Sometimes you come across a person who has had a prolific amount of work in their life. There are so many people that fit that description. I do think that there are just people who put out so much work into the world that you are surprised to see. How do they not run out of ideas to do?! It’s insane that there are people out there who never run out of ideas.
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There are just a lot of writers in the entertainment industry who never seem to run out of work to do. Like, how do they manage to jungle three different productions at once? How are they somehow helping pitch a series that their for writer created? I guess when you do good work, a lot of people start to notice you a bit more. Having a show that everybody watches gives you some credibility in the industry. “That person managed to write a show that appeals to a lot of people. Let’s sign a deal with them so he can make more of those.”
People like Ryan Murphy or Mike Schur have managed to make names for themselves for creating shows that a lot of people seem to watch. Ryan Murphy co-created Nip/Tuck, Glee, American Horror Story, American Crime Story and bunch of other shows that are on Netflix. Mike Schur, on the other hand, created Parks and Recreation & The Good Place. Both of them have since leveraged the deals that they made with the network and the studios they partnered with to help other writers get a shot at doing their own show.
But there are people who have managed to stay within a certain network and good work there for decades. I am amazed that a studio has that much trust on a single person to shape their network’s programming for years on end. One such person is Dan Schneider.
Now, if you know of the name Dan Schneider, chances are that you’d probably cringe at that name. He hasn’t really been all that active ever since Nickelodeon decided to part ways with him after he was accused of misconduct by some of the people who have worked with him on his shows. I know that it seems insane to put this whole thing in the middle of this post. But it’s a relevant detail.
I guess this is the point where I talk about his life growing up. There really isn’t to it, honestly. It seems that he was smart enough to get into Harvard initially. But he dropped out after one semester. He moved back to Memphis to earn money for himself by repairing computers. He then went on to movie to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
His first few years in the industry was spent doing a bit of acting work. He spent five years as part of the main cast of the ABC series “Head of Class.” He did a bit of other work for other shows after that. And somehow that lead to him hosting second iteration of the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards.
In 1993, he was hired by Albie Hecht, who he had met when he hosted the KCAs, to help create a sketch comedy show called All That. Dan wrote the pilot and then it got picked up by the network. That was pretty much the beginning of his career with the network.
All That’s popularity lead Dan to co-create and produced shows that banked on some of its stars. Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell went on to star in the sitcom “Kenan & Kel” while Amanda Bynes went on to lead her own sketch show “The Amanda Show.”
It’s sort of interesting how most of his work for Nickelodeon kind of involved taking an actor who was great in the show that they worked on and creating a show that revolves around them to a degree. This has happened with Drake & Josh which lead iCarly. The second iteration of All That lead to Zoey 101 that then lead to Victorious. And then both iCarly and Victorious lead to Sam & Cat.
Dan was handling two different productions by the time that allegations against him started coming out. At that point, he had a net worth of $25,000,000. Most of the allegations had to with him not being that great of a boss. Aside from the fact that he would sometimes post photos of feet of some the stars he worked with who, by the way, were about 12–16 years old.
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