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Is There Too Much New Programming On TV?
HughPickens.com writes: John Koblin writes in the NY Times that there's a crisis in television programming felt among executives, viewers and critics, and it's the result of one thing: There is simply too much on television. John Landgraf, chief executive of FX Networks, reported at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour that the total number of original scripted series on TV in 2014 was 371. The total will surpass 400 in 2015. The glut, according to Landgraf, has presented "a huge challenge in finding compelling original stories and the level of talent needed to sustain those stories."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Too many seem to have the following structure:
90% of the time is dedicated to an episode specific narrative following a formula. Whether it's the detectives getting a case, the scientific guy chasing a new phenomenon, etc. For the most part the, the events in this portion are episode specific although usually there's some new morsel that exposes information the grand conspiracy and larger story arc when that episode's events are resolved.
10% of the time is dedicated to following/expositing the serial aspect of the story, usually some kind of conspiracy or larger story. Very little information is exposed, mostly just enough to let you remember there's this bigger (and often much more interesting) narrative arc taking place.
Mostly this just feels as if the series has been turned on its head. It should be about the 10% part that is the actual "meat" of the story. If (and only if) the dumb series runs enough seasons, the larger story arc might get resolved in some semi-satisfying way. Mostly it seems like the writer had a pretty cool idea but didn't know what to do with it, and fell back on the "case of the week" to fill it in because the bigger idea really didn't have much behind it.
In some cases, this can be tolerable but most of the time you just feel strung along, like there's this really cool story that's going to get broken wide open...and then nothing, or something entirely lame like Lost happens.
In contrast, really good series (like the Wire) manage to make the entire series about the story arc and the individual episodes expand and bring it out. Part of the Wire's specific genius was that it did this well and also had a seasonal anthology feel to it as the action shifted from the corner, to the port, to the dealers again without losing the larger momentum but giving us different characters and settings, too.
When I start a new series if I feel like I'm being strung along by episode 4 or 5, chances are I won't ever get resolution and I just drop it.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot more books published each year than TV shows, and yet it seems this does not pose a problem for writers.
Firefly: loved. Dropped at ep. 13 or so. Zero closure (from the network. Kudos on cast and others for the attempt with the movie, but... 2 hours of movie cannot replace many hours of series.) Poster child for network insanity, lack of foresight driven by must-profit-this-quarter-or-shareholders-will-riot.
Homeland: the season "finale"? Nothing. Not a damn thing worth airing. And the drivel-infested baby-angst... omg, switch it off. Bad enough its basically cop-porn, federal-style, unlimited excuses for "What constitution? Constitution? Isn't that something to do with whether I catch cold or not?" but I have to have baby angst inflicted on me? It's no wonder these series die on the vine when the shows grievously lose focus like that.
Speaking of baby angst, Sons of Anarchy: An entire inane SEASON of baby-angst. Hollywood: When I want "soul searching humanity" in my drug-dealing, weapons-smuggling, murdering, underhanded, principle-free smorgasbord of evil gangland bottom-feeders, I'll let you know, mkay? Don't hold your breath on that one, either. They would have lost me over that baby-kidnap nonsense if it wasn't for Crazy-Pants McGillicuddy, AKA Tig Trager. He was constantly saving episodes. Best-written character on the series by leaps and bounds.
Mostly-consistent entertainment: Deadwood, Game of Thrones, Vikings, Ray Donovan, House of Cards, and (surprisingly) Daredevil.
There may be a lot of new shows, but there sure aren't a lot of good new shows. I'm not having any trouble at all trying to choose what to watch. I'm having trouble finding anything worth watching, and if I do find such a thing, they'll probably cancel it anyway.
Then there's the abject cop porn. Talk about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Total bottom-feeder trash. But at least there's a huge audience for it. We can't all manage to keep the drool off our faces. That's exactly what keeps Fox News on the air and Trump in the running — the huge number of utter idiots in the general population. I can't think of a single cop show where a major theme wasn't the show trying to make excuses for absolutely inexcusable behavior by the cops. I mean, okay, if the show is *about* inexcusable behavior, alright then. But when the "hero" is off the reservation and they play that up as a good thing, that's just destructive to every reasonable and sane point of view there is. Awful stuff. I''m not talking about antiheroes either. When a show about a cop is clearly holding cops up as "the good guys", and they can't be bothered with little things like people's actual rights, as if their correct role was legislator, judge and jury all rolled into one, I just turn the show off.
My only real problem with TV is finding anything worth watching. I get that stranger in a strange land feeling more often than not, and sadly, it doesn't come staffed with a libertarian, open-minded genius, super mental powers, and telepathic aliens. Just a vague urge to go do the hermit thing in a cave.
I don't know... I barely watch regular tv anymore, but I've never once said 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.'. What I usually say is 'There is to much crap I have no interest in on tv', which includes lots of shows with interesting premises that never go anywhere. When I do find a show I like I'm lucky to get 13 episodes before they go on hiatus and run the risk of never being seen again because the metrics say it's not 'popular enough'. As has already been mentioned Firefly falls on this list, but plenty of others do as well. Networks are inherently fickle and wouldn't recognize good tv if it was used to hit them over the head. Thank god they are becoming less and less needed to handle entertainment.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I was watching several series for a few years, and new ones kept coming up, and I got bogged down. Missed a few episodes, then decided to wait until I could just watch the entire season at once, to catch up, but then fell behind in several more series. Then you would have some series take several breaks, and I wouldn't know when to start watching again. Then you get filler episodes that don't matter, and don't interest me enough to catch up on them. Then add to that the aforementioned fact that a lot of shows I enjoyed got cancelled after I invested time into them (Sarah Connor Chronicles was a huge blow to my enjoyment of TV), and I just stopped caring. I mostly game, exercise, or watch movies or the Marvel shows, on Netflix. I'll watch some occasional cartoons (Family Guy, Simpsons, Archer, etc), that doesn't require too much knowledge of previous shows, but I can't invest time in like 10 different series, that require me to watch each and every week.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
There are shows that rolls on because they attract stupid people that are too lazy to skip the commercials and there are smart shows that gets cancelled because the ad providers considers the audience impossible to target.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No, it really doesn't. There aren't too many new shows. There are simply too few shows getting renewed. Every episode that has aired before is "new programming". There's certainly not too much of that. If anything, there's too little. If you watch whatever is on Netflix, you'll run out of new content before you watch TV every evening for two years. After that, you'll be sitting there looking for new content and not finding any that looks interesting to you. Yet the shows that you aren't interested in are probably interesting to other people, so those shows should still continue to exist.
The real problem, unfortunately, is what it has always been: ratings-driven executives who are not content to pay for shows unless they find their audience instantly and are broadly popular. This leads over time to progressively lower-quality programming that dumbs down everything to be "good enough" for the largest possible audience, while being seen as "good" by none of them.
What we need is what we have always needed: executives who have the courage to allow a show the time to find its audience, even if that takes three or four seasons, who are willing to guarantee more than a half season at a time, giving people a reason to think long-term about a show's future. Without that, most TV will continue to be what it has become: crap.
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