When you turn on the television after a long day at work, school or however you make your living, what's the ultimate goal of that action? Are you looking to veg out on mindless drool? Do you want to be transported to another reality for awhile? Is it just background noise?
What do you watch? Reality TV? News? Scripted Dramas? Primetime procedurals? Is there really a difference anymore?
In the last decade or so, television has fallen into a rut of recycling programming formulas instead of creating original programming. For every type of show out there, there are 10 to 15 imitation shows that follow the exact same formula with only minor tweaks in content.
Like "CSI?" Great! Then you might also like "Trauma," "NCIS," "Cold Case." Or would you rather watch "Top Chef?" In that case, there's "Project Runway," "Top Design," "The Fashion Show," "America's Next Top Model." "The Bachelor" more your style? Well then, what about "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," "Real Chance of Love," "Daisy of Love," "Rock of Love," "For the Love of Ray Jay," etc.
Even though the shows I listed above seem to represent different topics and interests, they all share the same thing in common -- they're formulaic. They repeat the same thing, episode after episode. When you tune into "Law & Order," you know what's going to happen before it even starts. A crime is going to be discovered (probably by somebody jogging in Central Park), the opening theme will play, the investigators will show up at the scene in their finest quality leather and designer clothes, they'll interview some people, they'll start to build a profile of the crime, they'll look for the killer and, of course, in the last 15 minutes of the show they'll realize that only one tiny piece of information was preventing them from seeing that some other person who was probably foreshadowed somewhere in the first 20 minutes of the show turns out to really be the killer, the jury renders their verdict, fade to black, Executive Producer Dick Wolf. The end. Tune in next week for the exact same shit.
The question I always have to ask myself is, "Do audiences simply enjoy not having to think too much or are the networks just too lazy to do anything but Mad Lib their shows together from mostly pre-existing formulas?" Many argue that the quick, cheap and easy nature of shooting "Reality TV" has left a void in the entertainment industry where quality scripted programming used to be.
I don't believe "Reality" (and I use quotes here because most so-called reality shows these days are loosely scripted) killed audience interest in scripted programming personally -- I think they can and should live side by side together. But I do think the ease of creating a "reality" show has made networks less interested in spending the time, money and care that is required to make a half-way decent scripted show.
With a "reality" show, you don't have to pay a writer every time you need to tweak a script, and you don't have to abide by those union requirements. You don't have to deal with the Screen Actors Guild either.
No, you can pretty much just sit back and let the drama come to you after loosely creating some kind of setting, a vague premise and providing as much booze as is necessary to get people lubricated. That kind of lazy, hands-off approach has certainly trickled down to the scripted shows that remain on network TV.
One of the few shows on currently that doesn't follow a formula week-to-week is FX's "Sons of Anarchy," a crime drama about an outlaw biker gang that controls a small town in California by former "The Shield" writer Kurt Sutter. In a recent blog post, Sutter lamented that "the reason most network scripted dramas suck is because of the process. For the most part, you have a collection of young, half-bright development executives who wouldn’t know a good story idea if it set itself on fire and fucked their mothers while singing 'Cheyenne Anthem' from Leftoverture. So they do what most chimpanzees do -- they ape and throw shit. Developing shows based on what they think people want to see. Churning out clones of semi-successful shows. Looking for a 'hook' to market.
"It’s never about the story or characters. That would demand talent, patience and an open mind, commodities that have long up and deserted ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and The CW."
The unfortunate thing is that television, from its inception, has never been an artistic medium. Unlike film and photography, which started out in the hands of curious young artists that saw the media as new ways to express their artistic visions, television has always been about business.
There have been very few visionaries that have used the format as their voice. Television has no Scorsese, no James Cameron, no Godard or Bertolucci. It has business men, marketing departments, accountants and advertising executives who don't care so much about the content of the product, just that it brings eyes to the screen to sell advertisements to.
So, in a way, it makes sense that things have played out the way they have.
What I have a hard time understanding, though, is why more networks aren't thinking about the future. Sure, it may be the easiest thing now to keep churning out season after season of "The Real Housewives of ...", but in two years, five years, 10 years that show will be forgotten as well as the opportunity to continue raking in money from it through syndicated reruns. And after you've exhausted all the major cities in the United States and are down to "The Real Housewives of West Podunk, Ark.," then what?
In contrast, James Cameron's film "Titanic" cost its studios tons of money, with the director himself giving up most of his compensation in order to get it finished. The result is a product that wasn't just the highest grossing movie of all time, but also a product that will continue to make them money for decades to come.
Universal took that leap with their "Battlestar Galactica" reboot on Syfy, and though the show's ratings were never paradigm-shattering, they will certainly rake in tons of cash over the next 10 to 20 years as the show gains cult status on DVD/Blu-ray and continues to be exploited as a franchise with syndication, spinoffs, comic books, novels, fan conventions, etc.
In a jar full of white marbles, the lone black orb is going to be the thing that sticks out, so why are networks and studios pouring all of their power and influence into churning out a bunch of white marbles?
It can't be a lack of talent. I meet smart, talented, ambitious people every day and Hollywood (as well as many other places in the world) is filled with young artists and writers just looking for their opportunities to bring their own visions to life. There are so many avenues that have yet to be explored in television, it certainly isn't for lack of content.
It's not like audiences aren't always searching for the "next, hot new thing," so it's not necessarily that people aren't open to seeing something new. There isn't a lack of great actors looking for work. Advertisers are looking for opportunities to exploit in this fledgling market.
This is what we call a "perfect storm," people.
Of course, networks point to the fact that even scripted shows that start off strong, like NBC's "Heroes," inevitably take a dive and thus, the risk is too high to pour money into something that may fail. But what they fail to realize is the reason why shows like that tank, which ultimately falls back at their feet - is all the network meddling. No matter how successful something is, in their minds, it could always draw in bigger numbers, appeal to larger demographics, and in the effort for mass appeal, networks often reduce what was once fresh and interesting to weekly exercises in tedium.
They try to slowly change a black marble to be more like the white marbles and then scratch their heads when it gets lost in the crowd. If James Cameron let the studios come in and rework "Titanic" in the way they thought audiences wanted to see it, we wouldn't be referencing it as the benchmark film that we consider it to be today. It'd be just another movie that came and went.
This is exactly the kind of short-sighted thinking that will ultimately lead to the collapse of the industry. And with the Internet quickly replacing broadcast television as the primary way to receive entertainment content, the industry, in my opinion, should be getting more aggressive in its methods if they hope to retain any place in the future.
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