Writing Hollywood

The Work and Professional Culture of Television Writers

Patricia F. Phalen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351788724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Writing Hollywood highlights the writing process in the production of television drama and comedy series in the U.S. The way writers do their jobs is heavily dependent not only on the demands of commercial business, but also on the uncertainties inherent in a writing career in Hollywood. Drawing on literature in the fields of Media Industry Studies and Occupational Culture, Writing Hollywood explains writers' efforts to control risk and survive in a constantly changing environment.

Using data from personal interviews and a six-week participant observation at a prime time drama, Dr. Phalen analyzes the relationships among writers in series television, describes the interactions between writers and studio/network executives, and explains how endogenous and exogenous pressures affect the occupational culture of the television writing profession.

1

Entertainment Media in the U.S.

It takes entertainment to “inform with delight.”

(Drama Executive Producer, M)

To understand the role of TV writers it is helpful to understand the organizations in which they work. Television production in Hollywood is a highly structured process that has developed over decades, to the point where every one of the hundreds of people who work on a series knows exactly what they are expected to do. In fact, the production of prime time dramas and comedies has been likened to a factory system in which each worker contributes his or her well-defined skill to the “product.” Current work routines and decision-making structures are highly path-dependent, reflecting the development of business strategies and the organization of work in earlier forms of media entertainment. This chapter summarizes the historical and present-day organization of the U.S. media industry, with specific reference to the role of writers.

From Live Entertainment to Film

Communication technologies that developed more than 100 years ago laid the groundwork for modern-day American media industries, from film to radio to television. For readers interested in detailed treatments of U.S. media history, several excellent books cover technological advances, the development of programming, and the growth of business structures (see, for example, Barnouw, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1990; Gomery, 2005, 2008; Sterling & Kitross, 2002). Here we can only cover some major milestones that defined, and re-defined, the entertainment business over the years.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, out-of-home, live performances shared the popular entertainment market with print publications like novels, magazines and comic books. Local theaters presented plays and vaudeville shows, and traveling circuses and wild west shows provided outdoor entertainment to mass audiences – one town at a time. However, as entrepreneurs developed the potential of film projection and broadcasting, popular entertainment underwent a major transformation that forever changed the theater-going experience and eventually brought “live” entertainment into the home.

Audiences first experienced film as a novelty. Nickelodeons allowed individuals to view clips of everyday events and brief, often quirky, performances. As projection techniques evolved, filmmakers produced short narratives and experimented with the creative possibilities of this new medium. Vaudeville and traveling shows incorporated films into their live performances as an added attraction, but the new medium soon became the main event. Eventually, theaters on the vaudeville circuit were transformed into film houses where audiences went to watch double features along with newsreels, cartoons and filmed miniseries.

The narrative potential of filmed entertainment continued to expand, alongside advances in camera and projection technologies. With these developments viewers could watch longer, more complex narratives – with title slides to make up for the lack of sound. Consumers became addicted to this new form of storytelling. Motion pictures were here to stay.

As this evolution took place, many stage performers and writers who made their living on the vaudeville circuit began to seek jobs in film. They brought their professional experience and they adapted their work routines to this new mode of entertainment.

In the 1920s and 1930s the U.S. filmmaking industry established itself, first in New York and then in Hollywood. In these early days, the job of creating films fell to directors, like D.W. Griffith, who controlled every aspect of production. They employed scenarists to develop general descriptions of the scenes, but as their title suggests, these writers had a somewhat minimal role in the production process. Directors often improvised storylines, character development, and entire scenes as they shot the film. With the establishment of the studio system in Hollywood, however, this free-wheeling mode of filmmaking became routinized within a hierarchical structure.

The businessmen who created the Hollywood studio system were Jewish immigrants who rose from poor backgrounds to become leaders in the new filmmaking industry. In An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1989), historian Neal Gabler describes the business conditions, personal rivalries and anti-Semitism that brought these men from the east coast to California to establish their studios. Once there, they developed an efficient factory-like system, controlling every aspect of feature film, from production in their own studios to distribution through their own pipelines to exhibition in their own theaters. Their employees, including writers, were under contract – they worked on whichever films they were assigned. This gave film workers a certain security but denied them professional freedom and mobility. The factory-like process was a source of frustration for those writers who wanted more creativity in their work.

The popularity of theatrical films – offered to audiences throughout the U.S. at prices most people could afford – made this new entertainment medium immensely profitable. Vertically integrated studios controlled production, distribution and exhibition. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s this system operated virtually unhindered … until the U.S. Department of Justice intervened and challenged the studios on antitrust grounds. The lawsuit put studio owners on notice that they could not maintain their tight grip on the industry. The case, U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures, et al., dragged on for several years until, in 1948, the studios agreed to divest of theater ownership. While this change did lessen their control in the film business, the major studios continued to have immense power in the industry because they still produced the lion’s share of films.

The next big challenge to studio power came with media entrepreneurs, like Lew Wasserman, who set about changing the contractual arrangements between studios and employees. Power slowly began to shift, as actors, writers, directors and others were finally able to reap the economic benefits of their increased popularity and success. They were no longer tied to the same studio for years – instead, they could choose to work on specific projects, and their guilds and unions negotiated for pay commensurate with their experience. For writers, this newly won freedom from long-term contracts proved to be a double-edged sword. They could decide which jobs they wanted to take, but they lost the security of a steady paycheck.

Talent agencies benefitted significantly from the new system. Through their soon-to-be celebrity agents, they started packaging deals, forcing studio producers to hire a roster of the agency’s clients to work on films. Producers could not, for example, hire only an A-list actor. If they wanted the actor, they had to fill other positions with people “suggested” by the agency, and the agency earned a percentage of every client’s salary.

Another important change to the studio system was the growth of independent production companies. Independents offered an alternative to working for the big studios – a more streamlined business structure and, often, more artistic freedom. Meanwhile, another entertainment medium was making inroads with American audiences: broadcasting.

Radio and Television Broadcasting

While film remained a popular source of entertainment, the concurrent development of radio broadcasting through the 1920s – and its ubiquitous adoption by households across the country – gave audiences an alternative source of information and diversion. Through this new medium, audiences could enjoy drama, comedy and variety shows without leaving the comfort of their own homes. They also did not have to incur the expense of traveling to theaters and paying for tickets. It is important to note, though, that the introduction of radio into the entertainment scene did not overshadow film. Going to the movies was still an event.

In 1927 the U.S. Congress created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) to regulate the fast-growing business of radio. As is the case today, a prospective station owner had to apply for a license to use the broadcast spectrum. The license covered a specific geographic location (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, Denver, etc.), and the number of licenses granted in any one location varied according to the size of the market. Stations applied for renewal of their licenses at the end of a specified number of years (which has varied over time) – and, as long as the station operated in the “public interest, convenience or necessity,” the FRC renewed the license.

Although the definition of public interest is vague, a major factor in determining broadcast license renewal has always been whether a radio station meets the needs of its local community. This goal of localism, as Napoli (2001) has pointed out, is still a difficult concept to define in U.S. communications policy. However, regardless of the exact definition each stakeholder uses, broadcasters have to, in some way, address the needs of their local audience.

From the start, the economic models of feature film and broadcasting differed substantially. While film profits came from ticket sales and distribution fees, radio and television broadcasters depended on advertising sales – both at the local and national levels. Local advertisers could buy time from broadcast stations to reach thousands of viewers in a specific market. Beginning in the 1920s, local radio stations had the option to affiliate with national networks. These networks paid stations to air popular programs – and the national advertising that came with them. By the early 1940s three major radio networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, claimed affiliates nationwide. Broadcast stations and networks both profited from this arrangement: stations gained variety shows, comedies and dramas they did not have the economic resources to produce on their own, and networks gained access to audiences they could only reach through federally licensed stations.

In 1934, Congress replaced the FRC with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate – along with other communication technologies – the new broadcast media. Its system of licensing carried over from radio to television – a television station is granted the right to broadcast on one frequency in a specific geographic market as long as it serves the public interest, convenience or necessity. From the start, television broadcasting in the U.S. operated as for-profit businesses, but, eventually, some spectrum allocations were reserved for educational (i.e., non-profit) use.

In the early days of radio and television, commercial sponsors (e.g., packaged goods companies) paid the production cost of programs, and advertising agencies produced them. The shows were live and often performed in front of a studio audience. Many of these entertainment series aired dozens of new episodes each season – in radio, as many as 39 programs. This was grueling work for writers. As one writer characterized the situation,

the autobiography of Fred Allen’s – he was a great radio personality, and his autobiography he titled Treadmill to Oblivion. And that’s what it feels like sometimes. The good news is your show got renewed. The bad news is your show got renewed. And it’s exhausting work.

(Drama Showrunner, M)

The sponsor’s advertising message was also produced live. Sometimes the ad was clearly separate from the entertainment content, but it could also be performed by the show’s actors – even on the same set.

This system of production was far from ideal. From the point of view of program producers, sponsors had too much control over program content. From the point of view of sponsors, rising production costs, especially for television, were making it inefficient for one sponsor to underwrite the entire cost of a program. As Meyers (2011) has argued, even the advertising agencies themselves began questioning the effectiveness of sales messages embedded in entertainment programs.

As these problems worsened, networks took over production from advertising agencies, and replaced the “one series-one sponsor” arrangement with multiple participating sponsorships. This meant that several different advertisers could buy time in the same program to promote their products. In this new system, advertisers paid only for the commercial time they purchased, and networks paid the cost of producing the programs. The change effectively shifted content decisions from advertiser to network. However, advertisers have always had some leverage over program content – whether by vetoing something that could potentially harm their brand, or by purchasing product placements within a program.

After World War II, television began to replace radio as the primary entertainment medium in U.S. households. Writers faced the challenge of adapting radio series to television and, at first, of writing just as many scripts for the new medium – 39 per season. Kraft Television Theater even aired 52 shows per year. Writers could re-purpose scripts that had been produced in different venues, but the work was still exhausting (Stempel, 1996). Over time, the number of episodes in any given series decreased, due in part to the substantially higher time and cost required for video production. Series moved from 39 episodes to 22; more recently, some series dropped to only 12 episodes per year.

Many programs that were successful in radio were also popular on television. Variety shows, dramas and comedies became instantly popular. The variety format featured famous entertainers, like Ed Sullivan, hosting a lineup of performances and interviews. The structure of early comedy and drama followed either studio performances in radio (e.g., Amos & Andy), or they were formatted as stage plays (e.g., Dark Shadows). However, as cameras became more mobile, shots became more varied and storytelling more complex, the production process – and the role of writers within it – continued to evolve.

Coincidental with the growth of television, movie theater attendance declined. At first, movie studios saw television as a threat, and refused to sell films to this new medium. However, some forward-thinking businessmen, like Lew Wasserman and Walt Disney, saw television as an opportunity (Epstein, 2006). They realized that TV could be a new distribution outlet – studios could gain additional income by licensing their films to stations or networks. In time, the studios came around to this way of thinking, and movies became a mainstay of television programming. Today, Hollywood studios are major producers of television series as well as feature films.

Television via Cable and Internet

Just as broadcasting challenged the older feature film business, the evolution of cable television challenged broadcasters. Until the 1970s, most U.S. homes could receive radio and television programs only over-the-air. In places where signal reception was poor, cables could carry the broadcast signal from an unobstructed place – a hill, for example – to households. In other words, reception via cable was seen as a way to boost and extend broadcast signals.

Very few people recognized the disruptive potential of this new mode of delivery for news and entertainment. Even when cable entrepreneurs began setting up systems to bring additional signals to homes and started charging subscription fees to users, broadcasters and others still thought of cable systems as boosters for popular over-the-air television signals. In time, cable owners started to offer new channels for locally produced programs, side by side with channels carrying local broadcast stations. Cable was still a weak competitor, however. Subscriptions grew very slowly – a function of the small number of markets that were wired, and the lack of good programming to justify the investment. Besides, locally produced programs fell far short of the quality that audiences had come to expect from broadcasters. Nevertheless, cable television was about to precipitate a revolutionary change in American television.

By the 1980s and 1990s this new business was gaining traction with audiences. Cities across the country had awarded cable franchises to local cable systems, so the number of homes with access to the service was steadily increasing. A major technological breakthrough – satellite transmission – made it possible for new cable networks to efficiently distribute content to cable systems nationwide. Premium cable networks, like HBO and Showtime, offered their programs for a monthly subscriber fee. Other networks, like ESPN, became part of cable subscribers’ basic package. They charged a fee to the local cable system based on the system’s total number of subscribers and, as more cable systems signed on, these networks could reach an audience nearly as large as their broadcast counterparts.

Initially, cable could not compete head-on with broadcasters for advertising revenue. Broadcast stations and networks had developed an efficient advertising sales system that advertisers and their agencies understood very well. Cable networks had to invest in developing their own sales force and marketing strategies. They also had to educate ad agency media planners – who were used to seeing very high ratings for broadcast television – on the benefits of buying time on lesser-rated cable networks.

Local cable systems had even higher obstacles to overcome than cable networks. Their technology did not allow for the insertion of local advertisements, so they could not compete with broadcast stations for local ad revenue. Once the technology caught up with the possibilities though, cable systems could sell local ads that could be inserted into increasingly popular network shows. Cable was not just for boosting signals anymore. In time, advertisers had the choice to buy time on broadcast or cable, both at the national and the local levels. This gave cable networks two sources of revenue: subscriptions and advertisin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Entertainment Media in the U.S.
• 2. Writing for TV
• 3. Showrunners: Where the Buck Stops
• 4. The Writers’ Room
• 5. Occupational Culture
• 6. Managed Creativity: It’s a Weird Way to Create
• 7. Political Spaces: There Are No Rules, but You Have to Follow Every One
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index