The Rise of Prestige TV in 2018
The term “golden age of TV” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s an accurate term for both the critical quality and diversity of programming available in 2018. An explosion of new series on non-broadcast channels (with Netflix alone launching a jaw dropping 700 new shows in 2018) has created an unprecedented combination of disruptive business models and demand for genre specific, narrowly focused content that would have traditionally stalled at the pilot stage or encounter tremendous difficulty in attracting a sustainable audience under the constraints of a traditional network such as NBC, ABC or CBS.
Prestige television shows have thrived in particular on premium channels such as HBO and digital only services like Netflix through the adaptation of a long standing British public TV format, making carefully chosen compromises with trusted creators and trusting in quality. Here’s how it happened:
- Movies as a Miniseries
The BBC has popularized the concept of creating a season of content as a series of interconnected movies or a decompressed movie split into a few episodes, formats used in the iconic Sherlock and the Collateral limited series starring Carey Mulligan respectively. HBO has adapted this by applying the Hollywood budget and cast approach to an 8–10 episode season length on Game of Thrones, True Detective and most recently Westworld to great success.
These series are easier for fans to invest in, with shorter episode commitments as either new viewers deciding on their interest in adding a new show to their content consumption during its initial run or potential viewers looking to catch up. The availability of shorter 6–13 episode commitments per season was critical for shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad on AMC to attract increased viewership once the back catalogs were added to Netflix, allowing interested viewers to quickly binge through previous seasons as positive word of mouth reached them.
In a worldwide media market of unprecedented choice, defining shows with a distinctive premise are necessary for newer players such as Netflix (Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things) and Amazon Prime (Transparent, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) to establish themselves as major players and adapting a movies as a miniseries model makes those defining shows easier to adapt for potential customers.
2. Exchanging Control for Cost
Among American networks, FX has led the way in providing extensive creative control to riskier concepts in exchange for a smaller budget per episode/season. Led by Louis C.K. on Louie and Better Things, their willingness to allow showrunners with bold but commercially challenging concepts to create shows with minuscule cost compared to the rest of their lineup has empowered modern critical powerhouses such as Atlanta on FX (where stars Donald Glover and Lakeith Stanfield have become Hollywood stars since its debut) to exist with financial returns to their parent company that would doom traditional network shows.
This also allows (or it could be argued, forces) creators to adapt multiple roles on their show: Donald Glover is a main cast member, writer, producer and director on Atlanta. The assignment of so many roles to a single person is exceedingly rare for most productions but the low cost, high control model applied to this show requires Glover to wear multiple hats which has resulted in his unique creative vision applied to every aspect of Atlanta to its creative benefit.
3. Critical Reception as Long Term Investment
Last but perhaps most importantly, networks are increasingly willing to spend on shows with high critical reception but low short term profitability (or even a financial loss) as a long term investment in the value of their network overall. From Mr. Robot on USA Network, Halt and Catch Fire on AMC, IFC Channel with Portlandia and The Detour on TBS among many others, shows debuting with low viewership ratings are now being evaluated by additional metrics including modern extensions of viewing (i.e. live + 7 ratings to account for DVR viewing) as well as newer metrics (i.e. effectiveness as exclusive content enticement in subscription renewal or reactivation messaging).
AMC faced a similar challenge with Breaking Bad and Mad Men through their early seasons, critically beloved programs that drew low weekly ratings but also established the network as a place where risky genre fare such as The Walking Dead could thrive and eventually deliver massive financial returns. A defining show can also be used to pivot the direction of an entire channel: with the recent loss of major cast members to Suits, USA Network is using the creative trust it has earned for its stewardship of Mr. Robot to try critically focused pilots on Briarpatch and the Jason Bourne universe based Treadstone with heavier serialization instead of their established format of self contained episodes for historical hits such as Law and Order: SVU.
The patience, consideration and eventual returns on investment for prestige TV for premium channels/content services have resulted in an unprecedented boom of high quality TV. It will require now dominant providers such as HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as well as incoming players like Apple and Facebook to exercise self control in what they invest in, but the rise of prestige TV looks to continue trending upward in 2019 and beyond.
