Tim Kring

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2013 issue of World Screen.

 

Writer and creator Tim Kring has often tackled innovative and ambitious TV concepts: the Emmy Award–winning Heroes featured people discovering they had superpowers; Touch blends science, suspense, mysticism and an autistic boy’s extraordinary gift for identifying patterns in numbers that connect people’s lives. Kring has also embraced working with brands and producing for the web.

 

WS: When Touch first premiered you mentioned the importance of balancing self-contained episodes against weaving certain mythologies throughout the season. How did you do that in season one, and what have you learned that you applied to season two?

KRING: It’s a very interesting question, because [since the series premiered] viewing habits have changed considerably. The reason why we tried to create a show that had a stand-alone quality at first was because the network felt that there would always be new viewers coming on board, especially in the first six or so episodes. They had done research and [had seen the] sampling of any new show, and [realized] that each week you could expect to have more and more viewers. So by wrapping each episode up into a neat bow, it would mean that people didn’t feel that they were alienated for not having watched the week before. We very slowly started to introduce a serialized story underneath, so that by about six episodes into the first season, those nagging questions [about the serialized story] were keeping viewers coming back. The episode questions would get wrapped up, but the season-long arc questions would start to elevate, so that by the end of the season we did a two-part season finale that was almost entirely a serialized engine.

 

When we started the second season, we hit the ground with an episode that was basically the third part of [the first season’s finale]. Viewers were very much thrown right back into a story that they needed to have watched. I don’t feel as much obligation to the audience knowing things as I used to because there are ways now for the audience to find out what happened. They can always go online and watch episodes from before. They can go to chat rooms and fan sites and find out things. In a way it’s up to the audience to catch up, but more importantly, even though we’re still a broadcast model that has to air once a week, the truth is, the modern way of watching television for so many people is to watch outside of that model—to watch episodes through downloads, or buying a DVD, or renting on iTunes, or streaming live, or streaming on Netflix. And because of that, those questions of backstory are not really that relevant to them. They’re watching a show in a weekend or over two weeks. So we’re now making the story more for that kind of modern form of viewing.

 

WS: Is this new form of viewing freeing up the storytelling?

KRING: Yes, it’s keeping us from having to repeat things. The loyal viewers always feel like, Well why aren’t I being rewarded for being loyal? Why do I have to hear that again? I already know that. And what’s really fascinating is, these new distribution platforms that are allowing people to “binge” watch are changing the nature of what these shows are. They’re changing the format, in a way. We used to think of 22 hours of television per season. Well, we’re starting to see that most of these series that are binge watched have fewer episodes. They’re the cable model, the 10-, 12-, 13-episode run. We’re starting to see that the audience is getting used to that size as a way of watching a season of TV. And in the same way that there is an optimum length for a song on the radio (a nine-minute song just doesn’t work) and an optimum length for a book (a 1,000-page book doesn’t work) and a four-hour movie doesn’t work, there’s an optimum length for these series that the audience ends up dictating a little bit to you. What seem to be really working are these 10-, 12-, 13-episode seasons.

 

WS: At the end of season one of Touch, you produced Daybreak, which was a web series.

KRING: Yes, we launched it off of the season finale of Touch and it was just the smallest little tangent off of the show, just enough to have a tie-in with the series.

 

WS: What were the creative challenges of telling a story in mini episodes?

KRING: It was 50 minutes of content, about nine to ten minutes apiece. In a way it was very similar to writing a pilot for regular tele­vision and we approached it that way. It had five acts. We shot it like a pilot. We used my crew from Touch and it very much had the production values of a big broadcast tele­vision show.

 

WS: AT&T was involved in Daybreak. How was that collaboration?

KRING: I had been approached by AT&T through the agency BBDO, who had had this idea of doing a multiplatform story. When they pitched me the story, I said, it’s very interesting because it feels like it fits with the ethos of Touch, and perhaps we could tie those two things together. What was really fascinating was that I went to the AT&T labs in New Jersey and got to go behind the scenes and sign all the releases that said I wasn’t going to steal anything from them! I saw stuff that’s two years out, three years out, five years out. They have this lab full of scientists who just think about the future and come up with weird apps and strange things that may or may not even make it to market. So many ideas just started going off in my head about how to tell stories utilizing these little apps that they had. So we put together a suite of AT&T apps that all were housed under one thing that you can download, and it ran in conjunction with the show. You could aim your phone at the [computer] screen and it would sense things. It was a very cool little app that downloaded onto your telephone.

 

But working with a big brand like AT&T is a really interesting experience because I was used to the network model of working with development executives. Daybreak didn’t have any of that. All they really needed was for the brand to be treated in the proper way and to let me tell an interesting story. So it was very exciting and I think that story­tellers, now­adays especially, have to think about what technology can do for them as storytellers in reaching an audience where they live. We’re all carrying around these mobile devices all day long, we’re on the Internet, and we’re on our iPads. All of these tools can be used for storytelling.

 

WS: Was it difficult for you to bring a brand into the storytelling? Could you see yourself doing that again?

KRING: I am very interested in it because we’re now at a time where these brands are seeing that the 30-second spot is a very difficult thing. Through the Internet and through mobile, brands now have the ability to have a direct relationship with their customers, I would call them the audience. Brands can go directly to a story­teller, create a narrative and push it directly to people that they already know how to talk to. Samsung, for example, has something like 50 million people on their Facebook page and those people constitute an audience, a real audience that you could push content to. You could activate them to be engaged in a narrative, and have them engage with one another in the narrative and create content for each other. It’s an incredibly exciting time, and the truth is, we all grew up with television that was sponsored by advertisers: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and the Texaco Star Theater and the Kraft Music Hall. Brands were right out in front, and I think that’s coming back now in a big way.

WS: I didn’t mind the 15-second billboard at the top of the show.

KRING: Exactly, as long as it doesn’t feel that you are constantly being invaded by some product placement that is crass. But the brands that are really smart about this know that it’s the halo effect that they get from providing entertainment that people really like or find meaningful. They end up having a connection to the brand for having brought them that content and made that available. We all grow up knowing that things have to be paid for by somebody. We don’t belittle anybody for that. That’s not something we denigrate. We know that somebody has to pay for it, so if brands stay in the background, present it in a way that’s enjoyable and then allow you to know that they presented it, that’s a very good thing.