There’s a reason the most successful night of primetime used to be branded “Must See TV.”
In the late s, NBC’S “ER” would attract more than million viewers a week in its Thursday, p.m., time slot. At its peak, the medical drama came close to commanding a share — meaning that % of people watching TV in that hour were tuned in to the Warner Bros. Television series.
Today, such an accomplishment is beyond the reach of any TV program short of the Super Bowl. Viewers now watch TV in very different ways than they did years ago, and streaming has ushered in an era of television that comes with shorter episode orders, high-wattage A-list talent and pricey production values. For nearly a decade, the traditions of old-fashioned linear TV have paled by comparison to the big-budget, commercial-free fare offered by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and others.
“When a lot of the streamers began, it was about getting attention to get people to sign up,” says producer John Wells, the creator of “ER.” “So you were doing things that would draw people away from other services — very large, star-driven pieces. These are wonderful programs, and they’ve been wonderful for the industry.”
The recent “Peak TV” age generated some of the best television in history. But because of cost cutting over the past months, program formats that were once seen as vestiges of the pre-streaming era are making a solid comeback — on streamers.
It makes sense: TV’S old guard has continued to make the kind of shows that viewers in the U.S. really like to watch. Newcomer “Tracker” is a bona fide hit for CBS, while the “NCIS,” “FBI,” “One Chicago” and “Law & Order” franchises remain pop culture juggernauts. It might not be anymore, but some of what fueled the business back then is still relevant. Think procedural dramas that have more than episodes per season, multi-camera sitcoms filmed inexpensively like stage plays and more consistent timetables for season premieres and finales. Turns out, plenty of viewers crave familiarity when surfing for what to watch.
So as advertisers, network executives and talent head to New York’s annual network upfronts presentations this week, they’re encountering something unexpected: The streamers that had been quick to destroy the old network TV formula are now looking to emulate it.
That includes embracing commercials, which is why outlets like Netflix and Prime Video will be present at upfronts week, a four-day marathon in which the largest networks make glitzy presentations to advertisers at venues like Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Streamers have joined the fray, doing exactly what the Big Four networks have done for decades: tout their wares to the advertising buyers who spend billions of dollars in TV spots every year.
Some of the new programming the streamers will be showcasing looks a lot like the fare that has fueled the broadcast lineups since the dawn of TV. Viewers still love the kind of “appointment TV” they binged on linear decades ago, which is why even in the era of prestige TV, some of the most-watched shows on streaming come directly from broadcast: “NCIS,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Friends” and “The Office.” Then there’s the -year-old basic cable show that destroyed everything in its wake on Netflix last year, “Suits.”
Those are TV shows — not six-episode dramas with pricey movie icons and budget-busting effects. They are the shows that have driven this business since its infancy: hit programs with staying power, with enough episodes to build a library of -plus episodes that generations of viewers can continue to enjoy.
After several years of spending big to establish their businesses, the streamers haven’t been able to keep that model sustainable. Those big-ticket, Emmy-baiting, high-end shows aren’t going away, of course. But they’re now being balanced with procedurals and sitcoms that wouldn’t look out of place on a broadcaster and can stick around a lot longer than three seasons consisting of eight episodes apiece.
“I think that’s a healthy shift,” says Warner Bros. Television Group chairman and CEO Channing Dungey, who has been seeing more interest in broadcast staples like family dramas and “hard funny” sitcoms — as opposed to dramedies — from streamers. “What’s exciting right now is that there’s a little bit of room for everything. There’s definitely an appetite for some of the slightly more traditional storytelling. People are looking at proceduralsin the streaming space in ways that they weren’t before.”
Peter Friedlander, head of U.S. and Canada scripted series at Netflix, argues that these types of shows never went away — we’ve just been more focused on their prestige entries. “There’s been a really exciting expansion of what you can do on television, and I do think that’s the result of the streaming era,” he says. “I think we’ll always have traditional television storytelling, but it’s been expanded. Balance is important.”
From a business perspective, streamers have also realized that while long-running shows that they’ve acquired from broadcast and cable TV can keep some of their subscribers happy, it would be smart to bring in their own homegrown traditional series as a good way to stop the subscriber churn. And those heftier orders don’t need to break the bank.
JJohn Wells is just the producer to bring the procedural drama format into a new era. He and fellow “ER” vet Scott Gemmill are taking what they did years ago for broadcast and updating it for the streaming age with their upcoming series “The Pitt.” Produced through Warner Bros. TV, “The Pitt” is a medical procedural starring “ER” alum Noah Wyle, and has been picked up for episodes by Max. The show has been built to make financial sense, with no box office titan demanding millions of dollars an episode and no outlandish price tag. The show’s budget clocks in at around $ million an episode — a steal by the standards of recent years.
“It’s an experiment, to some extent,” says Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content. “But if anybody knows how to construct a fairly priced drama that’s well done and gripping, it’s John Wells. The thought was, let’s try episodes and see. Does that keep people engaged for weeks? If you do, that’s a big win.”
Bloys makes no effort to hide the obvious — Wells’ track record of delivering high-end drama on a budget was a selling point for “The Pitt.”
“It’s not $ million an episode with huge special effects or anything like that,” Bloys says. “There are ways to produce a show for a budget that are still compelling and interesting and fun — and particularly the way that John and Scott will do it. Those skills were born out of the days of network television, when you’re doing to episodes a year.”
And more of these linear-like shows are in the works. Warner Bros. TV is also behind a multi-camera sitcom from Chuck Lorre starring stand-up comedian Leanne Morgan, which has been picked up for ¡ episodes at Netflix. Netflix also just ordered its first-ever medical drama procedural, “Pulse.”
“I think what’s happening is a realization that to keep people signed up and to reduce churn, you need shows that audiences get connected to, that show up in a timely fashion or are on long enough the consumer feels that they need to continue to subscribe,” Wells says.
As a storyteller, Wells relishes the larger canvas to tell longer stories about characters’ lives. “I do think there’s a real appetite for that,” he says. “Audiences would like to see those shows, at the quality levels that they expect from a streaming service. And doing that for more episodes certainly is part of the financial arithmetic that makes it valuable for everybody.”
Bloys stresses that just like “ER” back in the day, “The Pitt” is not a medical soap. That’s part of what drew Wells to develop “The Pitt” — that he could take advantage of the freer content restrictions in streaming and lean into the very hard realities of life in an emergency room.
“You don’t have the same kind of broadcast standards that you have to meet,” he says. “One of the things that we got excited about with ‘The Pitt’ is we could go back into telling medical stories that look like what really happens in the hospital and the way in which people interact with the health care system.”
And the longer seasons allow a producer like Wells to amortize the cost of production, lowering episodic costs.
“If you’re trying to be fiscally responsible, the more episodes you have, the better off you are,” notes Dungey. “But it’s more than that: It’s building a library and building that relationship that the audience wants to have with those characters. Our hope here is that over the course of episodes — which is double the amount of most streaming shows these days — by the time you get to the end of that season, the audience feels connected to and familiar with these characters, and anxious for the second season to come.”