Propagate's Ben Silverman Says Execs Today Fear Taking Risks Without a Big Star, Big IP and Rely on ‘Derivative Ideas'

Yahoo

27-03-2025

A decade into running Propagate Content, TV producer Ben Silverman, who has been behind hits like 'The Office' and 'Jane the Virgin,' is keenly aware of executives' aversion to risks when greenlighting new projects, especially after his two-year stint as NBC's co-chairman.
'There's just so much fear among so many executives about taking risk and doing anything that just doesn't have a massive star or a massive IP,' Silverman told TheWrap for this week's Office with a View. 'Talent is still just such a big driver of so much of what is selling, and then, as as always, high quality writers on the scripted side and high quality IP (intellectual property) on the non-scripted side.'
While Propagate is armed with big stars and strong IP across its upcoming series, including Peacock's spinoff of 'The Office' and Owen Wilson-led golf series 'Stick,' Silverman noted the history of the TV medium enabled stars to be built, pointing to castings for Steve Carell, John Krasinski in 'The Office' and America Ferrera in 'Ugly Betty.'
'We didn't look to cast stars in those shows — we looked to cast great people to play those roles and give them a chance, and then they became stars,' Silverman said, noting the aversion to trying new things extends to genres networks or streamers haven't traditionally embraced. 'That locked box of ideation is really disappointing and a bummer for the audience,' Silverman said. '[The audience is] not thinking about it in terms of the genre — they're thinking about it in terms of the entertainment value.'
While Silverman admits there's been a 'lull' in the scale of programming commissioned by distributors of late, leading to a 'disparate environment' for TV, he predicts there will be a 'shift back,' that will include significant investment from networks and streamers in order to 'compete and remain relevant to their subscribers and advertisers.'
'We sadly are living in an age where people rely on a lot of derivative ideas,' he said. 'Hopefully the innovation cycle will will grow anew.'
There's been a huge 'Stay in LA' movement to keep production in LA rather than elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad. What needs to happen for shows to come back to L.A.?
It is unbelievably heart wrenching as a Palisadian and Angelino to have watched the absolute lack of focus on our unbelievable industry. Not only is every TV show and film a job employer, a highly educated workforce and a well-compensated workforce, but also all of those films and TV shows are commercials for our great state. I have been so shocked by the lack of tax credits and incentives to keep the business rolling in California, and we watched as Atlanta and Georgia really invested in tax credits and the means in which to support the industry, and a whole business arrived there, and people stayed, and you have these great employees who then become great citizens. I think it's been an absolute failure of leadership. I lobbied numerous times to increase the tax credits, and they're gone on January 2, so I haven't seen one real move to actually be competitive to these other locations. It's mind blowing to me. We have the weather, we have the people, we have the locations, we have the breadth of mountain to desert to pre-existing sets and and no incentives to do it because it's a lot more expensive to produce in California due to labor and other reasons.
There's been a contraction in reality in the U.S., but unscripted seems to be booming abroad. How are you taking advantage of that and what sort of unscripted formats have been catching your eye lately?
We produce 'Chopped' in America, which is consistently one of the best shows in all of non-scripted and and has some awesome offshoots of it, and that we do shoot in the United States, and is an original idea from within the company, so we're very much still looking for that home grown and great innovation inside our company in the United States, and then we look all over the world for great IP and ideas. And there's a couple of players that are still investing in original ideas and and we look to partner with them. I think we're the best in the world at helping adapt those ideas to the American market, and also, through our incredible talent relationships, we're able to really build those ideas up and have them be bigger. So when they go to sale and to be pitched, they come with assets and attributes, and we also bring in great partners who are authentic and connected to them.
Sports seems to be a big pull in unscripted — Is sports all we can look forward to in the unscripted field?
It's not the future. I am so proud of what Howard [T. Owens] and Way brothers have done with the 'Untold' franchise at Netflix … it really was the first to be done that way post the opening of sports being interesting to anybody but ESPN. Netflix has been a great partner, and I'm told each one of those films is so exceptional and has so many unique emotional touch points that open up layers of what goes on inside sports. We're also making a Jerry West documentary with Kenya Barris, so we are always excited about and invest in sports programming. We have a massive partnership with the PGA and Pro Shop on bringing back the Skins game, an iconic event for TV and streaming that we're in conversations with various players on as well. Sports content is a big piece and leg of the stool of the unscripted, but so is food and lifestyle or big entertainment formats, and there's a lot of different ways to reach the audience and connect to them, but obviously sports do drive the biggest ratings in their own games, and there's so much interest in stories around and connected to sports and competition.
How have you found a balance between scripted and unscripted shows?
When I started, people were very much defined by genre and were uniquely in one specialty, and even micro specialties:'I'm a game show person, I'm a sitcom person.' Having created 'The Tudors' and 'The Biggest Loser,' having done 'Ugly Betty' and 'Jane the Virgin,' connecting to a very robust U.S. Hispanic and global audience, having so many different touch points in the scripted and non-scripted world, I always thought the audience just cared about, are they being entertained, and didn't necessarily turn into a specific genre. I was driven by the audience in the choices I made by knowing I wanted to watch them, so the only unifying theme of the shows that we create and produce and connect to is that they're high quality and they're things that interest us. They're a little poppier, they're a little more fun.
What are your thoughts about the state of the sitcom right now?
The audience-based sitcom has really obviously slowly disappeared. I've watched 'The Office' be ripped off and imitated by a myriad of people who worked on it for one season, then did shows in that vein. So I take some responsibility of moving the path of the empathy and emotion of the situation comedy forward, but it also makes many of them not as absolutely funny. I'm constantly watching our comedies to make sure that we're also laughing at them, not just emoting with them — that is a hard alchemy. It's been a long drought — stuff will have to re arrive. I think it's also why 'The Office' reruns, the 'Friends' reruns, the 'Curb Your Enthusiasms' are continually dominating, because they remain the crown jewels, and they haven't been topped yet.
What can you tell us about this new version of 'The Office?'
We have high expectations and want to be measured with it. We just need it to grow like the original one did — The original did not arrive on the scene with a bang; it took a long time to draw on an audience, and this version will also need time to connect, but has a great cast and is really smartly written, which I think the audience will eventually deeply connect to.
Luckily, we had the support of NBCUniversal, and were able to actually shoot on the lot, which is just so fun and such a gift to be inside our great iconic lots. I think there's no better environment to make content than the studio lots. It's just like being in a university campus of creativity and resources, but it makes it more expensive, so you have a higher hurdle. And whatever you do in California and LA, unfortunately is so much more expensive than if you did it in Georgia or Texas or Canada.
What advice do you have for young people entering the industry?
If you can get a job at one of the big tech streamers and touch it from that way, you have a really good path for a career. If you're a writer/creator, working with your peers and actually doing the work and doing creation and acting and writing is also an amazing path right now. There is so little barrier to entry to actually produce stuff from a cost basis, if you use your own equipment and are comfortable generating your own material, and I see so many brilliant voices emerge that way. When I meet young people who want to be writers, actors or directors, I say, 'start now' … and make sure you're making those relationships to build that content with your peers at USC or NYU or Columbia or Tufts, or wherever you're at school.
The apprenticeship of creativity is still a great thing about Hollywood, and being an assistant to a writer or to a producer or to a business affairs executive is arguably the best path. Unfortunately, there's just less investment and less hiring going on right now into a slightly lower volume environment, but I am positive that will change. Ee have new players and new entries coming in — I think the Skydance-Paramount deal is going to unlock so much that platform has been forced into hibernation until that deal is done.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The post Propagate's Ben Silverman Says Execs Today Fear Taking Risks Without a Big Star, Big IP and Rely on 'Derivative Ideas' appeared first on TheWrap.