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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 02 2015, @12:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the diamonds-in-the-coal-pile dept.

John Koblin writes in the NYT that there's a malaise in TV these days that's 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 and 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."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday September 02 2015, @12:52AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @12:52AM (#231049) Journal

    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.'

    Gee, I think I found the problem right there.

    The concept of people having to "commit" to to a show. It used to be you could dial up an episode of Star Trek, or Bonanza, or Lassie, and if you missed next week, it didn't matter. These days, they want you to commit to an entire season.

    As far as the "emotionally" part, that seems a bit of a stretch if you ask me. I can't remember the last time I had a real emotional investment in a TV show.

    Most people have only so many hours they are willing to devote to TV, and ever increasing numbers have learned that the investment seldom pays off. The increasing load of advertisements makes it even harder to stick around for even a single episode, let alone an entire season.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:04AM (#231053)

    You are not qualified to comment on this subject because you are obviously not an ordinary person. Ordinary people are fully emotionally invested in cheating on their significant others and chronic backstabbing of friends, neighbors, and coworkers. This is how ordinary people live, and you are just not a part of their society.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:25AM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:25AM (#231069)

    I have to suspect that this could be a cyclical thing. I may be missing a few generations here, but:

    • Long-running radio serials
    • followed by soap operas
    • replaced by lighter sitcoms and short-story-arc series
    • replaced by heavy, continuity-rich dramatic series
    • leading to media commitment fatigue
    • possibly producing a regression back towards more self-contained fare

    Considering that the dramatic arts are as old as humanity itself, I have to think that the detailed, long-story-arc form has shown up before, and that this situation has played out in the past, just in different media.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 02 2015, @06:49AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 02 2015, @06:49AM (#231155) Journal

    I can't remember the last time I had a real emotional investment in a TV show.

    I can. I even bought all the series of M.A.S.H. on DVD

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:34AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 02 2015, @11:34AM (#231200)

    The concept of people having to "commit" to to a show.

    You can make episodes higher quality and worth watching or try psychological tricks to get them to watch next week. You can guess which is cheaper.

    This can have VERY negative effects on viewer numbers. In the 90s I tried to break into B5 but couldn't get thru the impervious wall of not having seen previous episodes because every episode strictly relied on having seen the previous 10-20 episodes. I'm planning on trying again this fall, starting from the first episode. From what I've read its pretty shitty ultra soft sci fi, but if you watch it as if it were a thinly skinned fantasy, full of telepathy and sorcery and monsters and dungeons and pirate ships, then its not so distracting and the story can be seen, which is supposed to be a good story. Its a lot like Star Wars in that way, there was sort of a 70s-80s-90s thing about getting rid of sci fi and replacing it with Tolkien very thinly skinned with space ships.

    Something similar happened with "The Sopranos" I was endlessly propagandized that its the best thing since sliced bread, watched two episodes around episode 60, total WTF reaction, did the scales of justice thing where its going to take 60+ hours out of my life to figure this out from the start, eh, F it, it isn't worth it. Now if they made a hundred mobster episodes that stood on their own maybe I'd have watched more than 2 before WTFing it and dropping it.

    The situation in non fiction, documentaries, is kinda different. If the BBC "World at War" series stopped in the middle, it would have been really bad.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:21PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:21PM (#231323) Journal

      Babylon 5 seems standard now, because most shows follow a larger story arc. At the time, they were practically the only ones doing it. Most big SciFi shows were Star Trek or Star Trek spin-offs, and, as such, incredibly episodic with no connective tissue. The special effects were much better than Star Trek as well, reflected both in the ships and in the aliens. The mechanics of spaceflight were much closer to realistic, too--The human fighters would pivot and fire while travelling along a vector. They also wove in sub plots into the main story arc in such a way that they would conclude and new ones would spawn across several episodes.

      That said, it's far better to watch the entire thing in the box set than to try to pick up random episodes as it originally came out over broadcast television. I watched them all a couple years ago and they have stood the test of time pretty well.

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      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:38PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:38PM (#231334)

        Yeah and I did see the Trek counter-reaction of DS9 and Voyager. They get picked on a lot, but were not really all that awful. Since Enterprise they don't get picked on as much, no longer the worst, etc. It'll be interesting seeing the cause so long after seeing the result.

        I didn't read Tolkien until long after I was playing RPGs and CRPGs and all the stuff that resulted from Tolkien so it was pretty weird reading. Wow his hobbits are just like the ones in that RPG I used to play, then kick myself for the nth time, you idiot he wrote them first.

        Another "fun" thing to do is take a cheezy action sequel series and watch them in reverse. Fast and Furious, for example. I intentionally watched those in reverse, was kinda cool. Its weird seeing a dude make a cameo appearance then seeing him as a main character in an earlier movie the next week.

        Reading (watching) the source long after the response is fun if you get a chance to try it.

        I'm planning on S1E1 straight thru to the end as advised in person by some folks familiar with the series and internet opinion seems to concur. I'm more or less looking forward to starting it, hoping for a rainy day soon.

        I watched a handful of "Breaking Bad" episodes until I got sick of it and I'm tempted to watch the whole series in reverse just to mess with my mind. Think of the suspense! Why'd he shoot that dude? Find out next week when he's finally introduced!

        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:52PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @04:52PM (#231341) Journal

          Ha, that's a novel approach. But it kind of does make me think that more than a few of us are trying to wring out the last drops of a dying form of entertainment. Me, I started to watch telenovelas to learn Spanish along with my kids who are in a dual language program. It is a good way to learn a language, because the vocabulary is limited to that of a 5th grader (as all soap operas are) so you hear the same words and idioms over and over. So it has educational value, but I can't honestly call it entertaining.

          A few years ago I would have predicted that gaming would fully step in to fill the void, but that too seems to be mining itself out to depletion as fast as passive viewing is.

          No idea what will come next. A boom in the Maker movement?

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    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday September 02 2015, @07:49PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @07:49PM (#231421) Journal

      For me, the Science Fiction aspects don't have to be "correct", they just have to be consistent.

      (The long flight down the trench in Star Wars, only to drop two missiles that immediately take a 90 degree turn and dive down a shaft on the Death Star was a real WTF moment for me. If the missiles could do that, why the run-up through the trench?)

      The crazy Fringe series, could be watched one episode at a time the first year, but if you came in on the second year you would be as lost as ever. Their sifi didn't matter if you watched it from the beginning. People can suspend disbelief about sifi just as easily as they can about real-fi.

      But AGAIN, they pushed it too many seasons, which required them to get weirder and weirder, such that it was impossible to join it a couple seasons in.

      (I liked the series, the acting was good, and characters were believable. But it too went 5 seasons, (100 episodes) became tedious, and should have ended in half that many).

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