, we'd sort of met. Yeah.
And then we ended up,

Speaker 1 you and I stayed with David Cross and

Speaker 1 we stayed and played craps one night. We almost cleaned the place out.

Speaker 1 Come on.

Speaker 1 Where was I?

Speaker 1 Was I already passed out?

Speaker 1 You were in bed, yeah, with a mouthful of walnuts. You were just already asleep.

Speaker 1 And so we go to, and so at that time, I will admit that when we first

Speaker 1 started hanging out and you announced the show, I had no idea. Of course, I had very little idea of what it was going to be.
You didn't know what you guys were going to become yet.

Speaker 1 I had even less of an idea, right? And then it became, arrested development kind of happened at a time when you guys were rocketing. Your business was really expanding quickly.

Speaker 2 Why didn't we ask for stock instead of that?

Speaker 1 No, no, because we're so stupid.

Speaker 1 You got in there as well.

Speaker 1 you got in the deal. You didn't look at it.

Speaker 1 Imagine if we just listened to our lawyers and not Bateman.

Speaker 1 So anyway, we go to, but I was going to say, so Ted, a cut to a couple years later, we do Bojack, and I want you to quickly tell the story about how Bojack came to be in a minute.

Speaker 1 But we go to, do you remember that time we went to Europe? I had just done the first season of Flaked, and we went to Europe to promote. Netflix.

Speaker 1 You were opening in France, so we went to Madrid, and we went to Italy, and we went to Paris, and you and Reed gave all these great speeches in front of people. But I remember distinctly.

Speaker 1 So we're in like, I guess we're in Milan and all these reporters going, oh, why should we care about Netflix? What's it going to do?

Speaker 1 And I said to them clearly, I want you to remember saying this to me now,

Speaker 1 a year from now. And of course, it becomes true.
And Netflix goes and it explodes in all these countries and it becomes the thing.

Speaker 1 Part of that, this is a huge question. So long, I'm bored myself.
Yeah, it is. It's Tuesday.
You made all these local productions in every country that you went to.

Speaker 1 That became a big part of your success. It's very big.
And what's cool about it is they get watched everywhere, including in the U.S.

Speaker 1 So our watching of non-English television has grown 50% year in year. And things like, you know, Korean drama has grown 100% in the U.S.
Huge, huge. And you know how much I love those European shows.

Speaker 1 I told you years ago, and then you'll text me, you'll say, we got a new show coming out. You got to check it out, you know.

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Speaker 1 So far, we've been chatting with Ted Saranda's CEO. I would like to chat with Theodore.
Oh, Theodore. Oh, my gosh.
Here we go. This is where he makes you cry.

Speaker 1 Favorite color. Get ready.
That was a very smooth transition.

Speaker 1 us back to Arizona.

Speaker 2 What were you driving to the video store? Was it, let me make a guess here.

Speaker 2 Was it a 320i?

Speaker 2 Was it a Jeddah?

Speaker 2 Or was it a Dotson B210? And was there a mullet?

Speaker 1 There was not a mullet, but there may have been a Ford F-150 pickup there. There we go.
Oh, there you go. This was Phoenix, Arizona, Jason.

Speaker 1 Is this, are you doing the thing you've dreamed of doing? If not, what is that dream? How much longer can you do this? Do you you get burnt out? What else do you want to do?

Speaker 1 I am doing way beyond what I could have dreamed of doing in my life.

Speaker 1 I really hold the art of making film and television in very high regard. I think it plays a critical role in people's emotional and mental health.
I agree.

Speaker 1 I think it is so important what happens every day there. And I feel like being involved in it at any scale is insane.
As a kid,

Speaker 1 for some weird reason, I needed like five hours of sleep. sleep.
So I would be up late and I'd watched TV. And my life,

Speaker 1 I've talked about this kind of publicly before. My home life was pretty chaotic when I was young.
I have five brothers and sisters, very young parents, and it was kind of like there was no bedtime.

Speaker 1 There was no curfew. It was pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 Television brought me a sense of order. I knew what was on at 11 o'clock on channel five, and it was really important for me to have that order.
It really did. It had a huge influence on me.

Speaker 1 And then what it came through is I had a deep reverence for old things.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've seen every episode of Dick Van Dyke and Eddie Griffith and other shows 100 times. I could quote them.

Speaker 1 And so, growing up in this, thinking about how important that was to me, I just wanted to be around it, let alone, you know, which was fine for me.

Speaker 1 You know, when I was young, the gauntlet, a movie from Clin Eastwood, they came to Phoenix to shoot. And my parents drove me downtown and dropped me off for the day to watch them shoot the movie.

Speaker 1 And it was. Anybody want a kid? Oh, completely.
And it was the hottest day in in Arizona history. I don't think they gave me any money for a drink, even.

Speaker 1 There's a button, but they sat out there all day and watched them shoot. And my tennis shoes were literally melted on the street.
It was so hot that day. Wow.

Speaker 1 And it was just to get a glimpse of this magic that was happening.

Speaker 1 And I don't know, I probably still have them somewhere, but I collected some of the old shells where they were shooting at the bus and all that. Wow.

Speaker 1 And it's just to me, it's like I got close to the gods that day.

Speaker 1 And then, so to me, Sean, you say, are you doing what you want to do? Beyond. Oh, that's beyond.

Speaker 2 But also changing it to a way that you kind of saw, maybe even at a young age,

Speaker 2 where it was kind of missing and where it could become better. I love what you said.
I read somewhere where

Speaker 2 you got tired of sleeping too late on Saturday and missing your cartoons.

Speaker 2 So the sense that you could have that on demand at some point maybe was lodging in your mind.

Speaker 2 And then also watching all the Mary Hartmann's back-to-back to back-to-back on a Sunday night after they aggregated on that day.

Speaker 1 That was my first binge.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly. So that that wouldn't be a negative when that became a possibility for you guys.

Speaker 1 It's funny. My kids are 26 and 24 and I try to get them to understand that there was a time that, like you said, if you slept in on a Saturday, you missed cartoons that way.
The whole week.

Speaker 1 And if you didn't see a show in prime time, you had to wait 20 years to see it again.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And now you not only when you have a new show this week and you go, you know, you can watch watch it whenever you get around to it But you're also when you come on against other shows new this week You're also coming on against everything ever made.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's like it's a very strange dynamic and I think the relationship people have with programming all kinds of storytelling is so different. Think about a movie.

Speaker 1 Our relationship with movies used to be movies were huge, right? They were bigger than way bigger than us. And they were totally in control.

Speaker 1 If the movie started at eight o'clock, you better be in your seat at eight o'clock or you're going to miss the beginning.

Speaker 1 And if they said something that you missed, you had to buy a ticket and come back in two hours when they say it again.

Speaker 1 And now movies are smaller than us generally, and we control when they stop and start. And I don't, it's an interesting thing to me

Speaker 1 with the relationship to storytelling and listening and all those things, how that evolves over time when that relationship is so dramatically different than it used to be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, also, it's funny you said that, but we do now measure everything sort of apples to apples.

Speaker 1 Like you can watch a show and say, hey, I watched this comedy, and then somebody goes yeah but it's not as good as the wire and you're saying well yeah of course it's different like this operates over here and this lives over here and now you everybody just compares everything to every like

Speaker 1 everything yeah the question you ask each other we all ask our friends and we get asked of each other is what are you watching what have you seen lately i think one thing that doesn't get mentioned enough arrested development in that first season of new content on Netflix, why it's so kind of symbolically important is when we first started the DVD business, people would just try boxette television.

Speaker 1 We started seeing how people watched TV shows like that because they were watching, you know, three or four episodes on a disc and then changing disc really fast. They really got into it.

Speaker 1 And then we started streaming, the only things that the networks would sell us were things that were not sold into syndication. And Arrested Development had just come off of the network that year.

Speaker 1 And they didn't have four seasons, so it hadn't been sold, hadn't been syndicated. So Arrested Development was one of the first things we had on Netflix to stream.

Speaker 1 And it was literally a completely different experience to watch Arrested Development four or five episodes at a time.

Speaker 1 Because, as you guys know, Mitch will write a joke that sets up in episode two and pays off at episode seven.

Speaker 1 And there's a 30-40% chance you are not going to see episode seven if you watched episode two.

Speaker 1 So, on Netflix, people watch the show in its entirety in a complete straight sitting and realize the genius of this comedy, how it was written, how it pays off, the complexity, the multiple, how many storylines, how many characters, how many jokes can all be running at the same time.

Speaker 2 Because you needn't waste any time repeating exposition because you can assume the audience just finished watching that episode.

Speaker 1 Nobody missed the reference. Nobody missed the reference.
And then, taking from that, and I remember kind of the conversations leading into that fourth season, the first Netflix season of Arrested,

Speaker 1 that Mitch Wood development. Have you seen it yet, Sean? I know you saw a couple.
Are you all in? Good for you. Good for you.
I saw the first three, and I laughed out loud.

Speaker 1 Oh, did you feel that you'd had enough? Good stuff. What was my character's name? What was my character's name? What's my character's name? Gob.
What's my character?

Speaker 1 I thought his character's name is Job. And then I said,

Speaker 1 who said Gob? Who the fuck?

Speaker 1 But as you know, Mitch started immediately. One of the things that he got on to was he might have been one of the first

Speaker 1 showrunners, creators, writers to write to the format.

Speaker 1 He was really into that idea. Remember how excited he was by that? He was so giddy.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's giddy all the time, but he was really particularly giddy about that the first time i walked in when mitch was writing the new season for netflix and i walked in that little room that he was writing and there was index cards and color coded yarn all around the string yeah with the string of plots it was insane it was so amazing i'm so i'm that is an incredible comic mind but i i think in general i'd say that Usually when people say things are ahead of their time, that's a nice way of saying it didn't work.

Speaker 1 But Aresta Development is truly ahead of its time. It's a show that was built to be binged before anyone was binging television.
Yeah. And so

Speaker 1 going from a show that was ahead of its time to a show that almost never was,

Speaker 1 Bojack Horseman was a 13-minute presentation that Raphael Bob Waxberg wrote and that

Speaker 1 I did with Aaron Paul and

Speaker 1 Paul of Tompkins and Amy Sederis, amongst other people. Patton was in the first,

Speaker 1 and everybody passed on it and they brought it to you. And I remember talking to you, you were like, Yeah, I think we're going to do it.

Speaker 1 Like, you were literally like the last stop. And you're like, I was like, really? Yeah, I think we're going to.

Speaker 1 And you got, not only did you pick it up, you got right into it. Yeah.
And if you remember that first, so first of all, tell me about what it was when it came across your desk, Raphael's piece.

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, it's remarkably funny. I mean, the show, and it had real meat on the bone.
I mean, it wasn't just silly funny.

Speaker 1 It was funny with a really serious, I mean, it's a comedy about depression,

Speaker 1 which is not on TV. And if it was, it probably wasn't funny or it was too, you know, getting that balance right is really tough.
And that show did, right? It was unusual in that way.

Speaker 1 And I remember at your old offices, do you remember like the first season?

Speaker 1 I forget what episode it was, but one night you and I went for dinner and then you were like, hey, I just got the rough in the rough animatic of like episode five.

Speaker 1 And then we kind of looked at each other and you said, let's go to my office and watch it. And we went, do you remember we went and watched it in the old screening room there.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we were both so excited about that.

Speaker 1 Before it even came out, we were really excited about it. That's, remember, I had that great hallucination animation sequence.
That's what we were dying to see. That's what it was.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I got to tell you, but you told that story earlier about us going when we went to Vegas.

Speaker 1 Again, this is back to that, you know, you're just, we were so green, you know, at the beginning of this.

Speaker 1 We brought everybody to the NAB convention in Las Vegas, which is where all the the like the TV tech people go. Not like the press they go to see.
No one was bringing talent to the NAB convention.

Speaker 1 We did it. Maybe it was an accident.
I'm sure it was. But I'm sure people go, why are they bringing all that?

Speaker 1 And remember, it was the whole cast of oranges, the new black, the whole cast of arrested development. And it was like a big star-studded thing in this place where all the TV tech people come.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were just kind of winging it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, Ted, a friend of mine and I play this stupid thing where we go quick, quick, quick, and you have to name like three things, but you can't think about it.

Speaker 1 You have to say it super, super fast. You cannot think about it, right? So I'm going to ask you a question and you have to answer it super, super fast.
Ready?

Speaker 1 Quick, quick, quick, name two shows that you're watching right now on Netflix. Go fast, super fast.
Go. Titty in Georgia and Firefly Lane.

Speaker 1 Great. That's all the time we have.
Wow. Shit, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 Now, are those the same shows that Nicole, your wife, is watching?

Speaker 1 That's why it was so easy for me to answer.

Speaker 1 So do you guys, do you guys, are you one of those ideal couples that watches all the same shows together yeah we don't have very similar tastes i mean nicole does not like anything dark in any way and i do uh and she really loves like uh she's a very tough customer my wife nicole so she but she loved she was an early spotter on bridgerton she knew it was going to be a hot one um and uh the show uh virgin river was one that she really loves and the one thing that our sweet spot where we agree is is like i said each gtv so that's why we watch so much that.

Speaker 2 So she's not cross-infecting

Speaker 2 your algorithm, right? She's got her own account because Amanda is screwing mine up so badly.

Speaker 1 You guys have to, you have to set up a separate profile. That's the key.
Because for us, it's the same thing. We will watch four hours of Virgin River and then Nicole goes to bed and I watch.

Speaker 1 six hours of the Chappelle show.

Speaker 1 I don't think Netflix knows anything about that. Jason, just get another account and give Ted, Jesus Christ, man.
Don't be such a cheap dick.

Speaker 1 Just get another fucking account for your wife so that she can, and don't jip Ted by having 80 people with the same password and all this BS that you always show off about.

Speaker 2 Listen, if I had stock, I would protect my profits.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 my favorite thing about Nicole is when she admitted to me years ago, well, she said in front of you about how much stuff she gets from Amazon. And she's like, I don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 No, Nicole was buying DVDs from Amazon, right?

Speaker 1 Of movies that are on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Now, was it pulling teeth to get to get a little window to do a little TED time today? Or is she,

Speaker 2 what's it like over there in your personal world? Do you live in a prison or

Speaker 1 does she give it up? No, she, you know, she, I think, really appreciates the time when I need to go off and do something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, the thing about this pandemic and us being locked in the office, I go to the office now a couple of days a week at her request. Sure.

Speaker 1 Sure. I had a good buddy.
I had a good buddy who said when this pandemic was a few months in, he said, my marriage wasn't built for 24 hours a day. No, none of them were.
No, none of them were.

Speaker 1 So, she was, I said, I'm going to do this tomorrow. She goes, Oh, great.

Speaker 1 And she'll, I assure you, she's, I do bring a little bit of a hectic energy to the place, and she appreciates the distance sometimes.

Speaker 2 Sure, well, we won't take you away from her any longer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she was very jealous when I told her who I was going to be talking to today. She said, It's love to Ellen.
Yeah, we love her.

Speaker 1 And I've got to tell you, you know, a lot of people, I've heard a lot of folks throughout the quarantine saying how much Netflix was so important to them.

Speaker 1 But I have to tell you, prior to the quarantine,

Speaker 1 I did not listen to a lot of podcasts. I just didn't, I didn't, I don't have a long commute.

Speaker 1 You and us both. And what did I get into? I mean, of course, because my three great friends have this great podcast, and I obsessively listen to every episode of Smartless.

Speaker 1 I think it's, I love what you guys are doing. The only thing I like better than someone who I love when they're a guest is when it's someone I don't know much about.

Speaker 1 And you guys have so much fun with them, and I really enjoy it. So thank you for doing that.
Thanks, buddy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, very cool.

Speaker 1 Thank you, you, Ted, for being here. Absolutely, Sean.
Good to see you. Great to see you, man.
It's so good to see you, Ted. You guys, too.
Have a good budget. All right, pal.
See you, buddy.

Speaker 1 Have a good day. Bye-bye.
Bye, buddy. Boy, that Ted.
You know, here's the thing about Ted. We all know, and even to our listener, too, everybody knows bosses in the world, right? Everybody has a boss.

Speaker 1 Everybody knows a boss. Work with a boss.

Speaker 1 But like, Ted is so rare in that he's, like you said, Jason, so personable and so likable and so jolly and so supportive. And

Speaker 1 you never see him in a bad mood.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I really, I was really sincere about that at the beginning. Like, I just don't know how he manages his time being so inviting to everybody he comes across.

Speaker 1 How does he ever leave a room? I know. Sociopathy.
Yeah, sociopathy. Ted is such a, here's what we're kind of saying.

Speaker 1 Like, not only is he sort of a very personal guy and quite gregarious, he's just a very even-keeled guy. Yeah.
And so he doesn't lose, he never loses sight of the prize.

Speaker 1 And it's a testament to somebody who loves their job and loves the position they're in and always has, right? And came by it organically.

Speaker 1 What? You know what I mean? Like

Speaker 1 he's not out of his depth at any juncture.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like I didn't even ask the obvious question of, so do you want to be a writer or a director or a producer? Like he just, like, he just seems so pleased and content

Speaker 2 with where he is and what he is doing and enjoying expanding that, diversifying, and staying in his lane in sort of the best possible version of the lane.

Speaker 1 And I knew you were going to say staying in it. I knew you were going to say that he's staying in.
You like to talk where everybody is.

Speaker 2 If I can say lane each day, I will continue to win.

Speaker 1 Why does he stay in his lane? Do you think he's got a sexy indifference? Oh, God damn it. Oh, no.
You know what?

Speaker 2 I think we're spending too much time together. No, we're not.

Speaker 1 Wait, can I ask you a question, though? What is Highway rhyme with?

Speaker 1 Bye. Oh, shit.
That's it, Bai?

Speaker 1 But that's it already?

Speaker 2 No, no, no. Hang on.

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to throw a veto on that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Highway does not rhyme with Highway. No, you got to do better than that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, no, you're right. You're right.
So let's buy that back.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think we're done talking about Ted yet.

Speaker 1 Is that the first ever aborted body? Yeah, definitely. Okay, so wait.
So what we didn't get to with Ted was Netflix and Chill, which I wanted to get to, which you still don't fully understand.

Speaker 1 Am I right, grandpa? I don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 It's a sex thing, right?

Speaker 1 Or a code. Oh, for fuck's sake.
This is so fucking embarrassing. How do you leave the house? What is Netflix and chill? Okay, so Sean's equally dumb.

Speaker 2 We're smart less.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 you know what? I might just include my parents on this, too, so I can just don't have to explain it four times. I'll just knock all four of you out of it.

Speaker 2 We're listening to the only smart guy in the world.

Speaker 1 Go ahead, Will.

Speaker 1 So, so Netflix and chill is a way, it's not necessarily a sex thing, but it's a term that people use to say, hey, why don't you come over and hang with me and we'll watch Netflix and chill?

Speaker 1 It's kind of like the old, like the old time, old-timey, like, hey, let's make out and watch TV, or sort of like, uh, hey, let me show you my apartment.

Speaker 2 Come on up, uh, let me show you around. That's like the old code for come on.
Once you're in, what, then I can just kind of lock up.

Speaker 1 Let me show you around my apartment. What the fuck are you? This is when you're picking up straight, like behind a dumpster.

Speaker 1 What's going on? Let me, let me, let me introduce you guys to the gay world. Uh, we don't say that, we just say, hey, do you want to hook up? Oh,

Speaker 1 like, why reflex and chill? Well, because.

Speaker 2 That's kind of a Hulu thing, though, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Because I've always wondered what Hulu means.

Speaker 2 Is it a derivative from hook up?

Speaker 2 It's H and the U and no?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 1 So, wait, I want to say that I think we're always fascinated, like to go back to Jason, what Jason said about the foresight of like, I think we're endlessly fascinated with people who seemingly can see into the future and predict anything.

Speaker 1 Like any kind of scientist, or in this case, this programming genius about Netflix is like, how did you know that? How did you, and the risk and the timing, it's just always fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And, and, and right at the beginning, uh, you'd, you'd see that stock and you'd say, oh, gosh, what are they going to do?

Speaker 2 I, I just, I want to, I want to sell that, you know, and, but like today, if you saw a bunch of stock, what would you say? And you wouldn't say sell, you'd say,

Speaker 1 buddy, buddy.

Speaker 2 That's how you do it, fuckface.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart,

Speaker 1 less.

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