Transcript: Wild Kingdom - Which Hollywood Animal Are You?

Execs are warthogs. Producers are hyenas. And so on. Rob Long on what he observed on safari

A friend called me up recently with bad news about his show.

“Did you hear?” he asked. “We’re cancelled.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I say.

“You know how it went down? This is classic. Get this: they call me up on Monday and tell me that they want to have a meeting this morning to discuss the creative direction and development of the show.  

And I said to them, ‘Does this mean there’s going to be a show? Because I’ve been getting some pretty strong signals that we’re about to be cancelled.’ And they’re, like, ‘Are you kidding, we love the show, blah, blah, blah.’ So I’m thinking, okay, we’re going to get to do a few more of these at least.  So this morning I’m logging on to the meeting –”

“The one they called, right?” I ask, just for clarification.

“Right. Right. The meeting they called. And I get an email. From the network. They’re canceling the meeting. And a few minutes later I get a call telling me they canceled the meeting because they’re canceling the show.”

“Why did they call the meeting in the first place?”

“Right! What about the meeting? What about the meeting? They said that on Monday they didn’t think they were going to be canceling the show, but that today, this morning, they changed their minds.”

“Today is Wednesday.”

“Right. Right!”

“What happened between Monday and this morning?”

“I asked them that. What happened between Monday and this morning? And do you know what they said? They said we had a strategic direction offsite meeting over the weekend and were processing the key takeaways and didn’t realize until this morning that your show didn’t fit into the strategic direction we’ve identified for our brand.”

A moment passes. I can hear my friend slowly calming down.

“But do you know who I blame?” he asks, quietly.

 “The streamer?” I ask helpfully.

 “No. Not the streamer. Those guys are just doing their jobs.”

“Wall Street, for encouraging this idiot trend of over production?”

“No, that actually helped me. I mean, my show wouldn’t have been ordered otherwise. No, who I really blame is America. I blame America.”

 “You’re mad at America?”