Approaching the fall season of 1994, NBC was in a tight spot. Under the leadership of Brandon Tartikoff, the network had dominated its competition through much of the 1980s, on the strength of series such as* Cheers, Hill Street Blues, The Cosby Show, St. Elsewhere, The Golden Girls, and L.A. Law. Warren Littlefield had taken over the presidency of NBC Entertainment in the summer of 1990 and helped develop new hits such as Seinfeld, Mad About You, and Frasier. But with its stalwart 80s shows having ended their runs, the network slipped to second place behind ABC. NBC needed more successes, and, against all odds, it was about to land two of the biggest hits in TV history.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD (former president of NBC Entertainment): NBC’s pilot season of 1994 is legendary in the business. In a world where failure is commonplace, we midwifed the birth of both Friends and ER. While ER came essentially out of the blue, we’d been casting around for a Friends-like show for some time at the network.

One morning while I had been studying the overnight ratings from the major markets, I found myself thinking about the people in those cities, particularly the twentysomethings just beginning to make their way. I imagined young adults starting out in New York, L.A., Dallas, Philly, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Portland all faced the same difficulties. It was very expensive to live in those places as well as a tough emotional journey. It would be a lot easier if you did it with a friend.

Addressing that general idea became a development target for us. We wanted to reach that young, urban audience, those kids starting out on their own, but none of the contenders had ever lived up to our hopes. Then Marta Kauffman and David Crane showed up with their pitch for a show called Six of One.

Kauffman and Crane were New York playwrights who had moved into television.

KAREY BURKE (former prime-time executive, NBC): I remember reading a Kauffman-and-Crane play when I was a secretary at NBC. We tracked them, me and Jamie Tarses. Jamie always wanted Kauffman and Crane to develop a show.

JAMIE TARSES (former vice president of comedy development, NBC): That was a great pitch. Marta and David finished each other’s sentences. We’d been hearing so many of those pitches. The six friends was a concept that was around. But that was a great pitch.

KAREY BURKE: The pitch was like two old friends telling you a story. The jokes were already there. They performed the pitch. The pitch was total entertainment. It was theater.

JAMIE TARSES: I remember there being no question about the show.

One of the series Kauffman and Crane had been working on was the early HBO sitcom Dream On.

MARTA KAUFFMAN (writer and producer of Friends): We got to Friends in a roundabout way. We’d just come off of Dream On, with one actor who was in every scene, and it was brutal. So we told ourselves, “We want to do an ensemble comedy.”

DAVID CRANE (writer and producer of Friends): Not that long before, we’d been living in New York, not doing TV. It was only three years later that we were pitching Friends, so we’d just been living it—that point in your life when your friends are your family.

MARTA KAUFFMAN: And we wanted to write something we would watch.