Primetime Is The New Orange

Primetime network TV is hot again. Or, at the very least, it’s gotten a better agent. 

You can see this in the spate of articles (and trend articles always seem to come in spates) proclaiming it to be so, most of which focus on a “mockumentary” sitcom from ABC called Abbott Elementary about (surprise) a group of schoolteachers.

There’s also Yellowstone, which is not exactly network primetime, but is found on the Paramount cable network and has been logging super impressive ratings, something we’d noted here a few months back.

That said, none of this should be the least bit surprising.

First off, journalists are always looking for the new, new thing. And there are only so many articles you can write about streaming, only so many times a journalist who is not in the thick of it can write a piece about how churn is an issue for streaming services or how weekly releases have advantages that all-at-once releases don’t.

So being the first one to say that primetime is hot again is a fairly failsafe maneuver, on the order of predicting that Netflix will eventually have to roll out an ad-supported model. If you’re right, you called it first and if you’re wrong, well, things changed.

Also, there are a number of fairly rational reasons why network TV might actually be getting better. 

(Which means that there may be a handful of other Abbott Elementaries, not that the line-ups will be full of hidden gems. Lowest common denominator and all that.)

First off, there’s the fact that the streaming services have hired away a lot of the big name talent like Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy. Which means there are more openings for up and coming talent on the networks along with a desire to give new voices a shot, because who wouldn’t want to be the one who discovers the next Shonda Rhimes.

Why would up and coming talent want to work for one of the networks though, with all their standards and practices and suits and antsy advertisers? Well, first and foremost it’s a really good deal financially.

Network shows may not pay as much as streaming on a per episode basis, but that gap is erased and surpassed by the math that network shows have 24 or even 26 episode seasons, versus somewhere between eight and 12 for a streaming series.

Working on a successful network TV show  is also the closest you can get to a full-time job in Hollywood: writers, actors, directors, producers and crew generally work a nine-month season that gives them summers off for family/travel/other projects as well as the ability to plan ahead, since network TV is produced on a regular schedule. 

Compare that to streaming, where there may be a ten-month gap between the first eight episode season and the second, during which time the vast majority of cast and crew members will need to find alternate sources of income. 

In addition to stability, which is important to anyone who is not a household name, network TV offers the promise of untold riches.

For real.

Actors and showrunners on a popular long-running series can accrue “generational wealth” from the sale of syndication rights and overseas rights of all those 200+ episodes.

Again, compare that to streaming, where Netflix is notorious for cutting series off after just two or three seasons (officially because they’re not helping to bring in or retain new subscribers, but allegedly to avoid having to pay out lots of money on backend deals.)

Another reason to be hopeful about primetime is what we can call “Farm Team Syndrome”— the various networks all show their most recent prime time episodes on their SVOD app the day after the shows run live, and if something like Abbott Elementary can lure viewers to Hulu, all the better. So it is definitely in the networks’ interest to take some risks.

Finally, there’s something we talk about here a lot, which is that all of the Flixes-that-aren’t-Disney+-or-Discovery+ have a fondness for “HBO-like programming” of the sort that gets them Emmys and respect from their peers. The problem though is that sort of programming only appeals to a small slice of the viewing public. And you can’t build a broad-reaching streaming network by only targeting that sliver of educated, affluent, youngish blue state professionals. (Well maybe you can for just one or two services, but seven or eight is out of the question.) 

Meaning you need to do something to appeal to the sort of people who don’t find dark comedies with conflicted antiheroes charming and prefer the simpler structure of the classic sitcom.

What better place to find that audience than on primetime TV, and if you can pull off the magic of appealing to both the HBO audience and the broader audience, all the better.

[Side Note: The degree to which the Blue Bubble talks to itself was on full display during the Super Bowl last night, with multiple commercials using actors from HBO and other streaming series who are likely unfamiliar to the bulk of the audience the ad is aimed at.]

If I had to make a prediction as to where all this is heading (and I do) then it is towards closer integration of the networks’ primetime line-ups and their streaming ones. 

On so many levels it no longer makes sense to produce two slates of programming, one for streaming and one for linear, especially when the linear shows wind up on the networks’ streaming apps anyway. Not to mention the fact that the networks are missing out on major branding and upsell opportunities by not tying their streaming and linear properties together more tightly.

It may even come to pass that the series they are most excited about will wind up running simultaneously on both linear and streaming, while those considered more niche wind up only on one or the other.

As we’ve noted here many times too, linear TV is not going to disappear, there is a good 30% to 40% of the viewing public who are quite happy with cable in its current incarnation, don’t mind paying lots of money for it and will only give it up if someone forces them to.

Meaning a good linear-streaming strategy is going to be a necessity for next decade (give or take) and if it can help the broadcast networks get a leg up on everyone else in the streaming wars, then running Really Good Shows on primetime may actually go mainstream.

Stranger things have happened.