Cable or Broadcast? Which is "better," and how?

[stj]

Premium cable includes shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Big Love, Californication, that Larry David show, In Treatment, Hung, Queer as Folk, The L Word, Stargate SG1, Jeremiah, Odyssey 5, Weeds, Rome, The Wire The Tudors, True Blood. There are basic cable shows like Breaking Bad, Extras, Stargate SG1, Outer Limits, Damages, The Closer, Burn Notice, The 4400, It's always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Shield and so on. I doubt anyone has seen all of them, but most people have seen enough to get an idea of their basic level of quality.

It is usually claimed that cable has more innovative programming.

Recalling broadcast programming, though, such series as Cop Rock, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Kings, In Justice, The Evidence, FlashForward, The Book of Daniel, Wonderland, Jericho, Brisco County and other series had their debuts on broadcast networks. Most of these series are quite innovative, so innovative they couldn't win a mass audience and were canceled. Other innovative series that did win a massive audience (even if popularity makes you forget how fresh they were upon arrival,) were shows like Hill Street Blue, ER, CSI, the original Law & Order, Picket Fences.

Cable has more realistic, aka vulgar language, and cable has more sex. And cable doesn't have commercial breaks. But most cable programming is written as though it has to break for commercials! That alone makes me seriously question whether cable programming is really so much more innovative than broadcast.

Any discussion?

 

[Marc]

How many of the shows you listed as broadcast would of been made without cable as an inspiration?

And all programs reguardless of broadcast medium are written for ad breaks a) because they hope they can sell the programs to other networks who will have commericals and b) even before advertisements came along, plays etc were all written in sections referred to as acts.

Finally even if you took the sex etc etc of the shows like the Rome, Deadwood etc they wouldn't survive on broadcast tv. It's gotta be instant ratings or it's gone - quality means nothing.

 

[Starbreaker]

FlashForward isn't cancelled. It's on hiatus until march like a million other shows.

 

[Harvey]

Premium Cable is the better medium, since it has to deal with much less censorship, is far less of a slave to running times (Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is far more than "that Larry David show," runs over the alloted 29:30 on various occasions when it suits the need of a particular episode), and doesn't require such a large audience to stay on the air (and therefore it can engage subject matter that would never be aired on network television).

Which is not to say that Premium Cable doesn't have plenty of trash on the air waves or that Network Television (and Basic Cable) don't allow for an occasional gem to slip through.

 

[Michael Chris]

I don't think I've seen a premium cable show from recent years that I could actually watch. The vulgarity in these shows is just awful.

 

[Harvey]

There's certainly no shortage of swearing. If you'd like to see a Baltimore cop series without swearing, see Homicide: Life on the Street, not The Wire. If you'd like to see a series about Larry David without swearing watch Seinfeld, not Curb Your Enthusiasm. And so on and so forth. Personally, I prefer the premium cable versions, but swearing doesn't bother me.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I like them both, Mad Men had become one of my new favorites, midway thru season 3 now, and even though its on a basic cable program like AMC, it was originally intended to be put on HBO or Showtime, not sure if it would have been too different if it was on a network, since it is somewhat episodic and not all that serialized

so I think it really depends on the show itself

I'd even say Mad Men has krept up to my top 3 current faves next to Lost and Dexter, surpassing Supernatural and True Blood

oh and I say, but probably not the first, but Jon Hamm should be play Captain America

 

[Trekker4747]

For my money, cable is better. Mostly for the vaster selection of channels, but I admit to only watching a fraction of the channels I have. But it's nice having the options.

 

[JonathonWally]

Premium cable includes shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Big Love, Californication, that Larry David show, In Treatment, Hung, Queer as Folk, The L Word, Stargate SG1, Jeremiah, Odyssey 5, Weeds, Rome, The Wire The Tudors, True Blood. There are basic cable shows like Breaking Bad, Extras, Stargate SG1, Outer Limits, Damages, The Closer, Burn Notice, The 4400, It's always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Shield and so on. I doubt anyone has seen all of them, but most people have seen enough to get an idea of their basic level of quality.

It is usually claimed that cable has more innovative programming.

Recalling broadcast programming, though, such series as Cop Rock, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Kings, In Justice, The Evidence, FlashForward, The Book of Daniel, Wonderland, Jericho, Brisco County and other series had their debuts on broadcast networks. Most of these series are quite innovative, so innovative they couldn't win a mass audience and were canceled. Other innovative series that did win a massive audience (even if popularity makes you forget how fresh they were upon arrival,) were shows like Hill Street Blue, ER, CSI, the original Law & Order, Picket Fences.

Cable has more realistic, aka vulgar language, and cable has more sex. And cable doesn't have commercial breaks. But most cable programming is written as though it has to break for commercials! That alone makes me seriously question whether cable programming is really so much more innovative than broadcast.

Any discussion?

Broadcast shows have to be blanded down to appeal to a much wider audience to be successful. Whereas Cable shows need a much smaller audience to be a success and can therefore afford to have limited appeal and remain "quirky" if you will

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm just surprised somebody mentioned Cop Rock.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Almost all the good shows are on cable now. Lost is the big exception. Chuck is a good show but pretty lightweight. Can't think of any others worth mentioning.

Broadcast doesn't get credit for launching the likes of Pushing Daisies if they just go and FRAKKEN CANCEL THE SHOW! On basic cable, it might still be around.

That's the problem with broadcast - the value of a single viewer is so low that only the most broadly popular shows survive for any length of time. Cable gets subscription and ad revenues. The value of each viewer is higher so there's more incentive to cater to viewers' niche tastes. On premium cable, the value of each viewer is much higher than either broadcast or basic cable. It's no big surprise that premium cable viewers get treated the best, and their tastes are catered to the most carefully. The more money you're worth to a business, the better they treat you.

Overall, boadly popular anything is going to be more boring and bland than anything that caters to a niche. Broadcast tries to be innovative - two good recent examples are Pushing Daisies and Kings - but innovation is a poor fit for the broadcast financial model.

 

[stj]

People seem to agree that cable is in fact more innovative, but hold that means the audience for such innovation will necessarily be a smaller audience that is only economically viable on cable.

I'm not sure that is the case. First season Dexter was broadcast in summer on CBS. NBC would have been grateful for its four million plus audience. This performance suggests that the relatively tiny audiences of some premium cable shows is because the audience is smaller.

From the other side, The Closer has been beating NBC and/or Fox and/or ABC, depending on the season. It fairly routinely scores five million plus audience, and I think has crossed the seven million mark a couple of times. (The segregated business reporting that only publicizes network broadcasts' ratings makes it hard to be sure.) It has not been blanded down but seems to be getting a mass audience despite a smaller potential audience, albeit one not as small as premium cable.

Pushing Daisies had very good ratings when it first premiered on ABC. But the writers' strike interrupted production. This can kill audience interest, especially serialized shows, or divert it to other programming. I fail to see how its precipitous drop in ratings on return reflects upon ABC. There was the notorious (or should be!) case of the Sandy Duncan show, which debuted to very quickly become a top ten show. Then the star developed a major eye disorder. Her sight was saved, I think, but the show was never successful again.

Then, there are the cancelled efforts on premium cable, such as John From Cincinnatti, from the guy who did the highly lauded Deadwood. The highly lauded Rome was abbreviated as well. The Wire, perhaps the most highly lauded of all, had its last season shortened as well. Bryan Fuller was quickly forced out of Dead Like Me, his first series. He wasn't forced out of Wonderfalls or Pushing Daisies.

In short, is it really true that innovative programming necessarily has a small audience? In particular, shows like Hill Street Blues, ER, Picket Fences, CSI (the originial,) Law & Order (again, the original,) have to be regarded as innovative in their time, yet they gained mass audiences. Indeed, the critical acclaim usually came after their popular success. ER, for instance, which was much more innovative than Chicago Hope, was the critical underdog against Chicago Hope, produced by a critical favorite (David E. Kelley, if I remember correctly.) Is it possible that notion that innovative television gets a small audience is merely defensive prejudice?

 

[Harvey]

Dexter was also rather heavily edited when it was broadcast on the network, wasn't it?

I think the notion that television proclaimed as 'innovative' usually has a smaller audience than normative television may not be true in all cases, but it is true in most. Witness Homicide: Life on the Street's rating woes vs. Law & Order and others. Of course, what 'innovative' truly means is up to debate. You claim ER was more innovative than Chicago Hope (I haven't seen more than a few minutes of the former, and none of the latter), but state that the critics felt the reverse was true until revising their opinions later. So what exactly does that mean?

 

[JonathonWally]

Then, there are the cancelled efforts on premium cable, such as John From Cincinnatti, from the guy who did the highly lauded Deadwood. The highly lauded Rome was abbreviated as well.

Rome was insanely expensive to make.

It was an excellent show, and I really mean excellent, on many levels, but HBO was overly ambitious about it, and it just cost insane amounts of money to make.


Another thing about premium cable shows compared to broadcast.

Showtime had shows like Queer as Folk and The L-Word. Both great shows, they would never have made it on broadcast television.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

First season Dexter was broadcast in summer on CBS. NBC would have been grateful for its four million plus audience.

Even on NBC, 4M is puny. Dexter's production had already been paid for, so that 4M was gravy. That math won't work for a show that's being produced for broadcast alone.

From the other side, The Closer has been beating NBC and/or Fox and/or ABC, depending on the season. It fairly routinely scores five million plus audience, and I think has crossed the seven million mark a couple of times.

5-7M is bad by broadcast standards, maybe not so much anymore but that's because broadcast has been losing its audience and they have no choice but to start to regard figures like that in a new light. If they could put shows on the air that could do better than that, of course they would. Since they can't, they try going the cheap route with reality crap and reducing scripted shows' budgets to bare bones. Even that doesn't work - as NBC found out with Leno.

But there's still a disconnect between a decently budgeted scritped show and that show only expecting 5M viewers, assuming those viewers are worth only their eyeballs to Nielsen. Throw in some cash coming from their subscriptions, and that 5M looks better.

Witness Homicide: Life on the Street's rating woes vs. Law & Order and others. Of course, what 'innovative' truly means is up to debate.

Definitely. I regard all cop shows as non-innovative by definition. They're cop shows! That's like saying a french fry is innovative. It might be a very well made french fry, with jalepeno-wasabi-pomegrante dipping sauce but there's no way it can ever be anything but mundane by my standards.

Pushing Daisies had very good ratings when it first premiered on ABC. But the writers' strike interrupted production.

The ratings fall off started before the writer's strike. The show was just too weird to survive.

 

[Trekker4747]

Cable or broadcast, which is better?

Obviously cable since it has better qulaity and orders of magnitude more channels.

 

[Lord Garth]

Cable is better.

You can go further with cable than you can on a network in terms of story and content. The seasons are also usually shorter. A shorter season leads to better focus and greater plot compression. Less time is wasted.

 

[Harvey]

Witness Homicide: Life on the Street's rating woes vs. Law & Order and others. Of course, what 'innovative' truly means is up to debate.

Definitely. I regard all cop shows as non-innovative by definition. They're cop shows! That's like saying a french fry is innovative. It might be a very well made french fry, with jalepeno-wasabi-pomegrante dipping sauce but there's no way it can ever be anything but mundane.

That's not really what I meant. But you didn't even like The Wire, so I'll submit that cop shows of any sort are not for you.

 

[Marc]

Then, there are the cancelled efforts on premium cable, such as John From Cincinnatti, from the guy who did the highly lauded Deadwood. The highly lauded Rome was abbreviated as well.

Rome was insanely expensive to make.

It was an excellent show, and I really mean excellent, on many levels, but HBO was overly ambitious about it, and it just cost insane amounts of money to make.

Though how much of the cost of Rome was the actual set construction? For any show the first season will always be the most exspensive (until your actors start asking for more) because you've got the all the pre-production work in there (costume design & manufacture, the same for sets).

So the longer a show is in production, the cheaper the production costs can get.

btw does anyone know - where the Rome sets torn down or have they remained (possible in storage) to be made available for future productions?

 

[JonathonWally]

btw does anyone know - where the Rome sets torn down or have they remained (possible in storage) to be made available for future productions?

They're still there. Doctor Who used them for Fires of Pompeii