Played
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Jay Leno takes it on the chin from NBC when the network informs him his future as Tonight Show host has a looming shelf life. He needs to hand the keys to Conan O’Brien, who doesn’t want to be stuck in the 12:30 slot forever.
As Letterman’s ratings at CBS decline, NBC makes a bizarre decision to keep its hosts happy and in the family. It’s a decision that backfires in every possible way.
The fallout will spark the last, devastating shake up in the late night wars, as the battlefield goes through radical changes. Technology and taste never sleep, and the networks—and the hosts—are forced to redefine themselves as the industry moves toward the future.
Pre-order our new book The Art of Business Wars now before it is released on April 13.
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CBS makes David Letterman a very attractive offer to leave NBC—a move he’s very willing to make—but his long-time network is desperate to keep him. So desperate they dangle the prize that Letterman felt he deserved all along—the Tonight Show.
That doesn’t sit well with Tonight host Jay Leno, who takes a major defensive stance to hang on to the position he worked so hard to get.
And in the wake of the Letterman struggle, an unknown talent emerges into the late night stratosphere—Conan O’Brien. He brings a unique, fresh appeal and his own set of rules as the networks battle for ratings, and audiences get finicky.
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When longtime Tonight Show host Johnny Carson shocks NBC with the surprise
announcement of his departure, Jay Leno is anointed as the next host of the network’s flagship franchise.
But there’s a problem: after a decade hosting Late Night at 12:30, David Letterman thinks Carson’s job should be his. Getting passed over is unacceptable to Letterman, and he’s going to exact a painful revenge on NBC.
And Leno’s firebrand manager Helen Kushnick is going to feel the backlash of her scorched earth policy in dealing with NBC brass. Their reaction will bring Leno’s career to the brink of destruction.
Pre-order our new book The Art of Business Wars now before it is released on April 13.
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Johnny Carson – the man who defined the Tonight show – is nearing retirement. But NBC has yet to settle on an heir. And that sets the stage for one of the most painful moments for the late night rivals battling for the throne. It will prove enormously embarrassing for Carson, Leno and Letterman. And they will vent their sentiments on stage. Meanwhile, Arensio Hall, a young, black comedian, is blowing past all of them, and posing the first serious challenge to Carson.
Pre-order our new book The Art of Business Wars now before it is released on April 13.
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The late night saga begins in the uncharted wilderness of after-hours programming. In the early 1950s, an era when television broadcasting literally stops at 11:00 p.m., NBC dares to push the envelope with something called the Tonight Show. It works.
It seems insane, but American audiences are ready to stay up--and advertisers are ready to spend big money to reach that audience. In the wake of Tonight’s success, CBS and ABC are left in the dust. But they’re determined to grab a slice of that valuable late night pie as the war begins for ownership of the midnight hour.
Pre-order our new book The Art of Business Wars now before it is released on April 13.
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The cutthroat evolution of late-night talk shows is a long and fierce battle for advertising riches, ratings and sheer egotistical triumph. It’s the early 1980s and NBC’s Tonight Show is the unbeatable standard in its class, and its long-time host Johnny Carson the indisputable god of late night.
Hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno and later Conan O’Brien all worship Carson. Each of them desperately covets the Tonight Show seat and will stop at nothing to get it.
As fickle audiences demand increasingly cutting-edge entertainment after dark, the fight to win late night will be redefined. And it will be ugly.
Pre-order our new book The Art of Business Wars now before it is released on April 13.
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The 1990s are about to end and ESPN is on a quest to strike down the competition before they can muster the strength to challenge it.
But when ESPN starts using the NFL to gouge the nation’s cable providers, Fox Sports gets an opportunity to dominate regional sports TV.
And as Fox steps up its attacks, ESPN soon discovers that it has to take drastic action to stop an exodus of viewers.
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It’s the early 1990s and media mogul Rupert Murdoch is out to shatter ABC, CBS and NBC’s stranglehold on American TV and take his Fox network into the TV majors.
To succeed, Fox will need a powerful battering ram and only one will do: the ratings magnet that is the NFL. And having been spurned twice before by the football league, Murdoch’s going to need all his cunning to get the NFL on side. But that's only the first step in a campaign to challenge ESPN’s position as the champion of American TV sports.
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It’s the late 1970s and TV sports is equivalent to a few hours of programming on ABC, NBC and CBS each week.
But in Connecticut, Bill Rasmussen is on a mission to change that by creating a cable TV network dedicated to airing sports. Trouble is, he’s got no money, no sports rights, no TV studio, and no cable provider willing to put his network into homes.
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It’s 1983 and shopping mall tycoon Alfred Taubman buys a struggling Sotheby’s, excited by the opportunity to revitalize the art auction market and increase competition with the company’s longtime rival, Christie’s.
But when the 1990s dawn, a slumping economy spells trouble for both auction houses. Sotheby’s and Christie’s hatch a plan to surreptitiously work together to increase profits for both companies, a decision that will have fateful consequences.
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By 2019, Taylor Swift's battle to get her masters back from Scooter Braun has gone public. She decides to fight by deploying her own, very dangerous weapon -- the Swifties. And Braun pulls out all the stops to protect his $300 million asset.
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By 2014, Taylor Swift has spread her wings into pop. But as her self-confidence grows, so does her discontent with her label. So she makes a bold move. Meanwhile, mega-manager Scooter Braun sees a business opportunity in Swift's early masters. The problem is, Swift has serious beef with Braun and his clients. And when she finds out about his plan, it'll be all out war.
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When Taylor Swift signed to an upstart country label as a teen, she probably didn't realize that she was signing away the rights to something she would spend decades getting back -- her masters. Swift’s fight for her $300 million master recordings is a scrimmage that could reshuffle the entire business model of the music industry. But first, Swift has to make it big. And that's a one-in-a-million shot.
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It’s the 1960s and Honda’s about to speed into the car market before Japan’s government can put up legal roadblocks to stop it.
Meanwhile,Toyota’s already zooming ahead. Its latest models are about to take Japan by storm and arm it with the funds it needs to make another run at the U.S.A.
But to break America, Toyota and Honda will need to outmanoeuvre the auto titans of Detroit.
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It’s 1945. Japan lies in ruins in the aftermath of World War II. The population’s starving, the cities are reduced to rubble, and the nation’s defeated. But from the war-torn wreckage, two motor giants are about to rise.
The first is Toyota. It’s the brainchild of Kiichiro Toyoda, the big-dreaming son of a wealthy industrialist who wants to create Japan’s answer to Ford.
But the other contender must travel a harder road. Its founder Soichiro Honda is a poor boy from the sticks and his only resource is his own ingenuity. So he’s starting on two – not four – wheels.
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A supertanker carrying 53 million gallons of crude oil runs aground in Prince William Sound sparking the worst man-made ecological catastrophe in the country’s history at the time. As Exxon struggles to get the cleanup underway, fishermen worry that this is the end of life as they know it
Links to recommended reading:
Not One Drop by Riki Ott
Out of the Channel by John Keeble
The Spill: Personal Stories from the Exxon Valdez Disaster
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Robert sits down with David Bell to talk about some fucked up shit that happened in reality shows because, damn, that Kissinger series was hard.
FOOTNOTES:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/11/a-catalogue-of-exploitation-the-maker-of-adocumentary-about-the-jeremy-kyle-show-speaks https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/13/jeremy-kyle-show-death-on-daytime-reviewa-shocking-expose-of-the-itv-series https://uk.news.yahoo.com/former-jeremy-kyle-show-viewers-ashamed- 100331877.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig= AQAAAAZWgpvLwCbf6hmmQQWlA3xWu_MZyFTeGYxHHhcO3AJO2qBXMvj8SdwkheQErRgVyOKss5QVZf lkaNF4Hb6rZCr-c4Ohyc_Ctyh- 58oGaoEstnukpGOzWDp_gmNDq1VrqvWn1TEzotD_TIOaQ9wQ5iTFYrUsxN7DcMlAGwByPqRX https://www.the-sun.com/news/4893340/jeremy-kyle-breaks-silence-steve-dymond-documentary/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/4893340/jeremy-kyle-breaks-silence-steve-dymond-documentary/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/fife/3102437/jeremy-kyle-lie-detector-itv-fife/ https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/09/the-reality-principle https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/tv/three-love-island-suicides-raise-concerns-about-reality-show1.69761973 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/25/a-cruelty-free-loveisland-impossible https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jul/18/problem-with-loveisland-people-who-turned-it-down https://ew.com/tv/2020/01/30/ryan-jenkins-jasmine-fiore-megan-wants-amillionaire/ https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/27/why-suicide-is-stillthe-shadow-that-hangs-over-reality-tv-hana-kimura-terrace-houseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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On March 28, 1979, Bill Zewe hears an alarm at Three Mile Island. Something has gone terribly wrong at the nuclear power plant, in southern Pennsylvania. And now, the operators at the plant must move fast—before a crisis engulfs the region.
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Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Bill Cooper.
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Robert is joined by Billy Wayne Davis to discuss Woulter Basson, a chemical weapons engineer with a hard on for racial extermination.
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