Welcome to Dunder Mifflin

Brian Baumgartner & Ben Silverman

3 annotations Oct 2023 data

Chapter 4

  • MIKE SCHUR: In the history of television, the same story gets repeated over and over and over again. A pilot airs and it's the lowest-rated pilot in the history of TV, blah blah blah. It's true. Jerry Seinfeld has a letter with the ratings for Seinfeld's test screening framed and hung on his wall.
  • MIKE SCHUR: Cheers was the lowest-rated pilot that NBC had ever aired to that point.
  • TERI WEINBERG: I think part of the reason it tested so poorly is it was something people had never seen before. They come to this testing, they get paid seventy-five or fifty dollars or whatever, and they judge your material based on twenty minutes and tell you if it's good or bad. We didn't care so much about testing.