The Biggest Trends In TV Dramas
What is the biggest trend in TV dramas?
We're in a time of change. In the genre area or in the franchise area, you only need to look at westerns and how they were eons ago, where there were certain very specific expectations of what the rules of a western story would be, and compare that to Deadwood, to see how far you can go with the reinterpretation of a traditional form. That's really what we're seeing in most of television today: certain categories are still being used - detective, medical, family, high school, to a lesser extent journalism, political shows - but we're seeing them all reinterpreted.
What are the lastest trends in TV dramas?
The great trends in drama today are partly technology driven. This is due to putting viewers in power with what they can see, when they can see it, and also because of the multiplying number of outlets; the hegemony by the three networks is greatly reduced and you get a trend where smaller groupings of interests can determine the success of a series for them. It's a change from the idea of broadcasting to narrowcasting. The other related trend is the increasing prevalence of entertainment material on the internet, so that television is not the only place to turn for comedy and drama, especially in the comedy area. The internet has become a prime force as network comedies have failed. All of these changes have made it possible to personalize your television viewing, and made it much more difficult to find hits of the mass quality that used to be prevalent on TV.
Why are more screenwriters writing for television?
Some screenwriters do uncredited rewrites. JJ Abrams does both. He's a co-creator of Lost, and there are many other names like that.
How are women's roles defined in TV drama?
There was a time when women could only be the Mom or the slut or the child. That's really not true anymore, though there are still some limitations like that. The issue is not whether there are now strong women in television because there are unquestionably. It's not just Buffy, who fought vampires, and it's not just the Jennifer from Alias, the character from Alias who also was physically tough, along with any number of other examples of physically strong women.
Did the onset of reality shows affect TV dramas?
Reality shows are the bane of existence for many writers, for some business reasons as well as creative reasons and programming reasons. From a business point of view, it's been a long, hard struggle to get the reality show writers covered by the Writers Guild and fairly compensated. Everybody who works in the business knows that those shows are not unscripted. They are scripted. There are scripts. You can see the scripts. People sit down and write them. The people on those shows are not anonymous guests; they are actors. These are scripted material shows. Reality shows have been a problem because they are low cost for the producers, which means that companies wanting to save money would bump off the air a show, a fine drama, where you really have to pay real money to the writers and the actors, and tell stories, in order to do a cheap reality show. So they're taking up time. That means there's less time to place another kind of show. You're just using up territory.
What did cable channels bring to the TV drama?
Cable channels brought possibilities to drama because they are free of some FCC regulations. The Federal Communications Commission regulates what can be used on the public airwaves, which covers such things as language and nudity. It ought to cover violence, but doesn't. To some degree, the FCC regulates subject areas. Cable, especially pay cable, is free of all those regulations. Because of that, it has invited creators to be free in imagining what people could say to each other, how they would interact, and what the real issues are for them. So it provided opportunity. Apart from the subject, the content, cable simply provided more outlets, and so more means just more opportunities to try stuff. Some of it is good; some less good.
How does Lifetime fit into the drama category?
Lifetime is a basic cable outlet like many others. They do series - they don't do many series, but they do some - and they don't have the budgets that some of the premium cable has, nor network budgets, but they're an outlet like any other. At one time, it was thought Lifetime would focus on stories for women. They kind of fell off that, and I understand they are getting back to it now. This certainly is a huge women's audience
How do HBO and Showtime fit into the drama category?
HBO and Showtime are trailblazers, HBO especially. They have this saying, "It's not TV, it's HBO", but it is TV. Both of them are not advertiser based, and because they're subscriber based rather than advertising, they're able to go ahead and do what pleases their core audience, rather than dumbing it down so that they don't offend.
In what time slot do dramas air?
The traditional time scheduling for prime time used to be that at 8:00 children were watching TV, so if they were hour dramas, they would be comedic, or fantasy, or heavily action oriented. But also other kinds of things air at 8:00, such as comedies, or game shows. As you go on through the evening and there are fewer children viewing, you get romantic shows, and some magazine shows, and now more and more some dramas also at 9:00. 10:00 has generally been the time for the sophisticated TV viewers: sophisticated material that would be of interest to adults. Sopranos aired at 10:00, for example. But now, with DVR, prime time just doesn't matter any more.
