or Yes Another Blog Post About Movie/TV Stuff or TV’s Just Better With Some Blood, Swearing, and T&A
Let’s clear one thing up right away – I’m not counting The Bachelorette or Breaking Amish as “good TV.” I don’t care how much you love them, I’m not counting them. So if shows like that are what you consider to be the “best shows” on TV, you’re probably going to hate this column. For everyone else . . .
Let’s take a quick look at some of the “quality” shows (and the scare quotes don’t mean that some of these shows aren’t flat-out amazing) that are airing right now, either currently on air or in-between seasons: Mad Men (AMC), Hannibal (NBC), The Good Wife (CBS), Louie (FX), 24 (FOX), Homeland (SHOWTIME) etc., etc. Plus there’s shows like Breaking Bad, The West Wing, and The Shield that have finished their time on air. Not a bad bunch, right?
But now let’s glance over HBO’s current crop: Game of Thrones, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, Girls, Veep, Silicon Valley, True Blood, and The Newsroom. And I’m probably missing something. And that’s without counting shows that have concluded their runs like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Oz, Six Feet Under, Eastbound and Down, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Generation Kill, Band of Brothers, and oh, that little thing called The Wire.
I’m not listing all the great (or even good) shows from the other networks, but the point I’m trying to make should be clear from that list: a huge number of the “best TV shows” are from HBO (and yes, I know “best” is subjective and all, but work with me here, willya?). Why is that? There’s a couple reasons this could be true (and some are even economics-related and not just based around my pro-creativity-in-movies/tv rants), but to do so, I’m gonna take a quick detour to explain (as best I can) how most TV works:
In Brief: A writer pitches a show to a Network (capitalized for a reason), either based on a concept or a script they’ve written. If the Network likes the pitch, they order a pilot, the first episode of a series. If the pilot turns out well (and sometimes even when it doesn’t, depending on who owes who a favor and other boardroom BS), the Network can order the show to series, that is, order more episodes (12 extra for a cable series, 21 extra for CBS/NBC/ABC/FOX basic network tv) to fill out a season. The Network then sells ad space for the show, and the more anticipated the show is (based on stars, pedigree, whatever), the more money they make off the add spaces. Once the show airs, people tune in to watch it, and the number of people that watch the first airing of an episode live is then registered as a show’s Nielsen Rating for the week. In normal people speak, the higher the rating, the more viewers, the more viewers, the more the Network can charge for ad space, and if the show is doing well, it gets to keep making episodes. Basically, as long as a show gets decent ratings, it can stay on air because it’s making money for the Network. This is true for most networks, such as the “Big Four” mentioned above, AMC, TMC, Comedy Central, TNT, USA, FX, etc.
HBO does not work like that.
HBO and channels like Showtime and Starz are subscriber-based, or premium channels, which means people pay their cable company extra to get those channels on their TV. HBO doesn’t have ads because it charges upfront for its services, and thus doesn’t need them (plus people are, in part, paying to not have ads play on HBO).
Still with me? Great. So what does this all have to do with HBO’s shows being, on average, better than everybody else’s? And how is that economics? Well this is the part where I tell you, since I know you all must be breathless with anticipation (and bear in mind that what I’m saying doesn’t mean great shows can’t appear on other networks; AMC is home to Breaking Bad and Mad Men after all). HBO’s shows are better because HBO the company doesn’t have to care about how many people watch them.
That sounds weird, I know. To clarify: yes, HBO cares about subscribers. More subscribers = more money, which is what HBO wants. So they do care about demand in that sense. But the actual number of people who watch a given show is totally irrelevant. Because people pay up front for the premium channel, it doesn’t affect HBO whether or not they make use of what they paid for. Money has already changed hands. And because there’s no ads on premium networks, they don’t care about how many people watch their shows live because they don’t need viewers to bring in advertisers to bring in money. AMC has to worry about how many people watch Mad Men every week – if ratings are slipping, they can’t make money off of it, and the budget for the show (its Average Total Cost (per episode)) might become larger than the money it makes off of ads each week (its Total Revenue). That’s why shows that, while good or even great TV, such as Awake, Firefly, Twin Peaks, etc. get cancelled – they just aren’t making money, because nobody’s really watching them. Because of this, most network shows have to play it safe (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Hannibal being three recent exceptions to the rule). If they upset the status quo too much, audiences might not stick with them, and so they follow the rules. That’s why you see so may crime or medical dramas that are all pretty much the same on TV.
Not having to worry about viewers gives the showrunners of programs like Game of Thrones or True Detective the chance to take huge risks in their storytelling and approach to TV, and this, in many cases, pays off by creating better shows (HBO is also able to give them bigger budgets to play with, but that’s not the focus here). With potential viewers paying up front for the service, revenue is already taken care of. It also helps that because they’re on a premium channel, HBO’s programs aren’t regulated by the FCC, which allows them to tackle stories and content other shows simply aren’t allowed to (which is why Game of Thrones is currently the only place you can get your sexposition fix on TV). These two factors combine to create an absolute freedom of creation, allowing the writers and directors (and actors) at HBO to focus entirely on the art, and not necessarily on creating something that will entice people to tune in every week.
And it’s not like people don’t tune in: Game of Thrones pulls in a huge audience for a premium cable show; True Detective’s finale crashed HBO Go. It’s just that the viewership is incidental to the art. It’s not the goal, it’s the side effect. And for a lot of these shows, this has resulted in increased audience demand – see the aforementioned about True Detective, note how Game of Thrones has only gotten more popular since its first season, hell, even Girls has had a cultural impact. The demand for HBO shows is high, but it’s that way because the shows are good, and they’re good because HBO’s business model allows them to take chances (HBO is also one of the best places to work as a creative, by all accounts).
I’m not saying that all HBO shows a great, some of them aren’t even that good (I’m looking at you Entourage). But HBO is the only place a show like Treme could exist. That show would have died in three episodes on a basic network, if it even got picked up. The Wire probably would’ve died there too. But because HBO is subscriber-based, shows like that can exist, even thrive. The Wire isn’t considered the best TV show of all time for nothing. That’s why the best shows are on HBO. Because advertisers don’t even come into it. Because HBO’s method of commerce, their economics, makes it about the art, not the product.
It’s all about making great TV.