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On this date in 1989, The Seinfeld Chronicles aired on NBC, an event that could easily have come and gone with little notice. There was no offer for a pick-up beyond the single pilot. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld shopped the show to Fox, to no avail. It looked dead.
It was the cancelling of a Bob Hope special that freed the cash for NBC’s. Rick Ludwin to order four more episodes. The secret to the success of those scoring viewership was simply their placement — they had Cheers as their lead-in. The network ordered more episodes, which also garnered ratings and critical success.
Be careful what you wish for. After the summer of 1990, NBC ordered thirteen more, but Larry David thought he and Jerry had run out of good stories worth telling. He advised Jerry to turn down the order! Jerry had the faith and, together, they found over 150 more stories to tell.
Unlike on the episode where a TV idea is pitched as “a show about nothing,” Jerry said the actual pitch to NBC was about how a stand-up comedian finds the basis for his comedy. That “inside showbiz comedy writing” idea was only one connection with the 1960s The Dick Van Dyke Show. The Seinfeld Chronicles original pilot was filmed on Stage 8 of Desilu Cahuenga studios, the same studio where The Dick Van Dyke Show was shot.
Seinfeld soon settled in at CBS Radford Studios where the standing sets on New York Street were used to represent West 81st Street, where the fictional Seinfeld apartment is located. I included a couple of shots of the studio’s New York Street, undressed. The exterior street scenes from the show were filmed there, after the art department made the street come to life.. No action was filmed in New York, only some establishing shots, such as the very real Tom’s Restaurant exterior, doubling for the diner on the show.
Seinfeld used the multi-camera 35mm film technique first pioneered for a sitcom by Desi Arnaz, with the addition of video assist, which allows for monitors to display a video image of what is being captured on film – an advancement in film production pioneered by Jerry Lewis. Seinfeld reruns have been bumped from 4:3 to HDTV specs.
