Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, March 19th, 2024

Dan Schneider has his Barbara Walters moment

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, March 19th, 2024.

PROGRAMMING NOTE
It's my birthday and my original plan was to skip today's newsletter and enjoy a very rare day away from the business. Sadly....

DAN SCHNEIDER HAS HIS BARBARA WALTERS MOMENT
For decades, ABC reporter and anchor Barbara Walters was the go-to interviewer for celebrities and politicians dealing with bad press. There was this predictable arc to the process. Some piece of embarrassing and/or career-threatening news became public and once the controversy became impossible to ignore, the affected famous person went on ABC and sat down for an hour-long primetime Barbara Walters interview. 

Celebrities, politicians and the culturally infamous went to Walters because she ticked several of the most important boxes for any crisis management team. She was seen as a fair journalist - friendly with the powerful but also capable of asking difficult questions. And because she had a long career, she spent time with the powerful and well-known in the off-hours. She wasn't seen by celebrities as one of them. But she was a known quantity and that made sitting down with her to undergo a few uncomfortable moments a safer bet than just speaking to some random reporter.

Former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider's life has gotten a lot more complicated since the airing of the Investigation Discovery documentary Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV, which aired on Sunday and Monday night. It took a day or so for the public pressure to build. But if this was 1975, ABC would be promoting a special Barbara Walters special for tomorrow night, promising an "exclusive and unfiltered conversation with the beleaguered producer."

But this is 2024, so instead Schneider fired up his neglected YouTube channel and posted an 19-minute mea culpa, moderated by the well-respected journalist BooG!E, who played T-Bo on Schneider’s show iCarly.

And while YouTube may be the new ABC, there is a reason why these public apology attempts come off as disingenuous. Because if you don't have someone pushing you to be contrite about specific events and challenging some of your attempts to save face, the results just look insincere and half-hearted.

Schneider opens by thanking BooG!E for reaching out and giving him a chance to discuss the documentary. Making it sound as if Mr. BooG!E was the first person who had bothered to do so. Many journalists had attempted to speak with Schneider in the past - myself included. The producers of Quiet On Set made numerous attempts to get him on camera and eventually were able to get a statement from him as well as the answer to some questions they posed based on events described in the documentary. Schneider could have discussed the issue anytime he wanted. He just chose not to do so until remaining silent was no longer an option. Then he opted to speak with someone who used to work for him.

Which pays off if Schneider was looking for a friendly audience. Because an actual journalist wouldn't let the producer get away with this response to the question about past behavior he might regret:

"I would snap at people sometimes. I would be snarky when I could have given them a nicer answer. I would not give people the time they needed, I would be in too much of a hurry. I'd move on to the next thing I had to do. And watching the show, so many times I wanted to pick up the phone and say to those people, "I am so sorry."

There is this little understood journalistic technique known as the "follow-up question" and it is apparently a concept Professor BooG!E is unaware of. Because he didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question, "Well, Dan, then why didn't you call them?"

Instead, he opted for the less traditional hard-hitting follow-up question, "Now you've written hundreds of episodes, thousands of jokes have been told. But currently, where we are, some people think that some of those jokes are inappropriate for children. What do you think of that?” Which is slightly more hard-hitting than “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” But only slightly.

Aargh. I can’t keep dissecting this any more and retain my sanity. It's not that the answers provided by Schneider are false. They are just carefully parsed and he utilizes that time-honored approach of answering specific charges with an apology that is general and doesn't actually address any of the individual claims. It's the crisis management equivalent of being accused of beating someone with a bowling bowl and apologize for unspecified "bad behavior."

The fact Schneider felt the need to do this interview is an indication of how Quiet On Set has resonated with audiences. He obviously feels the need to blunt criticism, a move which says a lot.

One question that I did have after watching the interview was that Schneider seems really focused on his Nickelodeon shows retaining their value and remaining available for licensing. He offers to edit out any scenes that offend critics, so the shows can continue to be enjoyed by future generations. 

It's not clear to me whether he still retains ownership of any of his shows or what financial interests he holds in them other than the mandated creator/writer/director credits and residuals. This feels like an interesting financial wrinkle in the story that has yet to be unpacked.

5 QUESTIONS LEFT UNANSWERED BY QUIET ON SET
Despite having spent a lot of time reporting on this story, I found myself with so many unanswered questions after watching Quiet On Set.

I wrote a piece today outlining five of the most important questions for me, and these just touches the surface:

What Did Brian Robbins Know And When Did He Know It?
Yes, it's a phrase that is so over-used it's almost a trope. But in this case, it also accurately describes the problem.  Robbins has been the president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon since 2021, and is also the CCO of the Kids & Family division of Paramount+. By all accounts, he and Schneider had a close relationship, especially in the early years of Schneider's career.

Robbins was the creator/lead writer of the sketch comedy series All That, the show which gave Schneider his start at Nickelodeon. He was a director/producer on Keenan & Kel, as well as an executive producer on The Amanda Show and the Amanda Bynes WB comedy What I Like About You.

This was a period that was by all accounts filled with turmoil and yet Robbins has never spoke publicly about the period in any detail. Speaking with contemporaries, Robbins was seen as a protector of Schneider, although there is no way of knowing from the outside if that manifested itself as simply "Dan's a great, passionate guy." Or did it extend to running interference at the network for an old friend?

Given that Robbins is now at an upper-level of Paramount Global (which owns Nickelodeon), he certainly would have a depth of knowledge about Schneider's behavior and the network's response. Not that I expect he'll discuss it - even off the record.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

TUESDAY, MARCH 19TH:
* Brian Simpson: Live From The Mothership (Netflix)
* Dinner Party Diaries With José Andrés (Freevee)
* Forever Queens (Netflix)
* Physical: 100 Season Premiere (Netflix)
* The Valley Series Premiere (Bravo)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20TH:
* Danger On Party Island (LMN)
* Homicide New York Series Premiere (Netflix)
* Icons Unearthed (Vice)
* Morphle And The Magic Pets Series Premiere (Disney Jr./Disney+)
* Palm Royale (Apple TV+)
* Top Chef Season Premiere (Bravo)
* X-Men '97 Series Premiere (Disney+)

SEE YOU ON WEDNESDAY!