Ben Silverman

Co-Chairman
NBC Entertainment & Universal Media Studios

First with his own company, Reveille, and now at NBC Universal, Ben Silverman has built a career in finding quality programming concepts—both scripted and non-scripted—and adapting them to the U.S. market. He has also pioneered innovative ways of seamlessly connecting advertisers and consumers through comedies, dramas and reality series.

WS: When you worked in Europe, what struck you about the television business there?
SILVERMAN: The primary difference was that public television underpinned most major markets outside of America. The industries developed differently because one was created purely for commerce, whereas the other was created for public service. And this disadvantaged for a while the growth of media and entertainment internationally, but today has paid off in that there is such a high quality level and tremendous infrastructure of creative people that are funded by ARD or the BBC or France Télévisions.
That was something that was really unique and interesting. And so was the ingenuity forced onto the international market because countries did not have an aftermarket within their own market. In the U.S., shows could make a lot of money in syndication after their run on the network, whereas internationally, shows had to make their money back in their initial run. So reality shows came about because of the economic realities of those markets. Shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? were a lot less expensive than some of the big dramas that were being made in America, or shows like Big Brother were much more efficient and technologically forward than U.S. comedies.
WS: What is the U.S. networks’ attitude today toward ideas from the international market compared to their attitude ten years ago?
SILVERMAN: There is a tremendous hunger for hits, and there is a lot less arrogance about where those hits come from.

WS: What did you learn from adapting The Office for the U.S.?
SILVERMAN: Working across a number of ideas that were adapted and translated, both successfully and unsuccessfully, I learned that from the start the piece itself needs to be great, as the Ricky Gervais version of The Office is. And then it needs some luck, alchemy and passion on the other end to turn out great in the new market. And Greg Daniels, Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson and the entire acting and creative ensemble is as strong as I’ve ever seen, and they were really able to make The Office become an American hit. That has been tremendously exciting and successful.

WS: What were some of the challenges you faced in adapting Betty la fea for the U.S. audience?
SILVERMAN: There were a number of challenges because we were significantly altering the format and moving away from a telenovela-style production schedule. Something that we debated a great deal and something that the American networks at the time just resisted, but that today at NBC we’d be open to, was the notion of [a classic novela] with multiple episodes a week, and a beginning, a middle and an end, over the course of the series. Instead, with Ugly Betty we followed more of a dramatic 22-episode-a-year structure. The show is fantastic, but it was a challenge, and that is one of the reasons why I brought in Salma Hayek to help me. She is a big star [and had experience in the genre] and is just such a passionate partner. I also brought in a number of advertisers who were familiar with the format internationally and had success with it, to help me lobby the network, because the network didn’t want it at the time.

WS: The Tudors represented another departure from the usual way of pulling together a show.
SILVERMAN: Yes, when I did The Tudors it was another example of breaking through the system. I got a British writer, Michael Hirst, to work with us on it. It was a story that everyone had always identified as being British. I sold it first to America. I couldn’t even get anyone in the U.K. interested in the project. I pitched the story to Bob Greenblatt [the president of entertainment] at Showtime. He was passionate about it, championed it, and we ended up selling it to the BBC, even though so many people think it feels like a show that could have started in England.

WS: From your experience, what is the best way to involve advertisers in development and production?
SILVERMAN: From the network point of view, we take all the risk—we fund the show and handle the deficit financing. Then we take our product to the advertisers and work with them to become mutually beneficial partners. NBC delivers the best value proposition for advertisers because we work so closely with them and understand their business so well that we really utilize our television programs as elements of marketing campaigns for them. We don’t just approach advertising in the traditional way that some of our competitors do, which is selling advertising space inside of programs. We try to develop brand stories and brand messages.
So generally, the process is that we take the risk and exposure and then bring in advertisers and help shape messaging for them. I could see the process evolving down the road, but producers aren’t willing to take the risk and the advertisers aren’t yet ready to take the risk. So until then, we’re still the ones making the bets, but what is really unique about us is we’ve taken those bets to the advertisers and worked with them.

WS: There has been a lot of discussion over whether it is necessary to do a pilot to produce a series or not. Are there certain projects that can go straight to series without a pilot?
SILVERMAN: It’s all about the project, the financial package and the creative vision. We are doing about nine pilots right now; we also have a couple of acquisitions of finished series and we are also co-producing 13 episodes of a straight to series.
We take what we call a portfolio approach around the content. Some projects are so compelling, whether because of the way they are put together as an international co-production, or the way talent comes together, that they should go straight to series. Sometimes, the elements don’t come together and you want to see the chemistry and the rhythm in a pilot to make your decision about the show.

WS: What are the biggest challenges facing network program departments today?
SILVERMAN: A lot of people always talk about the Internet being competition, but really the number one competitor to broadcast TV is cable TV. And luckily NBC Universal is in all of those businesses, but as choices continue to proliferate, it’s just harder and harder to get initial attention to your shows. And it’s more and more important to be patient and allow a fan base to discover those shows and hopefully return to them and allow those shows to grow. That is a challenge in a tough economic environment, but it’s also a challenge just to accomplish that. We’ve seen over the past two years that shows don’t launch as hits right away the way Friends did, they require more of the nurturing that Seinfeld, The Office and Hill Street Blues got. So all the choices out there available to consumers make it more and more important to stick with what you believe in.

WS: And this is a departure from the way business was done ten years ago, right?
SILVERMAN: Yes, I think the openness to do many different kinds of deals is something we are very proud of at NBC. We want to not only run the business as it has been run, but we want to evolve the business to inherent success in the future as technology changes.