The Golden Age of American Drama

October 2006

By George Winslow

A perfect storm of feature
film-like production values and original storytelling techniques has created
some of the best drama ever seen on American television.

Early next year, British
viewers will see something on television they haven’t seen in nine
years—a new U.S. drama, Six Degrees, airing in prime time on ITV1.

“When a major broadcaster
that hasn’t been acquiring U.S. series decides to start airing them again in
prime time, it shows the impact U.S. dramas are having on audiences,” notes Tom
Toumazis, the executive VP and managing director for Europe, the Middle East
and Africa at Buena Vista International Television (BVITV), which sells Six
Degrees, an ABC network series.

The willingness of
broadcasters like ITV1 to once again prominently schedule U.S. dramas in prime
time not only reflects the recent success of shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives—which pulled in record ratings in many
markets—it also highlights a creative renaissance in American TV drama
production.

“When we look back on this
period, it will be hard for people to believe that all these great dramas were
on the air at one time,” muses Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC
Entertainment. McPherson, who was involved in the development of Lost and Desperate Housewives while running Touchstone Television, adds, “You
have The Sopranos, 24, Lost,
Desperate Housewives, Grey’s
Anatomy, Nip/Tuck, The Shield, Law & Order,
CSI and so forth. The list just
goes on and on. It is a golden age of U.S. television drama.”

Many factors have
contributed to the revival. Faced with stiff competition from high-profile,
award-winning fare on cable, the U.S. broadcast networks have moved away from
cookie-cutter police procedurals to series with more cutting-edge themes and
complex characters. That has attracted high-profile theatrical talent like
Jerry Bruckheimer, the executive producer of CSI, bringing big screen production values to the
small screen.

“It used to be that people
in the film business looked down on television,” says Jennifer Nicholson-Salke,
the executive VP of drama development at Twentieth Century Fox Television. “You
had to practically beg
a feature writer to come over and
write a script. Now I’d be a rich woman if I had a dollar for every film writer
that’s sat on my couch and pitched a show. They love what they’re seeing on TV.
They like the creative freedom. They all want to work in television.”

“I’ve been doing this for
20 years and I’ve never seen this kind of talent coming from the
theatrical-film industry over to television,” adds Sharon Hall, the senior VP
of drama development at Sony Pictures Television. “It is fantastic the kind of
writers, actors, directors and production people we can draw on. It has really
changed the way dramas look and feel.”

Some of those changes can
be easily seen. “There is so much money on the screen that the shows look more
like mini movies than the classic TV show,” says Marion Edwards, the executive
VP of Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution.

Other changes are more
subtle, relating to a willingness by the networks to embrace more daring
creative concepts. “The quality of the content is simply better than it’s ever
been,” says David Stapf, the president of CBS Paramount Network Television.
“The key is that the networks are encouraging diversity of content and voices.
When CSI, Lost and Desperate Housewives first
appeared, those shows broke the mold of what was on American television. Then
their success really opened up the door to more interesting ideas.”

Michael Wright, the senior
VP of original programming at TNT and TBS, agrees. “When Lost aired on ABC, it broke every rule,” he says. “It
broke the rule that said serialized drama wouldn’t work on TV. It broke the
rule that said you can’t have 37 characters. It changed every rule so that they
now all come with a qualifier: You can’t do this or that unless the show is
really good.”

Even so, networks must
still find the sweet spot between cutting-edge ideas and mass entertainment.
“The trick is to maintain a high level of creativity and quality in the writing
and acting while still keeping the programming accessible and enter­taining,”
Wright adds. “It is easy to err in either direction. You can make something
that is too rarified and lose your audience or you can make something that is
too low-brow and lose their interest by being too obvious.”

CREATIVE FACTORY

Just how networks are
achieving that fine balance between creativity and entertainment can be found
in the development process, an extremely laborious, expensive process that
critics once blamed for the lack of creativity on television.

The traditional U.S.
broadcast-network’s drama-development pro-cess begins in July and August, when
network executives begin hearing pitches for new dramas. By the end of
September, the networks have decided which dramas are worth further development
and they’ll commission scripts or ask the writers to develop the stories.
(Pitches for comedies, which take less time to produce, come later in September
and are often not purchased before November.)

Drama scripts begin
arriving on the desks of network programming executives by the end of the year,
and in January and February, the networks select a few to turn into pilots.
These pilots are then produced—under seemingly impossible
schedules—by April, when the networks settle on their fall schedule. The
lucky shows are announced to the public in May, during the upfront
presentations when much of the advertising time is sold.

The entire process has
long been criticized as inefficient and wasteful. Unlike many other countries,
where broadcasters focus their energies on a few concepts, the U.S. broadcast
networks typically commission 400 to 500 comedy and drama scripts during the
development season. About 140 to 150 of these get turned into pilots, which may
cost $5 million to $7 million for a drama pilot and $2 million for a comedy. In
the end, only 35 to 45 new drama and comedy pilots will make it into the
prime-time schedule. Many of these won’t last into a second season.

To avoid the rush and
wastefulness of the spring pilot season, most broadcast networks have moved to
a year-round development cycle whereby some pilots are commissioned throughout
the year, and some shows are given a slot on the schedules long before the fall
shows are officially announced in May.

This year, for example,
NBC commissioned the drama Kidnapped in September, which allowed a pilot to be produced at a more
leisurely pace and delivered in March. Soon after seeing the pilot, the network
agreed to put it on the fall schedule, and it was shown to advertisers in May.

While most series still go
through the traditional development cycle, the year-round development process
allows the networks to highlight a few new series, making it easier to build
some buzz among advertisers and in the media.

WIRED FOR CREATIVITY

The cable networks’
development season works on very different principles and timing, largely
because they lack the programming budgets of the big U.S. broadcasters.

Generally, cable networks
develop far fewer projects. Those that make it to the screen, typically 13,
usually cost around $1 million an hour, much less than the $2 million or more
lavished on broadcast-TV dramas.

TNT currently develops
nine or ten scripts a year, Wright explains, working on an 18-month development
cycle. In the first part of the year, the channel will evaluate scripts and
eventually order three pilots, which are shot during the summer. The pilots are
evaluated in the fall, and by the end of the year, orders are placed for full
series, with the number depending on the scheduling needs. The commissioned
series are then delivered the following summer, when many of the cable
originals bow in the U.S.

Traditionally, cable
networks were able to air more cutting-edge content because they didn’t have to
adhere to the indecency regulations governing broadcasters and because they
didn’t have to reach a mass audience. In recent years, though, many of the
traditional lines between U.S. dramas airing on broadcast and cable have
blurred.

“I’d say that the
differences between a network and a cable drama are not as clearly delineated
as they once were,” says Twentieth’s Nicholson-Salke. “Ideas that we might have
taken to cable in the past, we’ll now explore for [broadcast] network
development.”

In part, that reflects the
networks’ desire to appeal to younger viewers who have been attracted to the
edgier fare on cable and the critical success of cable shows like The
Sopranos and The Shield, which was the first basic cable network series to
win an Emmy.

“The networks have a much
bigger appetite for risk and more complex, flawed characters,” explains Sony’s
Hall. “Cable and network shows are starting to resemble each other more and
more. In the past, we’d decide if an idea was a cable show or a network show.
We’d never think of pitching a show to both network and cable. Now, we’ll
de-velop a concept and then decide the best place to pitch it.”

The distinction also has
less im-portance internationally. “In the past, cable meant low-budget,
second-tier programming,” notes Armando Nuñez, Jr., the president of CBS
Paramount International Television. “It doesn’t mean that any more. The 4400 [which airs on USA Network] has done extremely
well internationally on large broadcasters. It has been an unprecedented
ratings success in the U.K., France, Germany and Spain.”

Belinda Menendez, the
president of NBC Universal International Television Distribution, agrees. Her
com-pany has widely sold the hit cable show Monk, which airs on USA, and she has equally high hopes
for Psych, which attracted over
6 million viewers when it bowed on USA this summer.

“Having shows that have
been developed for both network and cable and having different types of dramas,
from serial dramas to close-ended dramas, has been important for us because we
can offer our customers so many choices,” Menendez says. “The production values
on these cable shows are so high, your customers don’t really see any
difference between network and cable.”

Still, subtle differences
remain. Broadcast networks targeting mass audiences air a much wider range of
programming than niche cable networks that have specific target audiences and
much more sharply defined brands. As a result, a network’s brand identity tends
to play a larger role in the development of dramas on cable.

TNT, for example, brands
itself as “the home for smart, entertaining dramas,” notes Wright. “We are a
network for drama lovers. We’re programming to a certain taste for smart,
entertaining dramas. We’re not a niche network but we’re not programming to the
widest possible taste, either. Success on cable is 3 million to 5 million
viewers.”

To ensure the shows fit
their brand, Wright says, “we spend a lot of time at the start of the
development process communicating who is watching us and why they are watching.
Our philosophy is that if you reach out to talented people and explain to them
your audience and your network’s goals, they will hit the mark. They are
experts at doing that. Where you can go wrong is trying to make the show for
them. The Closer is wonderful
entertainment because of the creative voice of the show runner and the creator,
James Duff.”

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS

Another key change in the
way U.S. dramas are created is the importance of international markets. Drama
producers typically face deficits of $1 million to $2 million between the cost
of production and the price paid by broadcast networks to air the shows. Given
the relatively limited potential of dramas in domestic syndication, producers
must rely on international markets, DVD sales and, eventually, the sale of
reruns to U.S. cable networks, to produce profits.

“We understand that
international is a factor in the business and that it is really important in
financing dramas,” says ABC’s McPherson. “The show’s appeal internationally is
not a dialogue we initiate. Our focus is the U.S. audience, but having run a
[tele-vision division at a] studio, I understand their needs. So, we are
willing to talk about issues that may help internationally.”

The major Hollywood
studios that produce most of the U.S. dramas are also getting their
international sales executives more closely involved in the development
process. In the mid-1990s, to maximize international revenues, Twentieth
Century Fox instituted a policy of having top inter-national sales executives
review scripts and provide sales estimates for network projects, says Edwards.
“I think we were the first to do that.”

Today, that practice is
widespread. Menendez at NBC Universal says, “we get involved in a very early
stage. A couple of executives from this division actually sit in on the
development meetings as the properties are developed.”

At Paramount, Nuñez and
Stapf also work closely together during the development process. “We have a
very close relationship,” Stapf says. “We talk almost every day. I not only
seek Armando’s and his group’s opinion on what will work, we also take those
opinions very seriously. Often it is a very helpful opinion. They look at
things more globally, and that often helps tailor a project for American
audiences.”

Appealing to international
tastes is particularly important because some very popular dramas can produce a
huge bounty, with some U.S. dramas commanding prices as high as $1 million an
episode.

“The production units are
looking to us to cover much of the deficit,” notes Toumazis at BVITV. “That’s
why we are putting a huge amount of effort not only in preselling the series
but also in marketing and promoting them.”

All the studios now deploy
massive marketing efforts to promote their series once they get on the air.
International broadcasters are regularly brought to Hollywood and given access
to production sets and stars so they can shoot promos, and the studios
frequently take talent overseas on press tours and to markets. Disney for
example, brought the cast from Lost
and Grey’s Anatomy to Europe
this summer for a European press tour, and it typically brings some executive
producers to MIPCOM to meet with buyers.

In the end, however,
creativity still rules the roost. “We are very in-volved in the development
process,” explains Toumazis. “But our role is to tell them what works
internationally and what they can expect financially from international
markets. The beginning and the end of the process, however, have to be the
creative content. You can’t have financial and sales pressures wagging the
dog.”