Is network drama TV dead because of censorship rules?

[DarthTom]

NBC wouldn't have bought it because the Walking Dead would be to far out of their brand, they are risk averse, and something like that... no.

Not so risk adverse any more - at least when it comes to zombies. Babylon which NBC picked up will be interesting to compare to TWD in terms of the, 'shock factor,' that is permitted on broadcast television.

We'll see - you think on NBC a teenager will be spouting out profanities as Carl did on TWD? Or how about a c-section that goes badly where a teenagers shoots and kills his mother?

 

[Greylock Crescent]

You do not need to show people swearing and banging to be realistic. If anything HBO shows go a bit ridiculously far in the other direction, showing much more nudity and swearing than is actually called for by the story. If a zombie were chasing me I might scream the F word, and you might hear a group of teenage boys using it every other sentence when their parents aren't around. But generally just walking around on the street you don't hear people just yelling it out.

Never been to NYC have ya? Fuck you might as well be a salutation.

I live and work in NYC ... and while New Yorkers can be blunt and assertive, they aren't necessarily vulgar for the sake of vulgarity.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Networks like HBO and AMC know they need word of mouth to attract viewers, so they shoot for a higher artistic quality than the networks that just know they just toss some likable characters in a predictable dramatic situation, market the hell out of it and they'll get several million viewers.

 

[Professor Zoom]

NBC wouldn't have bought it because the Walking Dead would be to far out of their brand, they are risk averse, and something like that... no.

Not so risk adverse any more - at least when it comes to zombies. Babylon which NBC picked up will be interesting to compare to TWD in terms of the, 'shock factor,' that is permitted on broadcast television.

They are still risk averse. They are picking it up because of the success of The Walking Dead. They want there own Walking Dead.

Not being risk averse would be LEADING creatively. Choosing something that's already successful for someone else is mitigating risk.

We'll see - you think on NBC a teenager will be spouting out profanities as Carl did on TWD? Or how about a c-section that goes badly where a teenagers shoots and kills his mother?

No. Not the cursing certainly. The violence? Maybe. Depends on how it's done.

America has always been more favor of violence than cursing and sex. Look at the movie ratings. Violence is ok. Show a boob and you have an R.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Which actually begs the question outside of my original question - why are cable channels able to make quality drama on a per episode basis far more cheaply? It cannot simply be because they don't hire more recognized stars?

Premium cable has bigger budgets than the broadcast networks. Netflix shows have budgets that are bigger or on par with the most expensive broadcast network shows, as do a handful of the most expensive shows on basic cable, although most basic cable shows (like most of those on USA and Syfy, for example) have smaller budgets than broadcast network shows.

Then again, it's estimated that House of Cards cost Netflix $50 million for two seasons or $4 million / episode which would make it more costly than The Walking Dead which I'd assume has a lot higher production costs.

House of Cards was initially planned to have a budget of $4.5 million per episode, but the budget went higher than that. Most reports pegged it as a massive $100 million budget for the 26 episodes of its first two seasons, but it ended up even higher. Hemlock Grove has a budget of $4 million per episode and Orange is the New Black a little below that. HBO's Game of Thrones has a budget of over $60 million for just a 10-episode season.

 

[MacLeod]

The simply answer is no. Networks around the world produce drama's year in year out to varying quality, each having to conform to their local censorship rules.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

What's beating the shit out of network drama is a whole genre that's a monument to Kitman's Law, the one euphemistically called "Reality TV" (although there's hardly anything "real" about plopping a bunch of civilians down in a contrived situation and videotaping what happens), because they don't have to pay a bunch of demanding actors, and all the writers have to come up with is a series of contrived situations, rather than an honest-to-God story.

And since the whole point of commercial television is to sell advertisers a receptive audience, "Reality TV" is an advertiser's dream: the ad rates are cheap, and the audience's higher brain functions (if any) are already thoroughly anesthetized.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

As much as people like to beat up on the broadcast networks and point to the type of programming they personally dislike as the culprit, the main reason for the drop in ratings is the ongoing fragmentation of the entertainment marketplace with a huge amount of competition and an increase in time-shifted viewing.

 

[Squiggy]

Your examples are poor.

Some of the most popular shows on TV today: House of Cards,

Not on TV.

The Walking Dead,

No tits. Limited swearing.

Orange is the New Black,

Not on TV.

Mad Men,

No tits. Rare swearing.

Game of Thrones etc.

This has tits...I'll give you that.

There's a violence factor in Walking Dead that probably wouldn't fly on network television - but that is an advertiser issue, not an FCC one.

Of your list, the only show that wouldn't air "as is" on network television would be GoT. While it's a good show, last season's finale only got 5.5-6.3 milllion viewers. It's never been a Top 10 show - as airing on HBO severely limits your national viewership more than any lack of censorship would help it.

Breaking Bad had an average audience of 6 million and Walking Dead right around 4.9. No where close to Top 10.

Your premise is flawed. Network dramas are doing fine. Not as well as they used to be before they had competition - but that's a no brainer.

 

[Timby]

For example I doubt that the way TWD has been made for AMC could have been aired on NBC without issues from the censors.

This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, because The Walking Dead is fucking awful.

In any event, no, network television drama is not dead. Beyond examples already discussed, LOST, Veronica Mars and Friday Night Lights are all semi-recent, and they were brilliant.

Any challenges network drama faces aren't due to censorship, they're due to the need to sell advertising. HBO and Showtime and Cinemax don't need to give a shit about that, because they make their money from subscribers. Channels like AMC do need to worry about ad sales, but they still make the bulk of their money from their per-subscriber carriage fee from providers. But because they're getting that carriage fee on top of any advertising, they can be more selective and take a few more risks on the programs they decide to run. That has nothing to do with "censorship." Breaking Bad's fourth season finale had maybe two million viewers at most -- those are numbers that would barely beat cancellation on The CW, to say nothing of the other broadcast networks.

 

[Squiggy]

Well, NBC might let it live.

 

[HaventGotALife]

So if the premise is flawed, do we need to change the game for network television? If they don't have to rely on advertisers, but have other sources of income, would they take more risks?

 

[Professor Zoom]

So if the premise is flawed, do we need to change the game for network television? If they don't have to rely on advertisers, but have other sources of income, would they take more risks?

The premise of the thread is flawed. Many more people watch network shows than cable. In other words: network drama isn't dead. It's doing quite well compared to cable drama.

Now, is it getting awards and critical love? Not as much, true. But, as long as it generates profit, I don't think networks really care.

If networks didn't have to rely on advertisers, I don't know if they would have enough income to create the amount of material they need to create. Consider how many hours of original content networks create versus cable.

And where would you imagine this income would come from? Subscribers?

But to answer your question: maybe. It, again, depends on the source of the income.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The premise of the thread is flawed. Many more people watch network shows than cable. In other words: network drama isn't dead. It's doing quite well compared to cable drama.

The premise of the thread is flawed, but saying that network drama is doing well compared to cable drama is also flawed. Premium cable shows accumulate a lot of viewers through time-shifting and it all counts towards monetizing the shows since it's a subscription business model. Since network dramas are advertiser-supported they need a much greater number of viewers on initial broadcast. Most time-shifting doesn't help towards monetization. Advertising revenues are still good enough for the broadcast networks to continue with their business model despite decreased viewership, but the time may come when they have to make a shift.

Now, is it getting awards and critical love? Not as much, true. But, as long as it generates profit, I don't think networks really care.

Profits are what matter to them most, but I'm sure network execs would love to have their shows fare better at the awards shows.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's true that a lot of network shows get great ratings. But they could create better quality shows within the unthreatening episodic formula and get equal or better if they put more of a focus on writing. But with a few exceptions they see writers as interchangeable, and they see the gain they'd get from better writing as not worth the cost of spending more on writers.

That's part of the reason HBO and Showtime shows have better writing, because they know if they don't have good writing, nobody buzzes about the show, nobody tunes in to see it.

Also the reason they fired Dan Harmon.

 

[Starbreaker]

You're just making stuff up.

Here's a sample of a random Tuesday on CBS:
NCIS 16.89 million viewers
NCIS:LA 13.10
Person of Interest 10.78

vs. "edgy cable"

Game of Thrones - 5 million viewers
Breaking Bad - 2 million viewers
Dexter - 2 million viewers
Mad Men - 2 million viewers

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
Again, a comparison of first-run viewership between network shows and cables shows isn't particularly helpful given how different the business models are. Game of Thrones goes up to a total of 14-15 million viewers per episode across all platforms, including time-shifting. That is of great benefit with a subscriber model, whereas time-shifting doesn't help much with an advertiser-supported business model.

Plus there aren't many network drama shows that draw as many viewers as the top CBS shows, and you need to bear in mind that it's the demo rating that really matters. Person of Interest averages just over a 2.0 in the demo with about 12 million viewers, Sleepy Hollow skewed younger and averaged in the low to mid 2s in the demo with 6.5 to 8 million viewers through most of its run, while no network drama comes close to the demo rating that The Walking Dead gets (6s, 7s, even over 8.0 sometimes).

 

[Frontier]

20 years ago this was a non-debate, but 20 years ago you had very few good original programs on cable. Now it's the other way around and people are voting with their time and money to say, basically, yes.

The broadcast networks are currently hand-cuffed and they know it.

Silly thing is, they handcuff themselves when they don't have to.

The rules say they only have to censor between 6 am and 10 pm. Yet they censor everything. The 10 pm hour could be much more liberated; but they're afraid of all the affiliates they might lose and the special interest groups that would protest. So they do nothing.

Anyone who says that you don't need X or Y to make a good show - you're right, you don't need it. But audiences are coming to expect and want it more and more.

Look at "I Love Lucy" and compare it to "All in the Family" and then compare it to "Friends" and you'll see how the constraints of censorship have changed as the decades go by. Only now, the pressure is even stronger because people can flip to basic or pay cable and see a show that's much more realistic by virtue of not being bound and gagged on what they can say or do.

Honestly, I find the restraint of the basic cable networks confusing. Basic cable is under no different rules than pay cable, yet they hold themselves back. They go further than broadcast; but not as far as pay. It's all very curious.

Personally? I'm 100% anti-censorship. I think we pay too much head to tiny vocal groups who want to pretend reality is a 1950 Norman Rockwell painting. But that's me. Thankfully, it does seem more people are agreeing with that... but it's still a long and tedious battle.

It's strange but network TV in the early 90s was more liberated than it is now. NYPD Blue did some controversial content, language and nudity. You don't see that anymore. Again, that vocal minority...

End of the day, the shackles concerning content is only one reason network TV is dying. But it is one part of it, for sure.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Honestly, I find the restraint of the basic cable networks confusing. Basic cable is under no different rules than pay cable, yet they hold themselves back. They go further than broadcast; but not as far as pay. It's all very curious.

While they partly monetize their content through cable providers paying to carry them, basic cable outlets are also advertiser-supported to a large degree. They self-censor because most advertisers want them to do so.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Cable doesn't need 11 million viewers to survive.

Cable needs 2 million.

Different models.

If everyone in America did get a cable box (odd that that isn't so) a scripted drama cable show would suddenly only need a hundred thousand viewers to financially justify survival.

Subscriptions fees + cheaper dissemination process + %100 accurate demography + minor amount of Advertising not inside programming (My cable used to often have ten minute blocks of advertising before and after different movies.) + sponsorship of popular programming = Advertising revenue generated from guestimation (1 Nielson family = 70,000 regular families? Fuck that.) of Nielson families.