A candid conversation about the state of TV and the problem with ratings, plus some outbreaks of jealousy and ego between Steve Levitan and Dan Harmon, creators of the third-year comedies "Modern Family" (the reigning Emmy champ) and "Community" (acclaimed if overlooked by voters).
(Photos of Harmon, left, and Levitan by James Acomb for TheWrap)
In this era of fragmenting audiences and declining shares for the broadcast networks, do you have a sense of the audience you're making your shows for?
STEVE LEVITAN: When I write, 90 percent of the time I am picturing it through the eyes of other comedy writers.
DAN HARMON: That’s what we do, too -- we assume that everyone in the audience is a genius, and write for the most jaded person you can imagine. Sometimes someone so jaded that they don’t exist.
LEVITAN: But that’s a problem. If you go for the most jaded person, you can really screw yourself up by being too cool for school. Another part of me thinks about the fans, the people who really just like the show and love these characters.
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HARMON: Yeah, when we were first launching our show, I was honored to be characterized as part of this post-ironic movement in TV. The grunge, and the lack of eye contact, and the self-deprecation and the self-loathing was coming to a conclusion, and now we were once again acting like there were still 200 million people watching every night, and that we were dividing them among three networks. Because there’s a craftsmanship brought to bear from that: Mom’s watching, Dad’s watching, the kids are watching, that’s TV when it was at it’s best. And in order to make the best TV, should you pretend that you’re still living in that world? "Modern Family" definitely has that purity and that optimism. And even though we get characterized as snarky and clever, there is a lot of optimism to "Community."
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But aren't you deluding yourself when you act as if that audience is out there?
HARMON: Yeah. I have to pretend. I mean, if I looked at the Nielsens and based whether to get out of bed on them, I would be in bed right now. So I have to continue to assume that the world is watching. And the way I can justify that is that in this age of DVD and YouTube and Hulu and Comic-Con, eventually I meet a whole bunch of people who have apparently seen the show and love it. It’s just the 1.5 and 1.4 [Nielsen ratings] that really suggests that not a damn person has seen the show.
LEVITAN: We just got some outrageously good plus-seven numbers. It’s both heartening and depressing at the same time.
