Video Age International April 2016

4 World April 2016 V I D E O A G E Gershman’s Soul Revealed inNewBook V eteran U.S. TV executive Larry Gershman has published his memoirs: a voluminous book of 424 pages titled A Kid From Brooklyn: Lessons Learned (Amazon U.S.$9.99 for the Kindle version, $14.99 for the printed version). The book is divided into 136 vignettes in chronological order. It is all about Gershman and his various career moves, from NTA to CBS, from NBC to Don King Productions, from Viacom to MGM/UA, and finally to the creation of WIN: World International Network. In between pages the reader can spot a few gems: Gershman describes how Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi’s “financial executive, Carlo Bernasconi,” asked him for a bribe, on page 308. Then, on page 314: “Ted Turner is a nut job, but one of the most honorable and loyal men I have ever met.” Each vignette ends with a “Lesson Learned” explanation. This latter aspect makes the title of the book unique (there are at least five other books with “ Kid From Brooklyn ” titles, in addition to a 1986 movie and various newspaper headlines, like the New York Times ’ recent “The Boy From Brooklyn,” about David Geffen). Gershman’s book also contains 12 pages of photos of himself with TV and religious leaders (including shaking hands with Pope John Paul II). Unfortunately, these pages were not accounted for while numbering the subsequent vignettes. After page 197, each vignette is indicated with a wrong number on the table of contents page (e.g., the vignette on Berlusconi is indicated for page 207 when it is actually on page 210). L ast January, Eye Productions, a division of CBS, chose the offices of VideoAge in New York City to film three segments of one of the last episodes of the long- running show The Good Wife . It was episode 16 of the seventh and final season. The series, which premiered in 2009 on the CBS TV Network, will have accumulated 156 episodes when the final episode airs. In the U.S., the series averages 12.5 million viewers per week. Even though The Good Wife is set in Chicago, the interiors are filmed at Broadway Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the exteriors around the NewYork Citymetro area. This is not the first time a production company has chosen VideoAge ’s offices. Last March, Broadway Video, the production company of NBC’s Saturday Night Live , approached VideoAge for an episode starring Michael Keaton. At that time, the offices were buzzing with MIP-TV preparations and could not be shared. To film five-minute airtime starring Stockard Channing and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (pictured above), Eye Productions dispatched a crew of 100 people, four 4K cameras and redesigned the interiors to look like an apartment. Usually, it takes seven days to prepare an episode and eight days to shoot. After an episode is completed, it will air in 28 days. The final episode of The Good Wife series will air in the U.S. on May 8 at 9 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) VideoAge is Site For CBS’s The Good Wife (Continued on Page 6)