Success Quote by Will McDonough

McDonough’s line reads like a polite industry memoir, but it’s really a careful piece of professional positioning. He starts with “fortunate,” a word that flatters the machine more than the individual, then pivots to the resume bullet points: CBS in 1986, then eight years at NBC. The specificity isn’t nostalgia; it’s credibility. In a business where reputations are traded like currency, anchoring yourself to networks and timeframes signals you’ve survived multiple corporate climates and still remained employable.

The subtext is that “television” isn’t one medium so much as a shifting set of incentives, and McDonough has learned to read them. Switching networks isn’t framed as betrayal or ambition, but as education. That’s classic writer-speak: he’s not chasing money or status, he’s collecting “insight.” It’s a tactful way to admit what everyone in TV knows - your creative life is shaped by executives, scheduling, audience measurement, and the constant threat of cancellation.

Calling TV “fascinating” lands as both genuine and strategic. It’s admiration with a wink: fascination is what you say about a medium that is irresistible, influential, and often maddening. Context matters here. The mid-80s into the 90s was an era of network dominance, rigid gatekeeping, and mass-audience expectations - a time when writers learned that success depended as much on navigating institutions as on crafting scenes. McDonough isn’t romanticizing television; he’s signaling fluency in its power structure, and selling that fluency as the real achievement.