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“Cheers,” in its first year, was one of the least popular shows on television. In its second year was one of the least popular shows in television. And then, only in its third year, because NBC executives trusted or just liked the showrunners and the writers, did it become one of the most popular shows on TV. And in fact, Cheers became so popular that, not only is it responsible for the most popular spinoff in television history, Frazier, but it’s also responsible for Seinfeld. That Seinfeld) actually was not a popular show on NBC until it aired after cheers and could essentially piggyback off of _Cheers’ audience to become what TV Guide called the greatest show ever. And I would humbly agree.
There’s lots of lessons that one can take from the very interesting story of Cheers. But one of them, I think, is that sometimes we demand perfection from products and people too quickly. That right now, especially in television and maybe throughout culture, we grade as fast as possible. A TV show comes out with its pilot and we say, good, bad. Watch the entire season. Don’t watch the season. Pick it up for a second season or cancel it entirely. We make these decisions after 40 minutes of content. The vast majority of Americans didn’t make their decision about Cheers until after two years of the writers learning who the characters were, and how their interactions would work, and how the relationships could build.
And so, maybe one implication of this story for talent management is that some people are fast burners and some people are slow burners. But sometimes there are people that you’ll hire where you’ll know immediately that they fit into the culture. But there might be others where their first few projects, their first few pieces of work aren’t up to the standard that you expected from them, but you trust the person over the product. You trust the potential of that person. And sometimes having just a small amount of patience to allow creativity to fully express itself can pay off in incredible dividends down the line. After all, Cheers’ full accounting, is not the popularity of that show, but also the popularity of Frasier, and Seinfeld, and Friends, and the entire NBC lineup that it eventually birthed all because a group of NBC executives in the early 1980s said, “We’re not going to cancel this show just because it’s unpopular. We actually kind of like it, and we’re going to keep it around until it finds the audience that we think is inevitable.”