This has been a phenomenal summer for TV fans. I can’t think of a past summer with as many memorable, original choices, most of which are just getting started with their first seasons.
Mr. Robot has mastered the narrative of counterculture, telling a story about hackers that bursts with dark authenticity. UNReal has made the behind-the-scenes stories of reality TV into a shocking, must-see drama. The Jim Gaffigan Show has given one of this generation’s defining stand ups a platform for his iconic voice of alternative, yet clean comedy.
An influx of great scripted TV is nothing new, of course. We are, after all, in TV’s “Golden Age.”
But what makes these shows stand out are their sources. Mr. Robot airs on USA, a network that specialized in simple episodic dramedies anchored by charismatic leads (Burn Notice, White Collar, Suits). UNReal is a product of Lifetime, a channel centered around the very reality TV that UNReal shamelessly slams. The Jim Gaffigan Show appears on TV Land, the channel strictly founded to appeal to the elderly with reruns of classic sitcoms. All three were perpetrators of some of the worst that cable TV had to offer, but now they’re taking scripted programming seriously.
And they’re not alone.
MTV’s taken to courting a new generation of teens with genre programming like Scream: The TV Series, and the upcoming The Shannara Chronicles. While E! is still heavily investing in the Kardashian family, they’re also now producing the high-society drama The Royals.
In increasing numbers, cable TV is the home for the last thing people expected – scripted television.
For most of the past decade, cable TV was a creative wasteland. Reality TV promised a simple, yet extremely lucrative formula. No writers, virtually no production budget, and no actors bound to contracts. Just eccentric personalities set up against (often staged) scenarios, and plenty of editing to form a story.
Another form of cheap programming could be found on channels like TV Land and USA, which filled bulk programming blocks with classic reruns of network sitcoms & procedural cop shows. This turned the landscape of basic cable into a sea of cookie-cutter reality shows and endless CSI repeats.
Yet, just as the realm of cable looked forever overtaken by price-maxing strategies, new technology has forced these channels to refocus.
Streaming video services like Netflix & Amazon Prime are the next frontier for television fans and studios alike. Netflix alone will spend $5 billion in 2016 for programming, a great deal of it from television studios to license out shows for the service.
Cable shows just don’t draw the numbers that streaming services are looking for. As for channels that focused on rerunning classic hits, their entire business model has been undercut.
In a Bloomberg piece that ran last May, a source close to Amazon Prime stated that they’d be dropping the majority of their licensed reality TV outings, citing “viewer fatigue.” While a reality TV program scores killer numbers as passive cable fare, the same format isn’t resonating with stream-happy millennials.
As a result, the entire business of television production is starting to tip back toward the favor of scripted series. It’s made the decisions made while green-lighting series a whole new equation, where long-term quality is a seriously considered variable.
Of course, change isn’t immediate. There’s still money to be made in reality TV. But if these trends prove to be consistent, there’s a firm future in scripted programming to be had.