I'm going to set a scene for you. It's 1965, and we're in some kind of office at the CBS

headquarters building in New York City. And since it's 1965, I'm picturing all kinds of wood

paneling and cigarette smoke and thin-lpelled suits in our scene. It's an urgent and important meeting of network executives to do a little bit of quality

assurance and, if need be, a little emergency strategizing.

You see, for weeks now, they'd been promoting a major network event, a primetime special

unlike anything that had ever been aired before.

The only problem was they hadn't

actually seen it yet. In fact, hardly anyone had. The whole project had been on an absurdly

short timeline, the kind where even if everything went exactly right, the whole thing wouldn't

come together until the very last second, and that last second was fast approaching. So here were the network executives, just

one week before their major primetime special is about to air, and they're about to sit down

and watch the finished product for the first time. And if that weren't enough pressure,

right on the other side of the door to this office out in the lobby is a gaggle of journalists

and critics.

Because as soon as the executives finished watching it, these people were going to come into the office for a private screening,

and then they'd go off to publish their reviews and the likes of Time Magazine and other major publications.

The executives finished watching, and they were not happy.

They thought it was flat and disjointed, confusing in some spots.

The producers were convinced that they'd failed and that the project was a flop,

and there just wasn't enough time to do anything about it.

But of course, they hadn't failed.

It wasn't a flop. The critical acclaim came pouring in, and on December 9 of

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