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Amazon Nears Debut of Original TV Shows
First time accepted submitter bakerharis writes with an article about Amazon's attempt to break into creating conventional television style episodic shows, but with a different model from the manistream media companies. "Amazon's foray into TV production is unique in the way it saves money. Every spring, traditional TV networks like ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox order dozens of pilots and show them to focus groups. Executives pick just a handful to make into series. Then, they commission 13 episodes of each promising show, with each one potentially costing a few million dollars. Many episodes won't ever air if the first few don't attract big audiences." Amazon, instead, has created 14 pilot shows, and is letting a cross section of customers in the U.S., UK, and Germany react to them to see which shows might be worth making more of.
Firefly?
How is this "but with a different model from the manistream media companies"?
How is this:
Amazon, instead, has created 14 pilot shows, and is letting a cross section of customers in the U.S., UK, and Germany react to them to see which shows might be worth making more of.
different then this:
Every spring, traditional TV networks like ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox order dozens of pilots and show them to focus groups. Executives pick just a handful to make into series.
They both make pilots and show them to groups of people who provide feed back, and based on that feedback the people producing the TV shows decide which ones continue.
So again, how is Amazon doing it differently? Looks exactly the same to me.
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"... a different model from the manistream media companies."
They won't play half the episodes out of order on a shifting schedule then refuse to show the rest? That sounds positive.
Sure, a non-TV-network producing original television shows for broadcast over the internet is going to have a different model than NBC or ABC do. But it's not like Amazon is the first company to do that. Netflix already produces original TV. I was hoping this article would compare to that, but it doesn't mention it at all. Is Amazon jumping in as a competitor of Netflix with roughly the same model? Or is their approach significantly different?
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So I was bored and decided to watch a few of the pilots. As someone who loved Netflix's House of Cards, I was excited to see what Amazon had in store for us of similar caliber. Well, suffice to say that spreading their dollars across numerous pilots instead of one single show gets you what you expect: utter trash.
Those Who Can't, a story about three teachers (gym, history, and Spanish) was utterly terrible. They hated a jock in the school who was constantly annoying them and being the stereotypical douchebag. The script was jerky, the acting was bad, and the entire premise was overdone. Not impressive in the least, in fact in many instances it was downright painful.
Alpha House starts out great with Bill Murray getting arrested and John Goodman watching as he freaks out but it goes downhill from there mostly because Murray is not on the show after that first 45 second cameo. The vulgarity (something I don't mind in the least and use regularly myself) is there for vulgarity's sake, not because it makes sense in the dialogue. The show itself is slow, boring, and pointless. It's like Amazon was trying to make fun of House of Cards on SNL but failing as SNL tends to do so well.
While I haven't watched all the pilots yet, I really don't think I have much desire to do so. I am still waiting for more House of Cards and certainly more Arrested Development on Netflix but this Amazon shit is just bad. They need to get their shit together and up their game if they think they're going to compete with Netflix's first-run flagship.
I'm guessing Onion News Empire is one of them, just started watching the pilot a few minutes ago. A few recognizable actors (not just a bunch of unknowns), funny so far.
Hopefully others work out this well too.
Netflix in the meanwhile is thinking more in terms of "Fantasy TV" - like "wouldn't it be awesome if we could see any show made by Director X that also has stars Y & Z"? Then they don't even care exactly what show gets made, they just throw the delicious self-aware ingredients together and let it all work.
You may want to rethink that "Fantasy TV" view.
Not only is Netflix picking up shows in a traditional way, most of their current and future programming is basically "sold" one way or the other even before the production starts.
House of Cards - a remake of a successful UK show.
Hemlock Grove - based on a novel.
Lilyhammer - made jointly for a Norwegian broadcasting company. I.e. pre-sold to Norwegians.
Arrested Development - a revival of a popular show.
Derek - based on an Ricky Gervais old character.
Turbo: F.A.S.T. - a spinoff from an upcoming DreamWorks cartoon.
Orange Is the New Black - based on a book.
On top of that, every single one of those productions is "sprinkled" with recognizable names - either acting or in production.
They are not trowing shit at the wall to see what will stick or carelessly throwing money at "Director X that also has stars Y & Z".
They are aiming at existing audiences.
Classic Hollywood game.
Get the rights to existing "content" with existing audience, slap some stars on the production, make your own thing out of all that and then sell the shit out of it.
Nothing bad about that, just nothing fantastic either.
Though... While you may not end up with wall to wall "Friends" clones (no star appeal at the beginning), but you may end up with the entire comedy line-up of "Joey" and "Two And a Half Men" clones, and the "drama" section full of "Sex and the City" clones.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Drop the idea of "TV show". They've been done and you probably do not have any better ideas than the networks have.
Instead, look at the books you're selling. Create "mini-series" type programming from the literature that is already out there. Focus on story arcs where you can have a beginning and an end.
The Black Company by Glen Cook.
Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust.
A steam-punk version of Doc Savage.
Perry Rhodan.
Neal Stephenson either The Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon.
Go big. Bigger than the networks. Bigger than the movie studios. Fill the niche they aren't willing to.
Really? Find a single scripted show rated less than TV-14 from the networks in prime time. There is NOTHING like the shows that I grew up on (Happy Days, Cosby, Home Improvement, etc...), which were shows the whole family could enjoy together.
Now, the kids shows are so annoying and poorly-acted that no adult could stand them, and the adult shows are so "gritty" and "dark" and "sexy" that no kids like them. Amazon could make a lot of money by investing in the type of shows that make a ton of money, because apparently the networks are too busy trying to be "edgy" to make a fortune.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...