So long Nigel Lythgoe…

So, since the news broke that Executive Producer, Nigel Lythgoe is leaving American Idol after 8 seasons, I’ve been fielding confused calls from friends… mainly asking ‘why is this news?’…

I have to say that I am surprised by the reaction - it made the front page news on CNN and the BBC for goodness-sakes. I mean this isn’t the Dalai Lama deciding that he’s had enough of capes and quitting his gig, or Regis throwing it in saying he’s tired of not using the F-word on tv - this is a producer?!

In my experience there are two kinds of Executive Producer - 1) A complete a-hole who has no business being there and 2) A leader, guide - a general you’d follow into the shaddow of death. (They can also be a-holes, so my description isn’t perfect, but stay with me).

Those times when you have to let an EP walk into your edit suite are usually the times you can spot it.

The EPs who are put in place by a nervous network exec, who doesn’t know what he’s doing either, will walk in usually face buried deep in their Blackberry… then limit their comments to that most annoying kind - when they simply reitterate other people’s points three seconds after the original comment, but much louder. These would be the first kind of EP.

The second kind sit in sage silence, they’ll take notes, they’ll laugh and enjoy the funny bits - and they’ll rarely cry at the sad bits, (because they hate sentimentality - they love great story telling and they’ll catch you out every time you try to sneak sentimentality by them by pasting sad music over a scene), at the end they’ll list off three or four scenes that aren’t working, (something you knew already - usually because you’d plastered sad music over them hoping you’d get by), and then give you three or so places where you missed a trick, or where you could add a line that fixes the problem you stayed late three nights in a row trying to fix. Yes, this is the second kind.

Now, they don’t have to be nice about it, (see my comment about a-holes) - but if you’re in tv to have your back rubbed you’re in the wrong business, (or at least the wrong country - I think producers in Finland get their backs rubbed).

Yes, you can sometimes feel mugged, embarrassed, defensive, angry… but never right. You know they’ve made your show better. It’s a mix of enormous experience, confidence, intuition - and mostly pride. After all this show has their name on it, usually in much bigger fonts than everyone else’s - and at the very front of the show, right after the title.

The word on the street is that Nigel Lythgoe is definitely the second kind of EP. Someone who at the end of each day, as he leaves the studios in his solid gold rocket car, knows he just made a show much, much better.

I recently heard a pitch for his new show, and it’s a good’n - but once you’ve run the world’s most successful tv show for 8 years running, the usual getting out of a job line of ‘wanting to face new challenges’ couldn’t be more appropriate.