FX chairman John Landgraf has a bulletin for a battered and bruised leisure trade: Folks love conventional tv.
After a decade of brinksmanship in content material spending among the many largest media conglomerates, old-school TV reveals alongside the traces of procedural dramas and multicamera sitcoms fell far out of favor with the inventive neighborhood. However viewers by no means gave up on these tried and true varieties. That’s one huge lesson that Landgraf has realized through the previous few years as FX has launched into a journey of transformation right into a branded hub on Hulu (and Disney+ exterior the U.S.) whereas additionally sustaining its roots as a linear, ad-supported cable channel.
Talking Nov. 19 at Selection‘s Enterprise Managers Breakfast in West Hollywood, Landgraf famous that the norms have shifted a lot that the trade’s problem is to discover a option to carry among the previous mannequin’s protocols right into a world that’s awash in leisure choices. One of many greatest challenges for programmers today is that collection aren’t constructed to go the space of 10 and even 20 seasons in success.
“How can we create a system the place it’s truly a extra regular course of for one thing to go a number of totally different seasons? And I don’t simply imply two or three, I imply we want, we want sitcoms and procedurals and the sorts of issues that persons are nonetheless truly watching contained in the streaming methods,” Landgraf mentioned.
His understanding of the issue has been formed by the perception he’s gained from seeing what clicks in streaming for Hulu and Disney+ and aggressive platforms. “Mates,” “Seinfeld,” “All people Loves Raymond,” “ER,” “Gray’s Anatomy,” “Legislation & Order: SVU,” “NCIS” and different sturdy classics from the not-so-distant previous drive a unprecedented quantity of streaming viewing. That ought to be a flashing neon signal to programmers. Landgraf sees this as a part of the bigger downside of fixing compensation phrases for inventive expertise — points that had been shouted about for months on picket traces throughout final 12 months’s writers and actors strikes.
“I have a look at the info. I do know what persons are watching, and so they’re watching plenty of the output of this trade again from an period after we had a revenue participation mannequin and we had folks incentivized to maintain engaged on one tv present 12 months after 12 months after 12 months and to make a whole lot and a whole lot of episodes,” Landgraf mentioned. “It’s a problem determining the way to rebuild that mannequin inside a brand new total ecosystem proper now. However I believe the audiences inform us that that’s tv. That’s one thing they actually need from tv. I don’t assume we’re excellent at giving it to them proper now.”
(Pictured: Cynthia Littleton, Selection co-Editor in Chief, and FX chairman John Landgraf)
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