How to become an Executive Producer.

The following post will outline the key elements of becoming a successful executive producer in television, or at least on the lowest-rated morning show in the United States.

Step One: Be Born Wealthy

I know, I know, you can't help who your parents are. Well, that attitude isn't going to make you an executive producer now, is it?
Do whatever it is you gotta do to be born into a very wealthy family. This is imperative to becoming a big-shot TV commander-type person. This must mean I'm speaking to unborn fetuses. Why? Because that's where the groundwork to good television is laid. You can't be born rich at age 13. You have to have money from when you were very little so all the spoiled, stunted instincts are driven in from an early age. Which brings me to number 2...

Step Two: Have a Major Fucked-Up Emotional Childhood Trauma.

I don't care if daddy drank. I don't care if creepy uncle Charlie touched your swimsuit area. The important part here is that something very traumatic must happen to you somewhere from the age of 6-14. If you're too young to remember it, it won't count. All the molestation in the world at age 2 won't go towards television supremacy unless it affects you later in life. Step 2 is absolutely essential for the following step...

Step Three: Have the Emotional Capacity of a Child

If you can process external stimuli at an adult level, you're doomed. You don't have what it takes to effectively run a really, really terrible television show. In order to control/create/dictate REALLY awful television, it's absolutely necessary that you feel the need to yell at grown adults.
That's right, grown-ups. Grown-ups pefectly capable of holding a real conversation to resolve and issue should be yelled at like children. If you can do this with no hint of irony, laughing, or a clue that you're radically emotionally stunted, you're golden.

Step Four: Do Major Drugs When Young. Then brag about it to Employees Whom You've Known for Two Weeks.

I know this is asking a lot. The title alone seems like a statistical anomaly. Yet, in my experience, it's totally necessary that you not only 1) Do drugs beyond pot, shrooms or acid (cocaine would be PERFECT!!!) you must also 2) Tell your brand-new employees about your former drug use, WAY before they're even comfortable with you as their boss, much less as a human being.
I can't stress enough that while Step Four seems like a tall order, it's as common to EP's as saying "Why the fuck did you do that?" (Honestly, I don't recall tale of either EP ever saying this, but everyone I worked with could imagine either one of them saying it, so fuck em'.

Step Five: Be Ridiculed About How You Don't Remember Anything

To be fair, EP's have to remember a LOT. They're expected to keep track of a ridiculous amount of information for the show management, show content, corporate rules/dealings, ratings, employee issues, guests, and anything else you care to throw in.
While even granting this wiggle-room, you must be absolutely sure that you don't remember vital information correctly that you've told other show managers, or the senior producer. It helps greatly if you regularly (not occasionally!) contradict things that you've said within a 24-hour period.

Step Six: Be Borderline Sociopathic

The ten major symptoms for sociopaths are: not learning from experience, no sense of responsibility, inability to form meaningful relationships, inability to control impulses, lack of moral sense, chronically antisocial behavior, no change in behavior after punishment, emotional immaturity, lack of guilt, self-centeredness

If you match at least four or five of these symptoms, congratulations, you're on your way to EP-land!


Step Seven: Quitely Hate Yourself

This is tough. It shouldn't be noticeable to the average employee. You have to strike the perfect balance of clearly hating your life or yourself to some degree, while having all the trappings of a successful life. Most of this can be blamed and/or tracked back to numbers Two and Three, but you have to be so remarkably stupid or arrogant (your choice!) to not acknowledge the cause of what's obvious to even a casual observer.

While none of these steps alone are guarantees to becoming an EP, they're proven traits of real-life, big-time television executive producers.
The total annual budget of the big-time show they run is nearly 9% (let me write that; NINE PERCENT) of what Matthew Perry made on his last year of Friends!!!

With cash like that my friends, who needs qualified leadership?