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Rob Long has a favorite story about network upfronts: a television network, unable to decide which of three pilots to schedule, flew all three casts to New York on the same plane, collected focus group results mid-flight, and met them at the gate — whisking some into Manhattan and stardom, and sending the others home. It contains everything you need to know about Hollywood: extravagant spending, procrastination and cruelty masquerading as efficiency. But here’s the thing — the focus group never actually went away. It just moved to TikTok. And it’s been telling Hollywood exactly what audiences want since approximately 1994. They just won’t look.
