Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television

Trisha Dunleavy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317402794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Culture populaire

This book examines the creative strategies, narrative characteristics, industrial practices and stylistic tendencies of complex serial drama. Exemplified by shows like HBO's The Sopranos, AMC's Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Showtime's Dexter, and Netflix's Stranger Things, complex serials are distinguished by their conceptual originality, narrative complexity, transgressive lead characters and serial allure. As a drama form that continues to expand and diversify in today's television, HBO's Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, Netflix's Orange Is the New Black and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale provide further examples. Dunleavy investigates the strategies that underpin the innovations, influence and success of complex serial drama, giving students and scholars a nuanced understanding of this contemporary TV form.

1

THE RISE OF COMPLEX SERIAL DRAMA ON AMERICAN CABLE TV

Introduction

Significant new opportunities for innovation in American TV drama became available as a collision between two related forces unleashed the necessary momentum. One was the expansion and ambition of American cable networks, whose potential to offer quality, alternative programming to a national audience was realized (from the late 1970s) by satellite transmission. The other was the rapidity with which American viewers embraced multi-channel television; this, by the late 1990s, matured to stimulate a gradual expansion in the supply of original programming, which in turn fueled creative experimentation. Cable TV services reached 63.4 percent of American homes in 1994 (Edgerton, 2008: 5) with advances in carriage technology driving an escalation in the number of TV channels being delivered to Nielsen Media’s “typical TV household” from 10.2 in 1980 to 43.0 in 1997 (ibid.: 3, 11). This increasing take-up for cable channels was a vital pre-condition for the new opportunities for TV drama alluded to above. Yet, even as the cable sector’s penetration reached ‘critical mass’, broadcast networks continued to dominate the commissioning and, with it, the concept design and form of American high-end drama.

Although the impetus was building by the early 1990s, significant change for American TV drama arrived in the period 1997–2008, seeded by HBO. Even though HBO was just one of a larger group of cable networks regularly commissioning drama in the late 1990s, its subscription-funded position necessitated a different approach. Whereas other cable networks provided a mix of ‘off-­network’ and original shows that could deliver to their age-based, gender-oriented or ­otherwise specialist audiences, HBO’s ‘premium’ cable footing disposed it to both acquire and, as far as it could afford, to originate programming with a cultural and/or creative distinctiveness geared to resonate with the affluent viewers that were its existing subscribers. Crucial to the success of the trajectory that HBO followed with original long-format drama was its realization that key to the allure and profitability of a premium cable service would be the offer of programming that was genuinely different to that which broadcasters were offering. Pivotal to this achievement was the conceptual, formal and stylistic distinctiveness of the complex serials that comprised HBO’s impressive first long-format drama commissions, specifically Oz (1997–2003), The Sopranos (1999–2007), Six Feet Under (2001–05), The Wire (2002–2008) and Deadwood (2004–2006).

This chapter investigates the institutional context within which complex serials emerged on American cable television. As long-format dramas, the first examples were certainly informed by the conventions of the broadcast TV dramas that preceded them – the nearest of which was arguably Twin Peaks, a rare example of fully serialized drama to appear within the larger ‘American Quality Drama’ paradigm to be examined next chapter. However, as high-end dramas commissioned for ambitious cable networks, drama serials gained new opportunities for experimentation and innovation from their origination outside broadcast television. Although a range of cable networks contributed to establishing the complex serial form, this chapter foregrounds HBO as the network on which it originated. Even though these serials gained considerable creative momentum from HBO’s ‘premium’ economy and its appetite for risk-taking, an important question for this chapter is that of how and why ‘basic’ cable networks such as FX and AMC have also been able to commission them.

The Maturation of the American Cable Sector

Although cable systems, networks and channels had been in place since the 1950s, their function and potentials had changed significantly by the 1980s, due to the effect of four developments which together ensured a different kind of future for American cable television than that previously envisaged (Mullen, 2003). First was the ability of those cable operators who could afford the necessary technology to uplink their signals to satellite and achieve national reach, an opportunity that HBO took up in 1975. Second, as Megan Mullen (ibid.: 128) observes, cable “subscriber numbers grew at a remarkable rate”. As at 1970, basic cable systems had penetrated 8 percent of American households (Thompson, 1996: 36); this rose to 21.7 percent of the national market in 1980 and 39.3 percent in 1983 (Edgerton, 2008: 4). Third was deregulation, as a result of which some important restrictions on the operation and programming of cable channels, which had inhibited their commercial development, were removed (Mullen, 2003). Fourth, a change which benefitted from the repercussions of the other three was that earlier expectations that cable services would develop as a complement to broadcast TV gave way to the realization that these would instead compete directly with broadcast networks.

Working in addition to the four developments above would soon be media conglomeration, through which the ownership of “both cable systems and national cable networks” would transfer from smaller local companies to large national media corporations (Mullen, 2003: 133). Beginning in the 1980s and developing into the 2000s, this change was merely one facet of a continuing concentration in global media ownership, as a result of which American TV networks and related media became but smaller elements of an ownership structure led by a small group of world-leading transnational multi-media corporations (Straubhaar, 2007). By 2005, and with mergers and restructurings continuing thereafter, American media ownership was dominated by Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom and General Electric, each of which was characterized by horizontally and vertically integrated business structures and interests (Hilmes, 2008).

Beginning in the 1970s, HBO’s development trajectory is indicative of the opportunities that became available to cable operators, even if few had the resources to fully exploit them. Although in this decade satellite technology was showing the potential to reshape cable television’s future, its prohibitive costs meant that only cable companies with unusual capital could deploy it (Mullen, 2008). Another challenge was that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, designed to protect broadcast television by inhibiting the commercial potentials of cable networks, needed to be negotiated or challenged (ibid.). In overcoming both of these obstacles, as a result of which it gained additional opportunities as an early, very successful premium cable network, HBO was greatly assisted by the financial support it received from Time Inc. An ongoing relationship that would heighten HBO’s ambition and enhance its opportunities, this began in 1971 when Time Inc. provided seed funding for the fledgling subscription service that was conceived as the ‘Green Channel’ and renamed ‘Home Box Office’ (Mullen, 2003: 106). HBO gained an important victory in 1975, when, having leased a satellite transponder to telecast a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, it became the first cable network to exercise national reach. As Megan Mullen suggests, HBO’s coup with the match that was nicknamed ‘The Thrilla in Manila’ “marked the definitive arrival of cable television’s modern era” (2008: 114).

A second significant victory for HBO followed two years later. Preparing the way for HBO to exhibit and invest in feature films was its 1977 challenging of FCC anti-siphoning rules governing the television release of theatrical features. Ensuring that “broadcast network affiliates would have first claim” on the newest and most commercially valuable Hollywood features (Santo, 2008: 21), these regulations could have thwarted HBO’s plan to develop a subscription service that centered on the offer of ‘home cinema’. However, as HBO saw it, there was a case to be made that in regulating pay TV content to this extent the FCC “exceeded its authority” (Mullen, 2003: 98). Taking the FCC to court on this basis in 1977, HBO won the case and its fortunes took a major upturn. As Mullen (2003: 98) observes, the ruling “allowed cable to replace broadcast television as Hollywood’s first television exhibition window”. While this ruling also made viable the creation of other movie-oriented premium cable services, HBO was ready to exploit it immediately and in three main ways. First, the exhibition of new-release theatrical features was geared to vastly increase HBO’s allure, justifying its charging of higher subscriptions and strengthening its business model. Second, the creation of a privileged relationship between Hollywood studios and cable operators by granting the latter first TV play of the former’s products, made “financing and exhibition agreements with Hollywood studios” (ibid.) considerably more attractive for HBO, as a network with access to the capital to invest in film production. Third, the incorporation of selected theatrical features into its schedule would greatly assist HBO to build the kind of ‘upscale’ entertainment brand that would distinguish it from the newer basic cable networks now being established.

These new cable channels catered to smaller, underserved segments of the audience through a narrower, more focused range of shows than it was possible for broadcast networks to offer in this pre-digital period.¹ The expansion of cable TV included a slew of entertainment-oriented channels. Underlining the impacts of the 1977 ruling won by HBO, two of the premium cable additions in place by 1980, Cinemax and The Movie Channel, were devoted to movies. Basic cable channels that were either established or rebranded as entertainment-focused included A&E, USA, Lifetime and TNT, all of which had launched in the 1980s. These were joined in the 1990s by the entertainment-oriented Comedy Central, Nick at Nite and the Sci Fi Channel (later SyFy), as well as by movie and arts channels, AMC and Bravo, which, having started as ‘mini-pay’ channels, converted to basic cable status. Although these channels would invest in original shows, as Mullen (2008: 154) underlines, “the new cable networks lacked broadcast television’s programming budgets”. Hence their challenge as entertainment-oriented channels entering an increasingly populated TV environment in which their role was to cultivate underserved niche audiences (including viewers willing to pay for additional TV services) was sustaining a supply of suitable shows through which to differentiate themselves.

The sustainability of the above range of new cable channels was tested and proven in the period 1995–2005, which saw a more critical rebalancing of broadcast and cable audiences. In 1995, cable services reached a massive 66.8 percent of American households, to create a total cable subscribership of more than 64 million (Hilmes, 2008: 304). Suggesting that this competition in American television centered on a tussle for share between ‘mass audience-oriented’ broadcasters and ‘niche-oriented’ cable networks, however, was that cable audiences rose largely at the expense of CBS, ABC and NBC, whose combined primetime share had fallen to 60 percent in 1995 (ibid.). By 2005, 94.2 percent of American households were subscribing to “some form of multi-channel video programming distribution (MVPD)”, with 69.4 percent of these involving cable services (Banet-Weiser et al., 2007: 2). By this point, and with the above majority of non-broadcast viewers together comprising 53 percent in primetime hours, the combined primetime audience share for broadcast networks was just 47 percent (ibid.).

HBO’s Emergence and Trajectory as a Provider of Original High-End Shows

HBO’s commissioning of fictional programming – which began with feature films and comedies, and later added high-end dramas and ‘dramedies’ – became increasingly crucial in the context of the explosion in cable TV networks that characterized and stimulated the multi-channel transition in progress from the mid-1980s. Helping to progress HBO’s longstanding ambition to provide a genuine alternative to the shows that broadcast networks were offering was the combined impact of three additional but related factors. First was HBO’s early inception and continuing tendency as ‘first mover’ among entertainment-oriented cable networks to anticipate the changing opportunities and move nimbly to turn these to its advantage. This HBO ‘attitude’ was strongly demonstrated by its successful 1977 overturning of an FCC regulation barring cable networks as ‘first window’ exhibitors for recent Hollywood movies. Second was that, as the first cable network to target an ‘upscale’, cinema-going audience, HBO was well-positioned to exploit the opportunities to extend its market penetration. In the years 1977–83, as Gary Edgerton registers (2008: 4), HBO’s “subscriber base skyrocketed” from the modest 600,000 it held at the outset of this period to the impressive 13 million it had achieved by the end. Yet, in opting to provide alternative programming for ‘upscale’ viewers at a time when it seemed “that the most popular and profitable cable networks would be those that reflected what was popular on broadcast television” (Mullen, 2003: 112), HBO took unusual risks.

This foregrounds the importance of the third factor that underwrote HBO’s ongoing risk-taking: the continuing support and subsidization it received from its original shareholder Time Inc. (Mullen, 2003: 108). Beginning before it even turned a profit, HBO’s production financing from Time Inc. allowed it to complement its developing brand as an exhibitor of ‘must-see’ Hollywood movies via a move into feature film financing. In 1976, HBO secured a co-financing agreement between Time Inc. and Columbia Pictures, whereby in exchange for the investment from Time Inc., a group of “major feature films” was produced, with HBO gaining “the first television rights” to air them (ibid.). As HBO continued to generate subscriber growth and larger profits through the provision of shows that seemed different from those available on broadcast TV, its nurturing ‘parent’ Time Inc. responded to the pressures on its own businesses toward increased synergy, economies of scale and market power. It was this set of pressures that fueled the conglomeration of American media between 1985 and 2005. Becoming an indicative example of the trend that enveloped most other American media companies in these decades, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1989 to form Time Warner Inc., “the largest communications company in the world at that point” (Hilmes, 2008: 286) and a member of the reducing ‘top tier’ of leading transnational media corporations.

A significant step by HBO toward an ongoing commitment to high-end television production was its airing in 1983 of The Terry Fox Story, the first original feature film to be produced for premium cable (Mullen, 2003: 147) and the first of many that would earn the network critical acclaim. In different ways, HBO’s movies and comedies were both forms through which it could push against television’s content boundaries by allowing the inclusion of confronting, risqué or explicit material. Prior to the 1997 debut of its first complex serial Oz, HBO’s interest in alternative drama was evident in its commissioning of socially or politically conscious feature films; examples include the Oscar-winning Down and Out in America (1986) and acclaimed The Josephine Baker Story (1991).

HBO’s original programming took a new turn from 1985, when Michael Fuchs was appointed as CEO, under whose leadership another crucial senior appointment, Chris Albrecht to lead HBO’s original programming, soon followed. Yet, whereas Fuchs still regarded HBO movies as the main thrust for its high-end commissioning (Motavalli, 2002), it was Jeff Bewkes – a rising HBO executive by 1985 and its CEO from 1995 – who understood the importance of a more diverse commitment to original programming and argued for the necessary finance (ibid.). Underlining Albrecht’s influence on this change of direction, Motavalli observes that prior to his arrival at HBO “there were no series of note and few original movies” and that Albrecht “had the relationships that counted … [and thus the ability to] move the network to the next level in original fare” (ibid.).

Within a few years, Albrecht had started delivering the kind of creative ‘edge’ that HBO needed in original programming, his first commissions generating a critical buzz and becoming vital building blocks in communicating HBO’s point of difference. The starting point for Albrecht, in preparing to expand HBO’s original production slate, w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Rise of Complex Serial Drama on American Cable TV
• 2 ‘American Quality Drama’ and the Complex Serial
• 3 Complex Serials and Questions of Authorship
• 4 Complex Serials and Narrative Innovation
• 5 Aesthetics and Style in Complex Serial Drama
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index