Yahoo Lifestyle John Landgraf Wrestles with the Industry’s Streaming Reckoning and Getting Back to Basics in TV
FX chairman John Landgraf has a bulletin for a battered and bruised entertainment industry: People love traditional television.
After a decade of brinksmanship in content spending among the largest media conglomerates, old-school TV shows along the lines of procedural dramas and multicamera sitcoms fell far out of favor with the creative community. But viewers never gave up on these tried and true forms. That’s one big lesson that Landgraf has learned during the past few years as FX has embarked on a journey of transformation into a branded hub on Hulu (and Disney+ outside the U.S.) while also maintaining its roots as a linear, ad-supported cable channel.
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Speaking Nov. 19 at Variety‘s Business Managers Breakfast in West Hollywood, Landgraf noted that the norms have shifted so much that the industry’s challenge is to find a way to bring some of the old model’s protocols into a world that is awash in entertainment options. One of the biggest challenges for programmers these days is that series aren’t built to go the distance of 10 or even 20 seasons in success.
“How do we create a system where it’s actually a more normal process for something to go multiple different seasons? And I don’t just mean two or three, I mean we need, we need sitcoms and procedurals and the kinds of things that people are still actually watching inside the streaming systems,” Landgraf said.
His understanding of the problem has been shaped by the insight he’s gained from seeing what clicks in streaming for Hulu and Disney+ and competitive platforms. “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “NCIS” and other sturdy classics from the not-so-distant past drive an extraordinary amount of streaming viewing. That should be a flashing neon sign to programmers. Landgraf sees this as part of the larger problem of changing compensation terms for creative talent — issues that were shouted about for months on picket lines during last year’s writers and actors strikes.
“I look at the data. I know what people are watching, and they’re watching a lot of the output of this industry back from an era when we had a profit participation model and we had people incentivized to keep working on one television show year after year after year and to make hundreds and hundreds of episodes,” Landgraf said. “It’s a challenge figuring out how to rebuild that model inside a new entire ecosystem right now. But I think the audiences tell us that that’s television. That’s something they really want from television. I don’t think we’re very good at giving it to them right now.”
(Pictured: Cynthia Littleton, Variety co-Editor in Chief, and FX chairman John Landgraf)
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