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