By many accounts, 1994 was a notable year in the world of media. It was, after all, when Nancy Kerrigan was attacked, the terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing convicted, OJ Simpson arr…
. “So what started to emerge for us was not being necessarily something for everyone, but having a large core group that would say, ‘I must get to my television, I must see this, this speaks to me.'”
One of the ways NBC was actively looking to try to do this was in reaching the “young, urban adults,” Littlefield recalls. “We were getting premiums for quality, we were getting premiums for upscale and college-educated, and we thought, ‘Look, we need to speak to that audience,'” he says. Once NBC committed to the Warner Bros.-produced pilot, Littlefield says there was “immediate buzz in the marketplace” from talent agents, which he considers “your first sign that you might be onto something.” After receiving nearly 1000 actor submissions for each role, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer ultimately received the six coveted roles.
Part of that vision was to treat the camera as a character, with the opening shot being a long take that travels around the hospital to more fully immerse the audience in the world. This was a technique not often used on television, and it added to the high-intensity of the setting while also making the audience feel like it was getting up close and personal with the “doctors who were heroic but also human,” Littlefield notes.
At launch, NBC scheduled “Friends” into the 8:30 p.m. time slot on Thursday nights, nestled between the already successful “Mad About You” at 8 p.m. and “Seinfeld” at 9 p.m., while “ER” received the coveted Thursday at 10 p.m. slot reserved for the network’s prestige dramas dating back to “Hill Street Blues” and more recently previously filled with “LA Law.” “ER” debuted to the tune of 23.8 million total live viewers, and by the end of the season it had averaged a 20 rating, taking the No.
As time went on with both shows, the audience expanded. “Friends” was a show that saw 25% of its audience in the over 50 demographic, Littlefield reports, in part “because it’s fun to remember what it was like to have those firsts. But additionally, it was because Crane and Kauffman “were telling stories that invited everybody in,” he adds.
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