Forty-one year old Andrea Wong, the president and CEO of Lifetime Entertainment Services. When Wong joined Lifetime, she said that the network was "widely viewed as a tired brand...ratings had flattened out, and the audience was aging." Moreover, Lifetime's stereotype had become a network that showed "women in peril" shows and movies. Wong was excited to reinvigorate the Network's brand, but when Wong actually set foot in her new office at Lifetime, she realized her task was going to be harder than she had initially imagined. Beyond the ratings problems and image problems, Wong discovered that numerous cultural issues plagued the company, problems that needed immediate fixing. In rapid fire mode, Wong moved quickly as a leader, making key people decisions in the spirit of changing a culture that lacked clear lines of responsibility, accountability, and nimbleness, while simultaneously changing Lifetime's brand reputation through its programming and marketing.

Kevin Reilly, at forty-six years old, had one of his first television executive experiences in the drama department at NBC, had―like many others―experienced his fair share of drama. What he described as the "three toughest years of my career" were at NBC when he served as entertainment president from 2003 to 2007. Reilly had re-joined NBC, after having originally worked his way up the executive ladder there from 1988 to 1994. He joined the second time around, just as NBC- which had a record ratings and profit run in the mid-90's to 2001-had begun a downward spiral brought about by a long development drought. In a little over a month, Reilly became the President of Entertainment at the top-rated Fox network. Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori, Reilly's former boss at the FX Network (a Fox-owned cable network), approached Reilly about the prospect of gaining a chance to "do over" his experience at NBC. Reilly had worked with Liguori at FX (from 2000 to 2003), where Liguori had been chairman and Reilly entertainment president. This time around, Liguori hired Reilly to oversee all programming responsibilities for FOX Broadcasting Company. Reilly started at Fox in July 2007 but nearly four months later, he faced a writers' strike, which hobbled the entertainment industry for most of the year, ending just as the nascent signs of the severe economic downturn had already begun to taken shape. Despite such challenges, Reilly pushed forward, doing what he had done throughout his career, which was to challenge the system, question convention, and find and develop hit shows that appealed to general audiences and critics alike.

New York-born Denise Di Novi was a rare breed in Hollywood-she had become a high-powered and highly successful movie producer within a small elite "boy's club" coterie while raising two sons and having a fulfilling family life. Despite the fact that 50-year-old Di Novi had reached the pinnacle in her field, the road had not always been easy. Raising two sons while being on movie sets for marathon 13+ hour days, as well as nurturing a fruitful 19-year marriage with a husband also in the business, required an incredible amount of juggling. How she managed that hectic lifestyle was partly due to her choice not to "go out at night" or frequent the ubiquitous and swanky Hollywood parties or movie premiers unless the movie was made by a close friend. Di Novi's down-to-earth way of thinking and lifestyle has not only made her an anomaly within the high-flying tabloid-rich movie industry, but also has helped her to survive the cuts and bruises inherent to a job where a series of movie flops would get her "dropped" by a studio in a second.

Every Tuesday evening, after a hectic day at the NBC Universal offices in Universal City, Neal Baer kicked up his feet to watch the latest episode of the award-winning police television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU). SVU was part of the triumvirate Law & Order franchise created by Hollywood legend Dick Wolf. The suite of shows included the original Law & Order, SVU, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Baer, an Emmy-nominated writer, was a "showrunner" for SVU--industry slang for the person in charge of every aspect of a television series, from story creation to script writing to direction and post-production--essentially the person who "ran the show." The term, showrunner, arose from the need to distinguish the executive producer from the writers, cast members, and post-production people who were often called "co-executive producers." Being a showrunner was analogous to being a baseball manager: "While the baseball manager reports to a general manager as well as a team owner(s), he is still perceived by the players, the public, and the journalists as the driving force behind the team. He is lauded if the team is successful, and fired if the team is losing. The same is true for the showrunner. Also, like a baseball manager, the showrunner works with other producers, who like the manager's coaching staff--the pitching coach, and the first- and third-base coaches--are professionals and expert at what they do." As a showrunner, Baer was a lot like senior managers at traditional corporations--he and SVU had earned enough respect within the industry to lead to a significant amount of autonomy but not absolute freedom. He needed to keep people below and above him happy. And he needed to be strategic at a high level to make a successful series while juggling tight deadlines and budgetary constraints, among other day-to-day details, on multiple episodes.