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COPYRIGHT 2004 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
Byline: Mike Duffy
The show about nothing that eventually became a television classic?
You know, "Seinfeld." Yada, yada, yada, that show?
Test audiences pretty much loathed the pilot for a strange little comedy originally called "The Seinfeld Chronicles."
NBC generally didn't get it either. So on July 5, 1989, the Peacock Network dumped the pilot onto the airwaves in the middle of summer reruns. Air it once, forget about it. Just another failed series pilot.
Except the screwball fates were smiling. A wisely stubborn NBC programming executive named Rick Ludwin had faith in Jerry Seinfeld's unconventional sitcom and its uniquely warped sense of humor.
So Ludwin engaged in a little emergency eye candy rescue mission. He and NBC freed up just enough money to crank out four more episodes of a show that would then shorten its title to one word, "Seinfeld."
The rest is hilarious yada, yada, yada history. And America was...
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