The amount of competition is just literally insane.

I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting.

Not ever having been an agent myself, my sense is that upper-level agents who have the most power, who can move people through the system more easily, are less willing to take on the volume of work to break somebody new. And then lower-level people, if they are willing to take on somebody new, they don't necessarily have as much sway, and it's harder for them to push somebody through.

Reality television was in some ways being unimaginative at that time. We were excited about the possibilities of the form, to use real people as your stars, to not be about winning, to be about going on complicated, challenging, funny, dramatic journeys.

That's the definition of a mini-series. A mini-series is a show that has no continuing story or narrative elements between one group of episodes and another, so no, I wasn't surprised.

We've actually bought quite a number of historical pieces. We are doing a piece on the abolitionists, Harper's Ferry and the abolitionist John Brown with Paul Giamatti.

It's not that writing staffs don't change at all, but they don't change very much. Directors are freelancers. There are directors who do five or 10 episodes of a show every year for years, but most directors are freelance, they come and go.