Vulture Examines New Television Landscape with Five Top TV Executives
The folks over at Vulture put out a big comedy cover story this week with the Gatekeepers of TV Comedy. The story examines the evolution that cable and streaming television networks have undergone in recent years as the old, mass-appealling “broad yuks for big bucks” model has been phased out in favor of more specially-crafted shows. Writer Josef Adalian spoke to a handful of TV executives about what it’s like working in today’s TV landscape, asking them how they go about finding new stars, how they pitch new ideas, and a host of other interesting topics. The full article is worth the read, but we’ve included a few interesting tidbits below.
Adalian began the group interview by asking the execs about the current comedy series model. Whereas in the past, the aim was to create a show with broad appeal that could run for 100-200+ episodes before being syndicated into a cash-cow, the current model seems to favor shorter-running shows with more tailored stories. Here’s what Joe Lewis, Amazon Studios’ head of comedy and drama, had to say on the topic:
Lewis: “One of the best recent inventions in television is the end of a series as an actual concept. I don’t know how you write an end to a show when you don’t know if that end will come in year three, four, five, ten. The very invention of that changes the nature of the business.
I’m sure we all say no to great material all the time for a number of reasons. One of those reasons might be, ‘I’m not sure this can break out.’ If a story doesn’t have an end, you can feel that even in the early episodes. It’s all an effort to make something people are going to watch, not just the week it comes out, but in five, ten, 20 years. Part of that is to make a complete work.”
On the topic of the old way of finding sitcom stars (via agents scouting comics at comedy clubs, mostly) versus how they’re found today:
HBO’s President of Programming, Casey Bloys: “There’s no one way. It used to be stand-ups, you’re right. You’d go to Montreal or Aspen and give a deal. There were spec scripts. Web series are a good way, like what we did with Issa Rae. Even if they’re not great, they at least show the tone that they want to achieve. Sometimes it’s through agents; sometimes it’s your own reading.”
TBS’s Executive VP of Original Programming, Brett Weitz: “As much as we all make fun of agents, they are still an incredible feeder system into our offices. We also have Conan O’Brien, so we get a lot of stuff through him. We have an overall deal with Conan’s production company, Conaco, which has proven to be pretty fruitful. We had these 23- and 25-year-olds, the Shipley brothers, who wrote a random spec about a plane crash as PAs on a set. Their manager gave it to us — and then they went and made Wrecked. So [ideas are] everywhere.”
The article is an interesting glimpse behind the scenes of an ever-expanding and changing industry, and provides some good insights into why the recent change in the television landscape happened, how the TV industry feels about it, and whether it’s something that will be a lasting trend. Be sure to head over to Vulture and read the whole thing!
