Speaker 1: Hey everyone, we're taking a break today for the US holiday,
Speaker 1: so here's one of our favorite episodes from the Big
Speaker 1: Take archives. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back
Speaker 1: tomorrow with a new Big Take. Hey Vicky, I am
Speaker 1: looking for a good news show to watch. What should
Speaker 1: I watch? Bad Sisters just finished that It is awesome.
Speaker 1: I went to try and find it. It's on Apple TV,
Speaker 1: Apple TV plus, Apple Plus right everything s P plus,
Speaker 1: which means you're gonna pay. And I try to log
Speaker 1: in because I have Apple TV. Apparently I thought I did,
Speaker 1: but I can't find my log in and I had
Speaker 1: to reset my whole Apple password. Just watched this show,
Speaker 1: so I just kind of gave up from Bloomberg News
Speaker 1: and I heart radio. It's the Big Take. I'm West Kasova.
Speaker 1: Each weekday we dig into one important story, and today
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about why TV is better than ever
Speaker 1: and yet it is somehow more annoying than ever. Remember
Speaker 1: when everyone loved to complain how there were a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty channels on TV and nothing good to watch.
Speaker 1: It's pretty hard to say that now there are so
Speaker 1: many good shows being made, and instead our new complaint
Speaker 1: is what a pain in the neck it can be
Speaker 1: to try to watch all those great shows. They're spread
Speaker 1: across all these streaming services, and most of them want
Speaker 1: a monthly payment for the privilege watching them. The Big
Speaker 1: Take podcast team here in the US actually wound up
Speaker 1: griping about this very thing when we were brainstorming about
Speaker 1: this episode, so we decided, what the heck, let's turn
Speaker 1: on the mics. I have Hulu because I got a
Speaker 1: beta version forever ago that was supposed to be cheaper
Speaker 1: than getting cable TV, and I'm still paying that and
Speaker 1: now they have up the prices. It went from maybe
Speaker 1: fifty bucks a month now it's like eight five, so
Speaker 1: I'm basically paying cable again. Yeah, I'm watching HBO Max,
Speaker 1: but I will come clean. I am on my parents plan,
Speaker 1: so thanks mom, Paul. And my dad's an I T
Speaker 1: security guy, so he's also texting all of the passwords
Speaker 1: and three different chats, so the user name isn't matched
Speaker 1: with the passwords. So yeah, well, I'm pretty sure both
Speaker 1: my daughters are on my Netflix, and now Netflix says
Speaker 1: they're gonna be cracking down on um, you know, sharing
Speaker 1: outside the house with that me and real soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have a case where I used to share
Speaker 1: a Netflix password with somebody, a former roommate, and at
Speaker 1: some point I just couldn't get into Netflix. But I
Speaker 1: felt like two hesitant to be like, hey, I've been
Speaker 1: bumming your Netflix for the last six to eight years. Um,
Speaker 1: could I continue bumming your Netflix from you? Okay? What
Speaker 1: is your tale of woe when it comes to TV? Well,
Speaker 1: my sorrow came when Quimby was kick off. Dy, you're
Speaker 1: the person who watched Quick, I was the one. I
Speaker 1: had it. I loved it. My favorite movie for the
Speaker 1: youngest Helmsworth. He was in the Most Dangerous Game. I
Speaker 1: don't know his first name, but he was in that.
Speaker 1: That was the very first movie Quick be put on
Speaker 1: and it was fantastic. It was in ten minutes segments.
Speaker 1: It was great. But yeah, after that, I was trying
Speaker 1: to get into some other content. But it's just quite
Speaker 1: what you have. Um. I have them all. I have
Speaker 1: HBO Showtime, I have Hulu, Apple Plus, got his Near Bill,
Speaker 1: have Paramount. But since Big Brother is over, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: delete Paramount for a while and wait till Big Brother
Speaker 1: comes back. I have a lot I do. I do.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, Okay, Michael, Yes, what are you watching and where?
Speaker 1: If you even know? Yeah, it's got to be the
Speaker 1: House of the Dragon on HBO Max was to the Dragon. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're rolling old school with HBO. Yes, But it's
Speaker 1: a fight every single time because as much as I
Speaker 1: love the Continent hbom Max, it's my least favorite app.
Speaker 1: I think it's navigation makes no sense and I just
Speaker 1: feel like an app that has that much money behind
Speaker 1: it um would be easier to use. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: many people are subscribed to services that you just don't
Speaker 1: ever use? But you just can't bring yourself to go
Speaker 1: through that, so we're trying to cancel it. I have
Speaker 1: them build on different devices with different things, So I
Speaker 1: have showed Time build as part of my Hulu package
Speaker 1: and I have HBO. So there's really no way unless
Speaker 1: you really want to take half your Sunday to track
Speaker 1: what you're paying where and how much. That's how they
Speaker 1: get you. I have one or two that I subscribe
Speaker 1: to and share a number of which I will not disclose,
Speaker 1: right because you don't want the cable police coming at you,
Speaker 1: or they, I guess the streaming police. It would be
Speaker 1: called exactly exactly and when they become better experiences, maybe
Speaker 1: I will subscribe to them all myself. Prime was the
Speaker 1: one nice thing. Prime was nice because we had it anyway,
Speaker 1: because my husband is an avid book collector. The TV
Speaker 1: is great, but you still have to pay for MO
Speaker 1: He's on top of it. So I watched You've Got
Speaker 1: Mail because you know it's fall in New York, and
Speaker 1: what else are you gonna do besides like sharp and pencils.
Speaker 1: I own up to it. Rebecca is coming clean. I'm
Speaker 1: coming clean about parental accounts and Meg Ryan. So I've
Speaker 1: already seen You've Got Mail, god knows how many times,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what's another Meg Ryan movie that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen? And there's one called French Kiss. I
Speaker 1: can't figure out where it is. I finally find it
Speaker 1: on Amazon and I click it, and I feel victorious
Speaker 1: for all about a half a second because it's not
Speaker 1: available in my region, and I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that means. Where is Blockbuster when you need it? Can't
Speaker 1: you just rent it and they send the tea in
Speaker 1: the mail. I do not miss those days standing in
Speaker 1: front that wall of videotapes and you can't find anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought it smelled nice. It did
Speaker 1: have a nice smell. Yeah, they had the popcorn up front.
Speaker 1: This little radio production was brought to you by the
Speaker 1: US based producers of the Big Take podcast, Empire, Mal Barrow,
Speaker 1: Michael Falero, Rebecca Chasson, Sam Gobauer, Vicky Vergelina. How did
Speaker 1: we get to this place? When we come back, my
Speaker 1: colleague Felix Gillette is going to answer that question. I'm
Speaker 1: here with my colleague Felix Gillette. He covers media for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg and he is also the co author of the
Speaker 1: upcoming book It's Not TV, The Spectacular, Rise, Revolution and
Speaker 1: Future of HBO. Let me just ask you, you know,
Speaker 1: we all hated the cable companies, and yet you could
Speaker 1: kind of find all the shows, and now we have
Speaker 1: better shows than ever before. And yet trying to remember
Speaker 1: where everything is is maddening, and paying for all these
Speaker 1: services is maddening. I think that we're now in this
Speaker 1: weird phase where there's actually nostalgia coming for the cable bundle.
Speaker 1: Forever people were complaining, Oh, I just wish we could
Speaker 1: just get all these channels a la cart. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be great? Part of the reason I wanted to write
Speaker 1: a book about HBO was this whole era of home
Speaker 1: entertainment for the past forty years, the cable satellite era
Speaker 1: was coming to an end. How do you make that
Speaker 1: transition to this new era of streaming. For a long
Speaker 1: time it was basically Netflix just completely was dominating the
Speaker 1: streaming space, right, And Yeah, this proliferation of services that's
Speaker 1: happened in the past two years in some ways, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's amazing for consumers. There's just so much
Speaker 1: incredible programming out there, But it also is kind of confusing.
Speaker 1: Where do you watch this stuff? You know, do you
Speaker 1: have the subscription, do you remember your past code? But
Speaker 1: in your book, you kind of take us back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of how we got here, like why and
Speaker 1: the seeds of it seemed to be in HBO kind
Speaker 1: of realizing the future. But Netflix as the new player
Speaker 1: looking at the big dominant HBO saying we're gonna overtake them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's such big rivals now. It's fun to think back
Speaker 1: that for a while, HBO and Netflix were really copasetic partners. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in the DVD era when Netflix was a
Speaker 1: service that you went on the Internet and you you know,
Speaker 1: looked at your queue and you browsed all these different
Speaker 1: options and they would send you the DVDs by mail.
Speaker 1: Um And during that era, Netflix bought a ton of
Speaker 1: DVDs from HBO because people wanted to watch the Sopranos,
Speaker 1: people want to watch The Wire, people wanted to watch
Speaker 1: Six ft Under, they wanted to binge them on DVD.
Speaker 1: They wanted together, and they would get them through Netflix.
Speaker 1: And so Netflix was a great customer for HBO. All
Speaker 1: the shows you just named, they were all HBO. They
Speaker 1: were the place to go outside the Hollywood system. We
Speaker 1: didn't have all these independent content creators yet it was
Speaker 1: kind of HBO was the goliath. When you saw that
Speaker 1: that statucky screen and you heard that signature intro sound
Speaker 1: that they played that st You're like, knew you were
Speaker 1: in for something good. Yeah, And then there's this amazing
Speaker 1: transition where you know, uh, Netflix decides, you know what,
Speaker 1: there's this new technology. We can send programming right into
Speaker 1: people's homes via streaming. You can click a button, your
Speaker 1: show will start playing. You don't have to wait for
Speaker 1: the DVDs to come in the mail. And they launched
Speaker 1: the streaming service, and what are they going to put
Speaker 1: on there? Well, one thing they really wanted was for
Speaker 1: the streaming service was those HBO shows because they saw
Speaker 1: it in the data from the DVDs and HBO the
Speaker 1: executive said, you know what, we're not interested in in
Speaker 1: letting you uh have our licensed content for this new service.
Speaker 1: During that process, it's sort of started dawn on the
Speaker 1: folks at Netflix that you know what, it's really just
Speaker 1: a matter of time. Somewhere in the future, we're all
Speaker 1: of these big studios and big brands, they're all gonna decide,
Speaker 1: you know what, we want our own streaming services. We
Speaker 1: want to go directly to the customer. We're gonna clawback
Speaker 1: our stuff. And it really dawned on Netflix executives that
Speaker 1: they were going to have to start making their own
Speaker 1: original programming. They thought, well, you know, we'll have a
Speaker 1: couple of years before we're going to have to start
Speaker 1: doing this. And really within a couple of months, they
Speaker 1: saw this opportunity to license a new sw that was
Speaker 1: being shopped around called House of Cards. And there's this
Speaker 1: great moment where basically Netflix swoops in and makes this
Speaker 1: huge offer and it was like more than anyone had
Speaker 1: ever offered for a show, had ever paid for something
Speaker 1: that hadn't been seen before. We're gonna guarantee two full
Speaker 1: seasons just they offered a hundred million dollars for these
Speaker 1: two seasons of House of Cards, UM and it actually
Speaker 1: ended up being a great bet by Netflix. I mean,
Speaker 1: people were astounded at the time. How could they offer
Speaker 1: that much? They're overpaying. It's such a what are they doing?
Speaker 1: And so now you have this new player on the
Speaker 1: scene and they have their own kind of signature looking
Speaker 1: sound that's immediately recognizable. Yeah, and you know, House of
Speaker 1: Cards ended up being a very seminal show for Netflix
Speaker 1: because it really put them on the map and established
Speaker 1: themselves as like, we're going to be a year in
Speaker 1: original programming in prestige drama, the most expensive genre there is.
Speaker 1: And it was just kind of a fascinating moment. And
Speaker 1: that was really the start of this rivalry HBO Max,
Speaker 1: Netflix and what they anticipated did happen. Just in the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. Then you had the launch of
Speaker 1: Disney Plus, you had the launch of HBO Max, you
Speaker 1: know how Paramount plus, you have Apple doing their own
Speaker 1: original streaming. UM fall of two thousand twenty two, I
Speaker 1: think is this incredible moment which I like to think
Speaker 1: of as kind of the blockbuster moment in streaming entertainment
Speaker 1: because you have Amazon Prime rolling out their Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings series. You know, they paid two fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars for the rights to make a TV series and
Speaker 1: they're gonna end up spending over a billion dollars on
Speaker 1: this by the time they roll out four or five seasons.
Speaker 1: At the same time, HBO Max has rolled out The
Speaker 1: House of the Dragon, which is this hugely expensive series.
Speaker 1: Netflix has uh The Sandman, which is also big expensive
Speaker 1: sci fi series. Disney Plus has She Hulk. So all
Speaker 1: these really big expensive programming landing on the streaming services,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, all of these services are
Speaker 1: under enormous pressure to try and start cutting their losses.
Speaker 1: What is like, what's the economics of this? Are they
Speaker 1: actually making money off of these? Well, for a long time,
Speaker 1: I think Netflix benefited from kind of the you know,
Speaker 1: the dominant paradigm and tech investing, which was like Wall
Speaker 1: Street love to invest in businesses that were losing money
Speaker 1: as long as they were gaining in scale, just gain customers.
Speaker 1: You can charge below market rates for the product, but
Speaker 1: you have to eat up market share. We just want
Speaker 1: to growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, and and Netflix benefited
Speaker 1: from that for a long time because they can always
Speaker 1: spend and spend and spend and keep increasing how much
Speaker 1: they were spending on things. And really this year is
Speaker 1: the first time where all of a sudden, because of
Speaker 1: all this new competition from these other streaming services, Netflix
Speaker 1: stop growing. They actually lost customers this year for the
Speaker 1: first time and forever, and Wall Street is suddenly like, wait,
Speaker 1: if it's not if you're not growing, if you're not
Speaker 1: going to have like huge growth, we're going to start
Speaker 1: looking at your margins a little bit more. We're gonna
Speaker 1: start looking at how much you're spending to feel. Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned these companies trying to stem their losses. They're
Speaker 1: making really expensive shows. Can they actually pay for them
Speaker 1: or is it is the model that we just have
Speaker 1: to keep paying subscriptions to each ones to try to
Speaker 1: support all of this. I think that's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure. And right now a lot of that money
Speaker 1: that goes into the streaming services to pay for these
Speaker 1: huge shows is coming from those legacy cable channels. So
Speaker 1: you know, Disney still has the Disney Channel, and even
Speaker 1: the less and less people are watching those cable channels.
Speaker 1: That's where the money is still coming from. But obviously
Speaker 1: that era is dimming. They're going to need to figure
Speaker 1: out how to pay for all this stuff. One is
Speaker 1: that the you know, your subscriptions for all these services
Speaker 1: are going to go up, right, they're already going up.
Speaker 1: And they think also at some point, we're just going
Speaker 1: to see more consolidation. When you say consolidate, do you
Speaker 1: mean that the bigger ones are gonna swallow their smaller ones,
Speaker 1: or that they're going to reconstitute the cable bundle just
Speaker 1: as a streaming bundle under one price, and then we
Speaker 1: just have cable again without the cable I think it
Speaker 1: will be both. I mean, I think in the short
Speaker 1: term you're already seeing bundling happening. You know, in order
Speaker 1: to have enough customers, they need to have less services
Speaker 1: in the marketplace. So it seems like what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is a future where we get a lot of
Speaker 1: great shows them and maybe we're paying one price, but
Speaker 1: we're still not all that happy about it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I also wonder what's going to happen. I mean, the
Speaker 1: trend that we've seen in the movie theaters for the
Speaker 1: past you know, twenty years has been this move towards
Speaker 1: blockbuster movies. Right, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is kind of
Speaker 1: the what everybody wants. But as you know, movie theaters
Speaker 1: have moved more and more towards blockbusters. There's been this
Speaker 1: simultaneous process where, you know, less independent films get made,
Speaker 1: middle range projects don't get made as much, And I'm
Speaker 1: curious it'll be interesting to see if a similar um
Speaker 1: dynamic plays out in streaming too. Felix, it looks like
Speaker 1: one way that the services are trying to capture more
Speaker 1: revenue is cracking down on password sharing. We've seen that
Speaker 1: from Netflix and other services. Uh, Or do you think
Speaker 1: that we're gonna start to see more ways where they're
Speaker 1: going to try and squeeze more money out of each subscription? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that for a long long time they were
Speaker 1: pretty lenient. They didn't really worry too much about it.
Speaker 1: At this point, I think the pressure is ramping up
Speaker 1: to really monetize every single person that's using the service,
Speaker 1: and that does mean making sure that if you're watching it,
Speaker 1: you're paying for it. And simultaneously, the other way that
Speaker 1: Netflix is dealing with all this is they've announced, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to launch a advertising on the service on
Speaker 1: the platform for the first time. That will allow them
Speaker 1: to offer a less expensive Netflix. You know, instead of
Speaker 1: paying fifteen dollars a month, let's say you'll pay seven
Speaker 1: dollars a month and you'll see some ads. Um. And
Speaker 1: broadcast television, which was advertised and supported and commercial supported,
Speaker 1: there are always limits on what you could do artistically
Speaker 1: on television because advertisers would get nervous about you know, uh, violence,
Speaker 1: moral complexity. Um. You know, story is about addiction. They
Speaker 1: didn't want stories about prison. There are all sorts of
Speaker 1: things you couldn't do on broadcast television. If you moved
Speaker 1: it to format that was advertising free, suddenly there was
Speaker 1: a lot more creative freedom and that led to this huge, um,
Speaker 1: you know revolution in the art of television that happened
Speaker 1: on HBO. UM. And it'll be interesting now to see
Speaker 1: almost the reverse process as uh service like Netflix that
Speaker 1: has also operated in this ad free, commercial free environment
Speaker 1: for you know, it's twenty five years of existence. Suddenly
Speaker 1: they're going to have advertisements while they're also going to
Speaker 1: have sponsors looking over their shoulders. And what that will
Speaker 1: do the programming. We'll have to see Felix, Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for being here, and good luck with the book. Last,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. When we come back, I talked
Speaker 1: to my colleague look at Shaw, and he's gonna tell
Speaker 1: us what is all needs for, which shows made and
Speaker 1: which ones don't the best time. The following movie is
Speaker 1: rated R. All right, I'm here with my colleague Lucas Shaw.
Speaker 1: Lucas covers the entertainment business for Bloomberg, and one thing
Speaker 1: I kind of want to ask you is somebody who
Speaker 1: really watches this close up is have all these new
Speaker 1: streaming services had a big effect on the kinds of
Speaker 1: shows that are being produced. The biggest impact that they've
Speaker 1: had has been on the volume of shows being made
Speaker 1: and on the money going into every show. So, you know,
Speaker 1: you had a certain number of shows being made on broadcast,
Speaker 1: let's call it a hundred fifty a year. Then cable
Speaker 1: comes in, after the success of HBO layers on a
Speaker 1: n other hundred fifty. We get to three hundred shows
Speaker 1: a year. The Netflix comes in. Now we're at more
Speaker 1: than five hundred shows just scripted being made every year.
Speaker 1: You add hundreds of unscripted to say nothing of news
Speaker 1: or sports. It's a good thing for a lot of
Speaker 1: creative people, because it just means that there's more buyers,
Speaker 1: more opportunities, But it also means I think that less
Speaker 1: care tends to go into every single show. Um. The
Speaker 1: The other upside if you're a creative person, and to
Speaker 1: some extent, if you're your someone at home, is that
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies are spending more per episode,
Speaker 1: at least on the biggest show, and so the quality
Speaker 1: of what you're seeing on TV looks more and more
Speaker 1: like film than it might have before. That must mean
Speaker 1: that the kind of middle of the pack and the
Speaker 1: kind of lower end of the tier really aren't getting
Speaker 1: much of an audience at all. You have a lot
Speaker 1: of programs where you you have to wonder who is
Speaker 1: watching them. I mean, look, I cover the business of
Speaker 1: of entertainment for a living. I watch a fair amount
Speaker 1: of television, although I at least hope I have other
Speaker 1: interests and there will be so many shows that come
Speaker 1: and go that I've never heard of. So what happens
Speaker 1: to those shows? You know, on network TV, the shows
Speaker 1: would get kind of canceled if they didn't perform, because
Speaker 1: there were only a few networks and those slats were
Speaker 1: really really precious now that you have so many of them,
Speaker 1: so many slots, so much time to fill. Do shows
Speaker 1: live on forever? So the good news if you're a
Speaker 1: creator a fan of a show is that most streaming
Speaker 1: services will commit to a season, and if there's big
Speaker 1: talent involved, they'll commit to two. Um and so shows
Speaker 1: do last, or the bad shows last a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: The counter to that is that the good shows don't
Speaker 1: last as longer, don't stay on forever. I mean you look,
Speaker 1: you know, across the board on TV and they'll be
Speaker 1: a law and order show that's on for twenty seasons,
Speaker 1: or Gray's Anatomy is now in its eighteenth or nineteenth,
Speaker 1: I forget which season. There's no show like that that's
Speaker 1: last that long and streaming now. Some of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is because streaming is newer, but but by and large
Speaker 1: Netflix will cancel its biggest or end its biggest hits
Speaker 1: after five or six seasons. I think Grace and Frankie
Speaker 1: this show with Jane Fond and Lily Tomlin is the
Speaker 1: longest running Netflix original at like seven or eight seasons.
Speaker 1: So it's the biggest change from the old days when
Speaker 1: you know it was it was broadcast TV or kind
Speaker 1: of nothing else untill now in the way shows are
Speaker 1: kind of created and and the marketplace for different kinds
Speaker 1: of shows, the process has traditionally been instill is at
Speaker 1: a lot of places that you you sell a script
Speaker 1: or a series of scripts for a show, and then
Speaker 1: you develop it, and then you make the pilot that
Speaker 1: first episode, and then based on that pilot, they decide
Speaker 1: if they want to continue, and if they choose to continue,
Speaker 1: then they'll usually pick it up for a season, and
Speaker 1: then they'll make that season and then it'll kind of
Speaker 1: continue or not. Netflix has not historically believed in pilots,
Speaker 1: and a lot of streaming services. Amazon is similar in this,
Speaker 1: where it will just pick up a season, and that
Speaker 1: sort of gets back to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: before with kind of even the bad shows will last
Speaker 1: a little bit longer, and part of that is because
Speaker 1: they're not they're choosing not to make a pilot upfront
Speaker 1: because that is seen as inefficient. One thing that we
Speaker 1: are seeing is a lot more diversity in the kind
Speaker 1: of shows that that are shown on TV. Yes and no.
Speaker 1: You know, I think when you if you see an
Speaker 1: increase in the volume being made, that does create more
Speaker 1: opportunities and and as a result of various social movements
Speaker 1: over the last few years, there's been greater efforts on
Speaker 1: the part of all these companies to make shows written by,
Speaker 1: created by directed by starring both women and people of color.
Speaker 1: So I think the numbers have generally moved in the
Speaker 1: right direction. They're not where most folks would like to
Speaker 1: see them, but they have uh, they have improved. The
Speaker 1: one area that hasn't really changed all that much, as
Speaker 1: the executive suites where almost all these companies are are
Speaker 1: still run by white men. Kind of a companion to
Speaker 1: that that I would say is there has been this
Speaker 1: globalization of media and attainment. Um and so I'm in
Speaker 1: the middle right now of watching a Korean drama. Now
Speaker 1: part of that because I'm working on a story about
Speaker 1: a Korean production company. But you've seen a surge in
Speaker 1: viewership and interest in international television, most of which features
Speaker 1: people who don't look like us. If you're someone with
Speaker 1: an idea, it is still possible to kind of come
Speaker 1: from the outside and assume, especially if you have an
Speaker 1: agent or manager and try to sell it to a studio,
Speaker 1: try to sell it to a network. You'll see bidding
Speaker 1: oars for you know, unattached projects. But by and large,
Speaker 1: most writers or producers of any renown have an overall
Speaker 1: deal at a studio, which gives that studio, whether it's
Speaker 1: Sony or Warner Brothers or Disney or Netflix, the first
Speaker 1: right to make whatever idea or project that they have.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes that person is also attached in some way to
Speaker 1: a TV network or streaming service, in large part because
Speaker 1: most of the TV studios are now owned by companies
Speaker 1: that also have a networker service, and they're trying to
Speaker 1: funnel all the best ideas from their studio to the service.
Speaker 1: Disney is probably the ultimate example of this, where pretty
Speaker 1: much anything you see on Disney Plus or Hulu has
Speaker 1: come from one of Disney's TV studios. Lucas Feelings that
Speaker 1: also talked about this kind of blockbuster phenomenon starting to
Speaker 1: take hold more and more in the streaming television realm
Speaker 1: to where they're really looking for a big, big hits. Um,
Speaker 1: how is that affected, you know, just your sort of moderate,
Speaker 1: normal television show that isn't a monster hit. Well, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's some concern among the average writer, writer, director, writer,
Speaker 1: producer that streaming is gonna resemble the movie business a
Speaker 1: little bit more. There was um sort of an outpour
Speaker 1: ring of of creativity or a willingness to take risks
Speaker 1: on projects because when Netflix or Amazon started, they were
Speaker 1: relatively unknown. People didn't know what a show for them
Speaker 1: should look like, and so they had to they had
Speaker 1: to take bigger risks to get shows made that either
Speaker 1: meant financially, so Netflix committing to you know, two seasons
Speaker 1: of House of Cards on a hundred million dollars or
Speaker 1: betting on a kind of a relatively unproven talent or
Speaker 1: an idea that was you know, outside the box. And
Speaker 1: I think this led to a lot of really great
Speaker 1: and interesting television in the early phases of streaming that
Speaker 1: has continued since then. What you're seeing now is a
Speaker 1: lot of these networks get more and more conservative because
Speaker 1: part of it is they're bigger, right, so they're trying
Speaker 1: to find the shows that can appeal to as many
Speaker 1: different people as possible. I think after Netflix had a
Speaker 1: big hit like Bridgetain, you know that, which was sort
Speaker 1: of like the type of show that you would have
Speaker 1: seen on a broadcast network instead of the type of
Speaker 1: show you've seen on you'd see on HBO, it wanted
Speaker 1: more shows like that. When it has a squid game,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, this unprecedented global hit, it wants
Speaker 1: more shows like that. The tricky part, of course, is
Speaker 1: that the biggest hits are always surprises. Nobody ever sees
Speaker 1: them coming, and so you get conservative and try to
Speaker 1: plan for the big hit, you might actually be likely
Speaker 1: to miss whatever that next great show is because you're
Speaker 1: you're looking for something that resembles something you had before
Speaker 1: instead of looking for something that nobody's ever seen before.
Speaker 1: Are you optimistic about the kinds of shows we're all
Speaker 1: going to get to watch? I'm a little bit torn.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, I think there's been too much
Speaker 1: television made over the last few years, and some of
Speaker 1: the quality filters have have gone away, um, because you
Speaker 1: have creative executive these companies who are overseeing too many
Speaker 1: different projects. And I do think that some brilliance comes
Speaker 1: out of limiting yourself. And so if we're entering an
Speaker 1: era of greater fiscal responsibility, as weird as it sounds,
Speaker 1: that might be kind of good, um, because it will
Speaker 1: force people to be more selective about what they make.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, it does feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies are going to get safer
Speaker 1: and safer streaming will feel a little bit more like broadcast.
Speaker 1: It will feel a little bit less fun, but there's
Speaker 1: more money and energy going into television than ever before.
Speaker 1: On a more optimistic note, there's gonna be more and
Speaker 1: more emphasis on overseas territories, which means you'll see more
Speaker 1: and more investment in storytelling from other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: And that's, without question been one of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: of kind of the streaming revolution in Hollywood is that
Speaker 1: you now can watch shows from Japan, South Korea, France, Brazil,
Speaker 1: Mexico with relative ease. Lukashaw, thanks so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Thanks Wess, Thanks for listening to us
Speaker 1: here at The Big Take, the daily podcast from Bloomberg
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