It’s Dan Harmon! Just kidding. Could you imagine?

Friends veteran Wil Calhoun will take the lead. Calhoun most recently worked on NBC’s Kath & Kim, CBS’ Gary Unmarried and Fox’s I Hate My Teenage Daughter.

Swartzlander’s credits include Gary Unmarried, Ellen, 8 Simple Rules, and Smantha Who.

This is painful but true. 

Nobody gets fired by accident — especially the creator of a television show. That’s because when you’re the showrunner of a network TV series, what you actually are is the CEO of a $60 million company, someone who creates a new product from scratch every eight days. As CEO, you make all creative and business decisions. You manage a crew of 200, write or rewrite every episode and have the luxury (and burden) of final cut. It is, in every sense of the word, your show.

So to replace a showrunner is no small thing. That said, it turns out to be surprisingly easy. You just make a couple of phone calls.

There’s a story Lorne Michaels tells at the end of Bill Carter’s book The War for Late Night about quitting Saturday Night Live. Lorne said that in his exit interview, a certain high-level executive at NBC said (I’m paraphrasing), “We paid you to deliver a certain number of episodes for a certain budget in a certain number of days. Nowhere in your contract does it say the show has to be good. If you believe it has to be good, then that’s on you. You can’t get mad at us for getting in your way.” Quality, in other words, is not the point. Money and ratings are the point.

Dan Harmon found this out the hard way on May 18. Sony Television (and, by not standing up for him, NBC) fired Harmon as the CEO ofCommunity. They wanted a product for a certain price in a certain number of days. He wanted it to be good.

Now the rumors are that Harmon was “difficult,” both to work with and to work for. I have no real information about this one way or another, but even if it’s true, Dan’s personality was a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Because —and here’s the dirty secret of television — there are plenty of showrunners who are difficult. Some are even truly Machiavellian, hated and feared by all. But as long as their shows are hits, no one would ever think about replacing them.

Community, as we know, was not a hit. From their actions, though, Sony and NBC made it clear that they hope to get a couple more seasons out of the show so they can push it into the black via syndication. They are apparently willing to do this at the expense of the series itself. But again, remember, neither the studio nor the network cares about making a “good” show, in a fan sense. They need it to be “good” in a ratings sense. A money sense. Which it wasn’t.

It takes a certain temperament to be a TV showrunner — a kind of humble megalomania. You have to like being in charge, but you also have to accept that you work for two major corporations. And ultimately it is they, not you, who decide whether you or your show lives or dies.

So if you’re going to be difficult, you damn well better be successful.

The author is a television writer-producer who has run a broadcast network series.

It’s a shame the circumstances had to be so shitty, because all of this discourse about television and showrunners is fascinating. 

danharmon:

Kids: 

A few hours ago, I landed in Los Angeles, turned on my phone, and confirmed what you already know.  Sony Pictures Television is replacing me as showrunner on Community, with two seasoned fellows that I’m sure are quite nice - actually, I have it on good authority they’re quite nice, because they once created a show and cast my good friend Jeff Davis on it, so how bad can they be.

Why’d Sony want me gone?  I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have.  They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business.  Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.

I do want to correct a couple points of spin, now that I’m free to do so:

The important one is this quote from Bob Greenblatt in which he says he’s sure I’m going to be involved somehow, something like that.  That’s a misquote.  I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC.  He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved.  I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon.

You may have read that I am technically “signed on,” by default, to be an executive consulting something or other - which is a relatively standard protective clause for a creator in my position.  Guys like me can’t actually just be shot and left in a ditch by Skynet, we’re still allowed to have a title on the things we create and “help out,” like, I guess sharpening pencils and stuff.  

However, if I actually chose to go to the office, I wouldn’t have any power there.  Nobody would have to do anything I said, ever.  I would be “offering” thoughts on other people’s scripts, not allowed to rewrite them, not allowed to ask anyone else to rewrite them, not allowed to say whether a single joke was funny or go near the edit bay, etc.  It’s….not really the way the previous episodes got done.  I was what you might call a….hands on producer.  Are my….periods giving this enough….pointedness?  I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying “it has to be like this or I quit” roughly 8 times a day.

The same contract also gives me the same salary and title if I spend all day masturbating and playing Prototype 2.  And before you ask yourself what you would do in my situation: buy Prototype 2.  It’s fucking great.

Because Prototype 2 is great, and because nobody called me, and then started hiring people to run the show, I had my assistant start packing up my office days ago.  I’m sorry.  I’m not saying seasons 1, 2 and 3 were my definition of perfect television, I’m just saying that whatever they’re going to do for season 4, they’re aiming to do without my help.  So do not believe anyone that tells you on Monday that I quit or diminished my role so I could spend more time with my loved ones, or that I negotiated and we couldn’t come to an agreement, etc.  It couldn’t be less true because, just to make this clear, literally nobody called me.  Also don’t believe anyone that says I have sex with animals.  And if there’s a photo of me doing it with an animal - I’m not saying one exists, I’m just saying, if one surfaces - it’s a fake.  Look at the shadow.  Why would it be in front of the giraffe if the sun is behind the jeep?

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  I’m not running Community for season 4.  They replaced me.  Them’s the facts.

When I was a kid, sometimes I’d run home to Mommy with a bloody nose and say, “Mom, my friends beat me up,” and my Mom would say “well then they’re not worth having as friends, are they?”  At the time, I figured she was just trying to put a postive spin on having birthed an unpopular pussy.  But this is, after all, the same lady that bought me my first typewriter.  Then later, a Commodore 64.  And later, a 300 baud modem for it.  Through which I met new friends that did like me much, much more.

I’m 39, now.  The friends my Mom warned me about are bigger now, and older, bloodying my nose with old world numbers, and old world tactics, like, oh, I don’t know, sending out press releases to TV Guide at 7pm on a Friday.

But my Commodore 64 is mobile now, like yours, and the modems are invisible, and the internet is the air all around us.  And the good friends, the real friends, are finding each other, and connecting with each other, and my Mom is turning out to be more right than ever.

Ah, shit, I still haven’t called my fucking Mom.  

Mom, Happy Mother’s Day.  I got fired.  

Yes, Mom.  AGAIN.

Dan Harmon will not be returning as showrunner of NBC’s Community, and whether he’ll remain involved at all with the series he created at remains very much in doubt. Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series with Universal Television, has closed a deal with Happy Endings writers David Guarascio and Moses Port to join Community as showrunners and exec producers. 

This is very disheartening news. Vulture also explains that Sony hired new showrunners without discussing with Harmon, which leads to the notion that he won’t be in a minor consulting role either.

Vulture hears that now that Sony made its deal with Guarascio and Port, it plans to ask Harmon to remain involved as a writer and consultant — but not as the person in charge of the show. (He’s expected to remain a “consulting producer” no matter what).  Given Sony’s decision to make a deal for Harmon’s replacement without telling Harmon directly, it seems a longshot that Harmon will agree to a diminished role. 

Click through for Joe Adalian’s full, detailed write up.

That was fast.

I’m going to miss his brutally honest TV industry tweets.

Mazzara has showrunning experience on The Shield, Hawthorne, and Crash. He was hand selected by Frank Darabont to share some of the show running responsibilities prior to Darabont’s stepping down.