Chapter 8

Life after Broadcast

The road to network cancellation is paved with good intentions. Many prematurely canceled shows were simply ahead of their time, often not given the chance to take flight. In other cases we had the right show but wrong network, and/or wrong time slot, poor marketing, ineffective casting, maybe a weak pilot and surrounding factors that led to the ultimate purge. No matter the reason, now-obsolete overnight Nielsen ratings sounded the death knell before a worthy show had time to ripen.

Here’s my partial list of personal favorite, provocative, high-quality TV series that IMHO died all too young:

Star Trek (The Original Series). Born: 1966 on NBC. Died: 1969. It’s surprising that the original, groundbreaking series lasted only 3 seasons, despite immortality via sequels and reboots. Lesson learned: Star Trek never dies.

The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Born: 1987 on NBC. Canceled by NBC: 1989. Picked up on Lifetime in 1989. Died (see irony) on Lifetime in 1991. Lesson learned: Jay Tarses’ ahead of its time, quirky, single-camera comedy. It was inspired, critically acclaimed, but ignored by the mainstream masses.

Twin Peaks. Born: 1990 on ABC. Canceled by ABC: 1991. Resurrected as a feature film in 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (both the prequel and finale of the TV series). A reboot series is in the works at Showtime. Prognosis: Keep your ear to the ground (and in case you don’t get this inside joke, watch David Lynch’s disturbing masterpiece, Blue Velvet).

My So-Called Life. Born: 1994 on ABC. Died: 1995. Lesson learned: Way ahead of its time.

Karen Sisco. Born: 2003 on ABC. Died: after 7 episodes that same year. Lesson learned: Ahead of its time. Carla Gugino nailed the titular role, which Jennifer Lopez also played in Out of Sight (co-starring George Clooney, directed by Steven Soderbergh), based upon the novel by Elmore Leonard. Would definitely be a hit on Netflix today, but when it aired, it was literally out of sight of most TV viewers. Shame.

Arrested Development. Born: 2003 on Fox. Canceled by Fox: 2006. Picked up by Netflix: 2013. Current prognosis: Pretty good.

Deadwood. Born: 2004 on HBO. Died: 2006. Lesson learned: Creative differences between showrunner/creator and HBO? This show was pure gold.

Veronica Mars. Born: 2004 on the (now defunct) UPN network. Migrated to and later canceled by The CW in 2007. Reborn as feature film via Kickstarter (raising the movie’s $5.7 million budget in a matter of days). Veronica Mars the movie was released in 2014. Lesson learned: Fans can overcome.

Heroes. Born: 2006 on NBC. Canceled by NBC: 2010. A 13-episode miniseries entitled Heroes Reborn premiered on NBC in 2015. Prognosis: Heroic.

Friday Night Lights. Born: 2006 on NBC. Canceled by NBC: 2008. Picked up by DirecTV’s Audience Network in 2008. Died in 2011. Lesson learned: Great show that got kicked around too much on a mismatched host network (NBC).

Pushing Daisies. Born: 2007 on ABC. Died: 2009. Maybe the title foreshadowed its demise? Lesson learned: Too eccentric for its own good. And it was really good.

Damages. Born: 2007 on FX. Canceled by FX: 2010. Picked up by DirecTV in 2010. Died in 2012. Lessons learned: Never underestimate Glenn Close. Creator/showrunners Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler and Daniel Zelman went on to create Bloodline on Netflix, proving that making a brilliant follow-up series is the best revenge.

Longmire. Born: 2012 on A+E. Canceled: Summer 2014, but was picked up by Netflix in the fall that same year. Based on Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Mysteries Season 4 premiered on Netflix in 2015. Prognosis: Confident and reliable, like Sheriff Longmire himself.

The Killing. Born: 2011 on AMC. Near-Death Experience: 2012. It’s alive! On AMC: 2012. Canceled by AMC: 2013. Picked up by Netflix: 2013, for its final season. The Killing is now officially dead. Lesson learned: Never withhold the answer to the whodunnit beyond the end of the first season. Brilliant writing, direction, acting. Though too late to course-correct from end of Season 1 blunder. RIP.

The Mindy Project. Born: 2012 on Fox. Canceled by Fox: 2015. Picked up by Hulu: 2015. Prognosis: Excellent.

Hannibal. Born: 2013 on NBC. Died: 2015. Prognosis: Rigor mortis setting in, but never say never to Hannibal.

Sneaky Pete. Born 2015. Died 2015. Reborn 2015. In a quick turnaround, this conman drama from Executive Producers Bryan Cranston and House creator David Shore went from CBS’s reject pile to 1 of just 2 pilots debuting in the summer 2015 season on Amazon, where they quickly received a full season pick-up. It’s a blessing in disguise: while the show (starring Giovanni Ribisi) had struggled as a procedural on a broadcast network, under Amazon’s shepherding, it added 2 key scenes that helped it hit all the right notes. Prognosis: Cranston + Shore + Ribisi could be onto something rather special.

Community. Born: 2009 on NBC. Canceled by NBC: 2014. Picked up by Yahoo, which started airing new episodes in 2015. Lessons learned: Read my adjoining interview with Creator/Showrunner/Executive Producer Dan Harmon. Prognosis: officially expired at Yahoo … who’s decided to forego the scripted original series business … for now.

Community on Yahoo!

Dan Harmon:
Creator/Showrunner/Executive Producer

Born in Milwaukee, Dan Harmon studied journalism at Marquette University before dropping out to do standup comedy. He was a member of Milwaukee’s ComedySportz, and part of the sketch comedy troupe “The Dead Alewives” with his frequent collaborator, Rob Schrab, with whom he wrote the Oscar-nominated animated movie, Monster House. Harmon, Schrab, together with Ben Stiller co-created the TV pilot, Heat Vision and Jack (with Owen Wilson and Jack Black). When it didn’t get picked up, Harmon enrolled at Glendale Community College for a semester and a half, where he took biology, psychology and Spanish classes. The Community study group is loosely based on Harmon’s own biology group, where he found himself unexpectedly caring for and helping complete strangers to pass their tests.

Harmon served as Executive Producer and showrunner of Community on NBC for 3 seasons, from its inception in 2009 through 2011—when he was unceremoniously fired by Sony Pictures Television (Community’s production company). For Season 4, writer/producers David Guarascio and Moses Port (Happy Endings, Aliens in America) took over, but there was significant viewer backlash. Even though Community was never a Nielsen ratings bonanza for NBC, its loyal fans deserted the show. Consequently, in 2013, Harmon returned to Community, serving as co-showrunner along with Co-Executive Producer Chris McKenna (American Dad!, The Mindy Project). NBC canceled the show after its fifth season in 2014, but it was immediately picked up by Yahoo!, who ordered a sixth season of 13 episodes, to stream on Yahoo! Screen.

In 2011, Harmon started hosting Harmontown, a live comedy show and podcast, which included a role-playing game segment, and multiple special guests, at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. Initially monthly, Harmontown turned weekly during Harmon’s hiatus from Community. In 2013, he took the show on tour, broadcasting from coast to coast. Documentary filmmaker, Neil Berkeley (Beauty is Embarrassing) followed Harmon, co-host Jeff B. Davis, podcaster Erin McGathy (Harmon’s wife), and Game Master Spencer Crittenden on the tour. Berkeley’s documentary Harmontown premiered at SXSW festival to rave reviews in 2014.

Together with Justin Roiland, Harmon created Rick and Morty, which centers on the (mis)adventures of a geriatric genius alcoholic inventor, and his less-than-genius grandson. The show premiered in 2013, and was renewed for 2 more seasons, with new episodes to air in 2016.

In 2009, Harmon won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for Hugh Jackman’s opening number at the 81st Academy Awards. He was also nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special for the same ceremony. Ever prolific, he published You’ll Be Perfect When You’re Dead in 2013, and is currently working on a second book, set for publication in 2016.

At his suggestion, I met with Harmon at a bar in Eagle Rock, just north of downtown Los Angeles. It was a dive bar by any standards: dark, windowless, and redolent of Pine Sol, tobacco, beer—and, faintly, of urine. When I arrived, I was the only patron in the joint. Harmon entered next, apologizing for being a few minutes late, as he’d inadvertently gone to our original meeting spot—another bar down the street that happened to be closed (did I mention it was 2 in the afternoon?) Harmon was wearing a lanyard around his neck with a key dangling—a gift from his wife because he kept losing his house key.

I set up my iPad for audio recording at a table in a black-vinyl-upholstered booth, pleased by the silence. Harmon felt self-conscious, and asked if I minded if he turned on the jukebox? I suggested something instrumental so as not to compete with my audio recording. He put on Johnny Cash, apparently that jukebox’s most mellow selection, and ordered a cocktail. Did I want anything? I ordered a beer, and effusively complimented him on Community, which to me is, hands-down, one of the best sitcoms of the past decade. It was at the top of virtually every critic’s Top 10 list of best sitcoms in 2009–2011, and an early proponent of the second wave of diversity in casting. In 2012, Community was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for the episode “Remedial Chaos Theory” written by Chris McKenna. The show has received multiple wins and nominations, including at the Television Critics’ Association (TCA) Awards and Critics Choice Television Awards.

The half-hour, single-camera comedy follows an ensemble of characters, led by the wry, fast-talking disbarred lawyer, Jeff (Joel McHale), who starts a bogus Spanish study group in the library of a community college in the fictional town of Greendale, Colorado. He forms the group not to be a model student, but to get closer to a pretty, social activist student, Britta (Gillian Jacobs). But Jeff’s plans are foiled when Britta brings other students to study with them: geeky, pop culture obsessed Abed (Danny Pudi), Christian single mom Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), insecure overachiever Annie (Alison Brie), former high school football champ Troy (Donald Glover), and arrogant, senior citizen millionaire Pierce (Chevy Chase).

Despite their differences, the group bonds and are often coaxed into aiding the college’s eccentric, incompetent dean (Jim Rash), in his schemes to make the school seem more respectable; the study group also continually reins in their unbalanced teacher—and subsequent classmate—Ben (Ken Jeong). John Oliver (The Daily Show on Comedy Central, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO) portrayed Dr. Ian Duncan, a disreputable Psychology professor, in seasons 1, 2, and 5.

One of the touchstones of the series, and of Harmon’s writing style, is its clever use of pop culture references, and parodying movie clichés and TV show tropes. In the meta pilot episode, John Hughes’ cult film The Breakfast Club features heavily. Each episode of Community was written in accordance with Harmon’s template of “story circles,” designed to create natural, structured storytelling.

The series has ostensibly completed its 6-season run, but there are rumors of a possible seventh season on Yahoo, and/or a Community movie in development. As well as on Yahoo! Screen and Hulu in the US, the show is currently available to stream via Netflix in the UK and Canada.

Back at the dive bar, as Johnny Cash crooned in the background, Harmon ordered another round of drinks—along with nachos and chili cheese fries—and we discussed Community’s migration from NBC to Yahoo! I was also eager to get his take on the digital television revolution.

Neil Landau: All the creative people I’m talking to who are doing shows outside of traditional broadcasting and the traditional system say that once you’re at a nontraditional network (e.g., Yahoo! Screen), it seems that you have so much more freedom. In your early experience on Community, were you being micromanaged by the network?

Dan Harmon: NBC was one of the most laissez faire, creatively compatible broadcast networks of a now dying age of broadcast networks. They were simultaneously hands-on and hands-off. “We know what we’re doing, we saw your numbers yesterday and here is how we are going to make a .7 a .8, by manipulating the psyche of the American public through your storylines.” That mentality still exists in broadcast television.

There’s a fundamental shift to the way the executive is looking at TV now that we’ve entered this new Golden Age of television. It begins with shows like Breaking Bad and networks like AMC saying, “Let’s do original stuff.” The idea seems to have become something writers have been saying all long, which is, “This stuff isn’t scientific.” You can’t model it. We’ve been trying for 60 years and it’s resulted in a Darwinian evolution of a safe mentality that is still high risk, high yield. It’s certainly not low risk, high yield, even if you are developing The Big Bang Theory. Because for every Big Bang Theory there are 20, 30, 50, hugely expensive, colossal, failures.

If you looked at that through the lens of any other industry, someone would come in and say, “This is a terrible business model.” To some degree there is a track record; you can systematically approach your speculation. But rolling dice is rolling dice. And Amazon, Netflix and Yahoo get that. These are new CEOs coming into an old media, looking at it through the eyes of proper business people.

It’s such a numbers game and Netflix understands. You have to make a lot of shows in order for the one that people start talking about to emerge.

NL: Traditionally sitcom characters don’t change, particularly in the multi-camera universe. On Community, they do. They evolved over time. Yours was one of the early dramedies, some have called it meta—with pop culture references—but there was a sense that it wasn’t going to be a formula nor the same every week. I’m wondering, at the point they said, “We don’t want you here now, we’re going to have other guys come in,” what was the main source of that tension? What did they want, versus what you wanted?

DH: I heard from NBC that, “We need a Jim and Pam.” From Sony it was always, “Stop doing what you’re doing.” The financial people would often lament, “You’re on your third season, there shouldn’t be any money that needs to be spent anymore except on actors or a cheese whiz prop.” The sets should be built; the template should be in existence. Of course, they’re thinking of Seinfeld, or their biggest recent success. They’re thinking, “When we were making money hand over fist, shows were doing this. Now we’re not making money and Dan Harmon’s show looks like this, so let’s tell Dan Harmon to make his show look like this other show.”

What NBC wanted was higher ratings on Thursday at 8pm. NBC wasn’t seeing higher ratings because, as we can now understand, Venice was sinking the entire time. Every morning you’d come in, and the numbers were always a little bit lower. Community was what NBC perceived as its big failure—which was its Thursday night comedy block. Community was the mascot of that failure of 2 hours of programming. It was just hemorrhaging money. “What’s going wrong here? Look at this graph going down… .” Meanwhile Sony was saying, “Congratulations on your third season.”

I’d get notes from Sony like, “Why are the characters aging and why do you keep doing Christmas episodes?” I’d say, “NBC likes the Christmas episodes.” They’d say, “NBC likes the Christmas episodes because NBC makes money when toothpaste companies advertise during the episode and they get a .1 hike in their ratings. Sony loses money on your Christmas episode because those are episodes that don’t play well in syndication.”

And they’re all right, so what do you do? You do your job, which is to make good television. And how do you do that when there’s no book about it that can be trusted, and there’s no Hogwarts that you can go to, and there’s no show you can point at—the answer is you position yourself in front of a television in your mind and ask yourself what would have to be on the screen in order for you as a viewer to say, this is the best show I’ve seen in my life. And that’s the only recourse we have.

NL: So you took some of the blame?

DH: I was pragmatic about it. I would say to them after table reads when they would lecture me about the numbers from the NBC side and the unpredictability of the product from the Sony side, “Your feedback is valuable to me, so is the guy at the gas station, and my writers. So is anyone who has watched TV and has something to say. Everyone’s feedback is valuable; however, if your feedback is I’m making my show wrong and you can’t get specific, fire me. I can’t take that note. I can’t just come into work tomorrow letting the giant cash mountain drive my work. In order to continue to make a show and make sure it’s good I’m going to have to tell you guys to get specific and get helpful or find someone else.”

There’s a tradition in old-school television—our kids won’t know what we’re talking about—“Oh, that’s the season they adopted the adorable black kid, or they went from single to multi-cam.” That idea of course correction, on a crass business-minded level, actually trickles down to the reality of the show. That’s a product of Reagonomics era, oligarchy of corporations, beaming a 1-way transmission to a captive audience, and only measuring their success or failure by these indirect Nielsen numbers and saying, “Your season has lower numbers versus last season. People like dinosaurs, add dinosaurs.”

NL: Clearly you were ahead of the curve. Now niche programming is encouraged and there’s room for everything. Quality and trust is important to the so-called startups (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu). This is the first original scripted series for Yahoo, are they saying, “Make the show you want to make, here’s money, we’re going to be hands off”? Will there be any change in strategy and how you approach the show? You can curse, have nudity …

DH: I suppose if we wanted to we could go down that road. They’re still a company that’s making content and has an image and a brand. Yahoo doesn’t want its first original show to be pro-child abduction. They wouldn’t necessarily turn their nose up at a joke that a Standards and Practices department might, but at the same time they want to be perceived as a purveyor of good content.

NL: Will the streaming be subscriber supported or ad supported?

DH: Ad supported. For our show they are going to have commercial pods, like old broadcast television.

NL: So there will be Standards and Practices, to protect the network and the brand …

DH: There was an era in which sponsors—the people with the actual money—produced television. They put the money down; they’re not risking anything in exchange for cultural efficacy or Emmy awards. They’re buying the frontal lobe of a population. Back in that day, a television TV writer had to address notes from the network, who had their own agenda, and a studio, but first and foremost the toothpaste note. Colgate had the Standards and Practices.

The only thing the FCC was able to do was express concern, and fine people. It’s all self-censorship and it started with sponsors self-censoring, because they didn’t want people boycotting the product. And then it became the networks taking over the sponsors. They said, “We create the content, you buy NBC. Within that product called NBC, you’re looking at 30 seconds of Colgate, Aim, or Crest.” So the networks took over in a clever way. And they took over the role of Standard and Practices because they wanted to brand their own network, compatible with any conceivable product that might want to sponsor them.

NL: Will George Carlin’s legendary “7 dirty words” you can’t say on TV be said on Yahoo?

DH: It’s a case-by-case basis. I put “Jesus” in the script and, if nobody tells me “Don’t say that,” then that’s what will air.

NL: You had a character smoke—which is verboten on broadcast network, right?

DH: Right. One of them was a former cigarette smoker, but very explicitly, transparently, branded as a marijuana smoker. There’s an episode where she’s getting high. The weird thing is how the rules interplay. You have Britta supposed to smoke a joint in the scene. One of the rules is, it can’t look like a joint. It has to look like a cigarette. The other rule is she can’t smoke cigarettes on camera, but she can exhale. You can’t inhale, but you can exhale. I was watching Empire and a kid has a bong. The dad comes in and as the kid picks the bong up, it cuts away before the bong hits his lips, you hear the sound of the bong. It cuts away—the pot hasn’t been smoked on camera, by some strange rule enforced by a Standards and Practices person. Her job isn’t to create the rules, just follow the rules. She does that by looking at other networks and content.

As a writer, your job is to constantly keep writing in the script—“she takes out a joint, sticks it in her mouth, lights it, takes a puff, and blows it out towards the camera,” and be told 9 times out of 10, “You know the rules! Why do you keep doing that?” Except the reason you keep doing that is because the tenth time it doesn’t get bounced back. You ask about it and you find out last night on Fox they inhaled.

NL: It seems it’s going to get more relaxed. If content’s available … my 14-year-old can download porn, there’s no way I can really stop him. So why can’t he see somebody smoke on TV?

DH: Your kid is watching, even on YouTube, he’s watching things that by broadcast standards are technically pornography.

NL: What appealed to you about going to Yahoo; how did they seduce you?

DH: What Yahoo said to win me over was, “We want you to make the same show you were making, we just don’t want you being told what to do anymore. We don’t want you to feel guilty about doing what you’re doing.”

NL: And that’s preferable to you than going to, say, Netflix?

DH: Going to Netflix with zero censorship is still something I might do, but it’s about the medium. If you’re going to write a limerick then you’re writing limerick. A sitcom is a sitcom, and part of the unspoken rule of the sitcom is that it’s for everybody. Meaning if someone has a breast exposed, it goes from writing a sonnet to, “Why are you bothering to write a sonnet?”

NL: You like the limitations of the form. And you want to be able to tell the story within the form.

DH: God forbid I would ever task myself with depicting reality and do what I do. I would feel like the biggest liar in that role. I like the role of liar because then I feel subversive by making things real. I can be subversive just by writing nice things about nice people, who burst into tears when they hurt each other and say, “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t.” I can be punk rock by doing that in a sitcom environment. I’d like to think if I wrote a porno, it would be a good porno. Part of what would make it good isn’t that it would be less pornographic, but it’s the best porno and turned people on. I just want to be a good writer and I recognize that limitation is part of the medium.

NL: Plus, now you won’t have to sweat the Nielsen ratings anymore?

DH: Yeah. I thought, This is a chance to actually do the experiment of working around the Nielsen system. That’s my most important goal. I can’t control how Yahoo does their numbers; I can’t control how Sony does their international distribution. If I had it my way I’d pull down all those barricades. Stop releasing Season 2 of a show that’s on its 6th season in the UK. Everyone is watching television at the same time, and you’re making half the planet steal it.

I was in Paris and a 16-year-old kid met me… . He showed me this app, where he knew when the next episode of Parks and Rec would be on BitTorrent. So it didn’t really matter what the studio’s plan was about Parks and Rec’s distribution. This kid knew that Parks and Rec was coming out from an app on his phone in 17 minutes, and he was going to download it, watch it and then talk about it on Reddit. I want people in Hong Kong and Ireland to be able to watch the new season of Community alongside everyone else, and I’d like their views to be tabulated at Yahoo’s discretion of course.

NL: You’ve finished all the new episodes for Yahoo? And will they be released in an all-at-once binge model?

DH: We’re about halfway done. 1 episode a week, with the exception of the first week—they’ll air the first 2.

NL: This is Yahoo’s first show; you’re their House of Cards; their Orange Is the New Black. In terms of Yahoo’s plans, the roll out, it’s a re-launch. A lot of people are going to see it. And people know it’s a great show. You have such a loyal fan base, and I think it’ll increase now.

DH: If you’re just counting clicks, for sure it’s going to increase. People watching the show weren’t being measured. And then you start digging into the flaws in the (Nielsen) system, where if it’s truly a show of its time and it is appealing to the most sought-after demographic, and that demographic isn’t watching television, you get a picture for how we can be a little underrepresented in viewership.

NL: Extremely underrepresented. It’s such a small sampling. How accurate is it, really, in a transmedia world?

DH: It’s a private company, with a dated product. That needle Nielsen is using has been corrupted from the beginning but it wasn’t visible in a world where there were 3 networks splitting 150 million Americans. It was like, “Hey, who watched The Incredible Hulk versus The Bionic Woman last night?” That was a great use of Nielsen. It was a metric for its time. And it’s still usable when comparing American Idol and The Voice to the Super Bowl. Not useable when comparing Parks and Rec to Community. It’s like giving a breathalyzer to someone submerged in Vodka.

NL: Some of it has to do with laziness of the American public. I’m going to hunt down an a la carte programming menu for myself, as I want to watch the shows I want to watch when I want to watch them. But a great majority, even with all these options, are just going to turn the TV on and sit there passively, and just watch what’s next on linear TV. Maybe they’ll change the channel, but people aren’t seeking out what might be best.

DH: They certainly aren’t flattered by the idea of selling their private experiences to a corporation so a corporation can sell it.

NL: Not at the moment. So how do you reach the people? The lead show was a really important thing.

DH: You reach them by providing entertainment. They only reason that changed, is because the networks got high on the hog and boxed the sponsors out. And now it’s just a matter of opening that box back up and letting Honda present your show.

NL: I teach a class at UCLA sponsored by Sony Crackle. They want act breaks and the story engines of a procedural for their 1-hour dramas. And nothing too racy, because they sell advertising and to international markets.

DH: Their name sounds like both a candy bar and a Mad Magazine rip off. I will make a million dollar bet that Sony will not be at the forefront of figuring out how to monetize an anti-Sony world. Everyone in charge of figuring it out is cashing their paychecks on time clocks that were built by an infrastructure that’s not going to be supported by this new world.

NL: Even though I’m facilitating delivering high quality pilots, that they may or may not want to buy, my instinct is they’re behind the curve. To me, it’s old school to be advertiser supported. If they want to compete with Amazon and Netflix, they would change that model, but they aren’t. As for Yahoo’s first show coming out, I’m surprised to see they’re opting for advertiser supported as opposed to subscription based.

DH: Why would Yahoo want to come out of the gate trying to get people to remember that Yahoo exists, and get traffic to come over to them by offering a product that you also have to sign up and pay for? Netflix is allowed to emulate HBO in the ‘90s and say, “Hey, here’s a reason to sign up for Netflix. If you sign up you get to watch OITNB for free.” Yahoo can’t do that. You didn’t sign up to Yahoo for anything before that. Yahoo’s built-in audience is what they’re buying from Community. They’re paying money that Hulu wasn’t able to pay to take that couple million people, guaranteed over to Yahoo with all their passion.

NL: What do you think Yahoo’s endgame is? AOL is doing originals, but no one uses AOL anymore.

DH: I honestly don’t know if Yahoo has an endgame. The ideal would be to disregard ratings and monetization, and have faith that good quality will lead to money. When Kathy Savitt [Yahoo’s Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Media] talks about television, she sounds like John Landgraf at FX. John is very successful. When he talks about strategies in this new world the first thing he says is. “I don’t know.” The second thing is, “You have to make great shows. You have to continue to have television be an important thing for people because, if you do, the money will come.”

NL: Amazon doesn’t care as much about who is watching, and ratings. Netflix is subscription based. I wonder what Yahoo’s game is.

DH: If I were Yahoo, I would be getting people to recognize me as a vendor of content. Figuring out how to take over Nielsen’s job of selling our metric. Yahoo is simply buying Community at an exorbitant price while paying Paul Feig a little less to do a really cool new space show … they’re writing a check to this dinosaur called Community to get those couple million people over there and jump start this engine. And Yahoo becomes a place you go to watch TV, period.

*Since this interview, Kathy Savitt, has left Yahoo for upstart movie studio, Robert Simonds’ STX Entertainment, where she will be the President of Digital. At press time, Savitt’s successor at Yahoo is yet to be announced. Yahoo has moved away from the scripted series business altogether, though there’s the possibility of a Community movie …

Evolution Is Integral to Revolution

Mercifully, thanks to streaming networks Hulu, Netflix, Yahoo—and satellite cable provider DirecTV’s Audience Network—many great TV shows that would be dead are being extended, resurrected, allowed to ripen and given their due.

Viewer loyalty and hardcore fans have been instrumental in saving canceled and “on the bubble” series in the past. CBS’ Jericho comes to mind. Historically, there have been broadcast network Hail Marys for such popular shows as ABC’s multiple Primetime Emmy Award winning Taxi, which was axed after its fourth season, then renewed for its fifth and final season on NBC. Southland: canceled by NBC, renewed by TNT. Futurama: canceled by Fox, renewed by Comedy Central. Unforgettable: forgotten by CBS, renewed by A+E. We’ve also seen migration from YouTube to basic and premium cable: Broad City and Key & Peele (to Comedy Central), then we have High Maintenance (from Vimeo to HBO in 2016). We’ve seen homegrown YouTube stars segueing to curated digital networks, such as AwesomenessTV, I Am OTHER, Maker Studios and multichannel networks (MCNs).

Arguably, several canceled series were simply too niche for advertiser-supported, ratings-dependent broadcast and basic cable networks, and would have survived or had greater longevity had the streaming networks existed before their demise.

In the former TV universe, majority always ruled. In the digital television revolution, niche is the new mainstream and has its own inherent value. It’s almost a variant on that biblical saying, “The meek shall inherit the Earth,” though now along the lines of, “The minority shall be represented and validated.” Through the digital television revolution, niche programs can flourish. It’s a new type of Digital Darwinism.

But is this a blessing or a curse for TV viewers? Maybe there’s also value to a cyclical reevaluation of what is … to make room for what’s next?

If we look to Nature, lightning strikes a forest for cyclical burn off to make room for new, heartier seedlings to grow and flourish. As the elder generation knows, clinging to the past isn’t going to stop progress. Sometimes, it’s a positive thing for a show to run its natural course without too much life support or intervention.

Are We Living in a “Content Bubble”?

In August 2015, FX Network’s CEO John Landgraf made waves at the Television Critics Association’s annual summer tour with his clarion call about the glut of original series, with 2015 set to produce an astonishing 400+ original scripted series (a 10% increase on 2014, which had already shattered all previous records). His remarks were rousing and provocative: “I long ago lost the ability to keep track of every scripted TV series … But this year, I finally lost the ability to keep track of every programmer who is in the scripted programming business … This is simply too much television. My sense is that 2015 or 2016 will represent peak TV in America, and that we’ll begin to see declines coming the year after that and beyond.”¹

Landgraf, a savvy businessman with impeccable taste, explained his main concern that this “content bubble” is not sustainable, overwhelming both viewers and programmers with too many choices and platforms. Some weeks later, he reinforced his controversial views at the Edinburgh TV Festival, claiming that the tyranny of choice “breeds discontent … [It] becomes work because whenever you’re choosing something, you’re un-choosing something else.”²

Showtime Networks president, David Nevins, and AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan, disagree. Their common sentiment, expressed by Nevins: “There may be too much good television, but there is never too much great television.”³

While I understand Landgraf’s anxiety that there is an overabundance of televised content, if you consider TV shows as analogous to books, his argument fizzles. When you look at the book publishing industry, both digital and paper books continue to rack up impressive sales. Landgraf himself is quick to agree, “Maybe what defines us uniquely as a species is storytelling … we love them and we will always love them.”⁴

Within the evolution of the book business, Amazon has become such a dominant force—a virtual monopoly—that has sadly placed most brick and mortar bookstores (large and small) on the endangered species list, just like newspapers. But readers continue to enjoy e-books on their tablets and Kindles, and book sales are strong. (Notably, indie bookstores that have managed to survive are doing surprisingly well, these days.) The big publishing houses have consolidated and continue to be the gatekeepers of the traditional book biz. And yet, thanks to crowd sourcing and social media, self-published books are also able to find a core of readers, both large and niche. Naturally, books are far cheaper to print and distribute than TV series. Landgraf’s comments go to this point: we’re spending too much developing, producing, and distributing shows, making it increasingly difficult for a quality surplus of content to break through the noise, connect with a fan base, and return a studio’s significant investment. His solution would be to filter through the glut of mediocrity and to only produce the best of the best—a strategy that’s currently working exceedingly well for his FX brand (The Americans, Louie, American Horror Story, Fargo). As one industry veteran puts it, “Unlike books, there are a lot of resources necessary to make a show good and to get it seen: writers, actors, etc . . With books, it doesn’t take 8 writers on a staff, 25 actors and many others to make a project good. There are not enough of those people available so they are spread too thin and, therefore, it is leading to a lower overall quality level. If there were true market forces at work, meaning if cable networks didn’t have monopolies in most markets (I can’t switch to Charter Communications or Verizon fios, for instance) they wouldn’t be able to force bundles on me.”

In his TCA speech, Landgraf bemoaned the lack of transparency at rival streaming networks: “Despite what many programmers would like to claim, every one of us chooses shows that don’t work … the fact that a second season of a show gets ordered before the first season has premiered [clearly a jab at competitor Netflix] says nothing about how many people are watching it or how good they think it is … Nobody bats 400 in professional baseball and nobody bats a thousand in TV.”⁵ Consider The Comedians, the swiftly canceled FX comedy series from 2015 starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad, a rare strikeout for Landgraf.

The rise of SVOD has strained the traditional model of advertising in TV, which Landgraf describes as “pretty broken.” A decade ago, over 50% of FX’s revenue was from linear TV ads, which has dropped to 32%. Landgraf foresees a continued decline of 1% each year. Naturally, no viewer enjoys sitting through 20 minutes of ads in an hour of programming. Landgraf noted that advertising agencies are dealing with the contraction via targeted, more creative and entertaining commercials that could receive higher CPM rates in the future. As a moviegoer who arrives early so I don’t miss the coming attractions, this revamped approach to TV commercials could be a welcome change for some, especially if the content is free.

Still, SVOD has presented a welcome second window and revenue for FX, which owns the rights to most of its shows. Landgraf has licensed series to Netflix despite his criticisms, citing his “fiduciary responsibility” to FX’s partners to boost revenue. He’s also brokered deals with Amazon and Hulu. Landgraf revealed his strategy at FX has been to “get bigger”—there’s FXX, FXM and FX Now, which is an “authenticated app” rather than OTT, and grants access to the whole Simpsons library.

The Bottom Line

Diehard fans can kick and scream all they want, but if there’s not significant revenue to be made by rescuing a series from cancellation, then there is no up$ide—and no re$urrection. Just a fond farewell; a remembrance of things past.

In fact that was the title of a book. In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), also translated as Remembrance of Things Past, is a multi-volume novel by French author Marcel Proust. Born: 1871. Died: 1922. Gone, but never forgotten.