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The Guardian asks: Is the golden age of television over?
Money is the root of TV's problems. In the US, where the TV economy is headquartered, TV and internet access costs two to three times what it does in the UK, and networks are in a tug-of-war with Americans, who are increasingly shredding steep cable bills in favor of Netflix and streaming services. This summer, many networks became locked in all-out legal battles with cash-strapped cable companies, with multibillion-dollar distribution deals at stake to fund those networks' huge programming budgets.
Executives are planning for a less luxurious future, in which TV shows may be briefer, lower-budget and filled with the kind of product-placement ads that audiences hate and advertisers pay for. Worse still, the company that started much of the trouble may soon confront flaws in its own business model.
Netflix reports earnings on Monday. Its problems, and those of companies like it, are more pressing than those of traditional television. At a conference in New York this month, chief executive Reed Hastings was blunt.
"Disney, who is very good in China, had their movie service shut down," he told an audience at the New Yorker Tech Fest. "Apple, who is very good in China, had their movie service closed down. It doesn't look good."
Hastings said his company was seeking to expand in other countries, India in particular. But there's a reason media businesses seeking vast scale tend to view China as the solution to all their problems: internet penetration in India is rising from 26% according to the World Bank. In China, it's rising from 50%.
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Netflix needs the money that increased scale would provide, in part, to pay top dollar for shows such as Arrested Development and Lost. In January, it told investors it owed $10.9bn in TV show licenses alone, with $4.7bn of that due this year. After that, almost the entire balance is due before the end of 2018.
Netflix will have to keep buying reruns at what will almost certainly be increasing rates if it wants to retain its users, and the companies selling those shows are now in a tight spot too – largely thanks to the ad-free Netflix model.
At US television networks, budget struggles mean making shows more as UK networks do, except with lots of ads and product placement: shorter lifespans, fewer sets and special effects, fewer episodes per series – and then little margin for error if shows look like they're failing early on.
Netflix cannot scale back. Its viewers pay for it outright and express their displeasure by canceling subscriptions, not by changing the channel. If anything, its executives are spending more: Baz Luhrmann's 1970s New York period piece, The Get Down, came with a record price tag for a service that had already driven up the cost of new scripts: $120m for 12 episodes, according to Variety.
In short, television content is expensive. With fewer people watching, the advertisers are getting fed up with paying the premiums the television networks ask for, and people aren't willing to pay the real price required for good television content. Unless something changes soon, expect cheaper television shows with shorter seasons and lots of product placements within the shows.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @05:52PM
I tried to watch B5, I really did
I can not blame you on that. Part of B5 at the time was the build up (the hype echos on to this day). The wait 'what are they going to do next episode'. Now? You can find out very quickly its probably the next one on the disc. Many times it is not that good. The whole thing is good. But individually most are very mediocre.
The story kinda still holds up. But the sets and effects do not hold up as much. Until they do that time travel episode the show is kinda creaky and 'ok'. Then it picks up from there and does not stop until the second to last episode in season 4. However, that the ending was rushed in season 4 shows. It was hand wavy and 'blah blah blah' done. Then woopsee we jumped the shark and have another season to deliver. They did OK but it was not as good. During its original run I missed 1 episode. Nothing made sense for 5 episodes after that until someone told me the plot of that episode.
SG1 still holds up. But it is a monster to watch. But it usually has a bit of humor in each episode to keep it fun. You can usually jump in anywhere and be mildly entertained.
Andromeda started off strong. It had an unfortunate lead actor and people skipped it because of his previous show but he actually did very well in it. But by season 3-4 it was starting to creak under its own story/mythos weight. Season 5 was pretty cool being one complete story.
If you want to watch a cop show watch columbo or dragnet. They are self contained and usually if you miss things you will still be up to date on what is going on.
In many ways the story arc is kind of cool but tends to make the individual stories not as good. Also many shows have decided to have a bunch of preachy messagey stuff in it. I watch this to get AWAY from that sort of thing. Not to double down on it. Some people like that and it is why those shows do well. I personally give it a skip.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 18 2016, @06:39PM
Andromeda started off strong. It had an unfortunate lead actor and people skipped it because of his previous show but he actually did very well in it. But by season 3-4 it was starting to creak under its own story/mythos weight. Season 5 was pretty cool being one complete story.
Unfortunately they fired the showrunner after season 1 episode 22, then the story kind of wobbled away from where it started. You can generally draw a line through "Ouroboros" and consider before and after as separate canons.
Robert Hewitt Wolfe released a script [cyberspace5.net] online of what his original series finale would have been, and we really missed out :-(
The horribly existentialist fifth season was highly allegorical and generally didn't make any sense, and at the very end they popped back to the end of season 4. Argh!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 18 2016, @06:46PM
Er, sorry--season *2* episode 22. So when you say "by season 3-4 it was starting to creak under its own story/mythos weight" I blame that on the replacement showrunner not really understanding half of what RHW was trying to do in the story. There are a lot of plot threads from those first two seasons that never end up leading anywhere.
The machine collective Harper was supposed to join, Trance story that only sort of half-happened, the futuristic cyborg version of Beka they ran into, the isolated Commonwealth planet that survived the fall and they dropped by like 3 times ever, etc.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:32PM
Also many shows have decided to have a bunch of preachy messagey stuff in it.
Yes the famous "prog-trek" thing where you can tell progressive ideology at the time of filming pretty easily. Goes back to the days of the first on TV interracial kiss on TOS, although technically as a fictional work I believe Kirk had banged several other species before he kissed a different colored human.
Sometimes that makes old soft sci fi hard to watch. The whole point of the episode was around kissing a black chick and you're not going to get the full effect, not get any effect really, unless you're in Mississippi in the 60s. Think of that classic screen cap of the cross dressing trans dude in a skirt in movie 1 or was it the first episode of TNG (doesn't really matter) the point being that was a major effect that will be missed.
Maybe an analogy as imagine if the special effects were so legacy/old you couldn't figure out the story. Nothing is that bad but imagine it for a bit. And in that context Kirk kissing a black chick is kinda like a special effect that is just going to blow right by 2016-culture people.
I suppose the whole essay above is kinda a justification for why very soft sci fi probably has to be remade every decade or so, whereas hard sci fi is cool for eternity, so thats why people mistakenly think soft sci fi is more popular because there's more churn in the "SJW narrative with a cut and replace setting change on Mars".
For example stranger in a strange land really needs a remake because "Hippies misadventures in Texas in '67 cut and paste thinly reskinned as sci fi" has gone beyond obsolete and beyond entertainingly campy to WTFs-ville. I mean, that book was part of the cannon of "Science Fiction Literature" academic classes in the 80s, I know because I was there... abut now a days my son thinks the characters are so weird and so far from 2016s culture that its easier to understand the culture and people of The Hobbit than SIASL. Or at least I haven't tried torturing him with the Silmarillian yet. Which isn't actually all that bad book other than perhaps defining high density. Like I remember WTFing at some higher math books for a few hours in school but eventually I figured all that out, unlike the Silmarillian.
I'm kinda motivated in my infinite spare time to re-read SIASL again and see if its as bad as I remember. Hard to believe the same dude wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress which still rocks decades later. I think generally Heinlein was a genius with the except of any time he tried to write a hippie into his books it just didn't work, like his typewriter was made of pure anti-hippie-ium.