However, this year came with a new brand of tea leaves, brought on by a significant change: whereas past years have seen winners determined by a limited blue-ribbon panel of voters in a given peer group, this year the voting was opened up to all members of said groups, meaning the voting pool increased exponentially. Reporting speculated that this could dramatically alter the winners, skewing toward populist series and diminishing the impact of the episode submissions that were typically considered crucial variables in the blue-ribbon panels’ decisions.

Accordingly, this year’s predictions narrative had more weight than usual, pushing those who were following the story to see each early win as a marker of a given narrative. And it didn’t take long for such a narrative to emerge, even if I joked about it being premature when I called it early on: HBO swept through the broadcast like the behemoth it once was, laying waste to numerous records in the process. Game of Thrones shattered the record for most wins by a series in a single year well before it won for Outstanding Drama Series, and Veep won three awards—including the fourth consecutive win for Julia Louis-Dreyfus and second for Tony Hale—before it emerged to dethrone Modern Family and take HBO’s second-ever win for Outstanding Comedy Series. Combine with Olive Kitteridge’s near-sweep of the Limited Series category—losing only Supporting Actress—and you have the most dominant performance for a single channel or network in recent Emmys history. It’s the first time that a single channel has taken home the TV Movie (Bessie), Limited Series (or Miniseries), Drama, and Comedy awards in the same year since the TV Movie category was added in 1980.

There are a large number of conclusions we could make based on this. We could discuss how the opening up of the voting pool privileged a show like Game of Thrones that has both large viewership and strength in the creative arts categories whose voters were previously unlikely to vote in the program awards. We might ask if the accessibility of HBO programming—both through elaborate screener DVD boxes sent to voters and through the ease of HBO Go/HBO Now—makes it more likely that voters have seen shows on the channel, versus some of the competition. We can ponder how the potential dilution of submitted episodes’ importance to the process privileged past winners and nominees with whom voters were familiar (thus giving Veep an advantage over newcomer Transparent, which won Lead Actor and Directing Emmys for Amazon Studios).

And yet here’s the thing about awards: we’ll never know. Although the social media consensus on my feed seems to be that Game of Thrones would have been more deserving in earlier seasons, or that Transparent was breaking more ground in comedy than Veep’s political satire, there’s every possibility Emmy voters felt Game of Thrones had its strongest year yet and Transparent was a drama masquerading as a comedy and dragged down by Maura’s unlikeable children. It becomes easy to forget in efforts to “solve” the Emmy voting process by turning it into an objective process that it is an inherently subjective one. And while I am an advocate for contextualizing the specific subjectivities that shape each year’s winners lest we accept the prestige they’ve come to represent as an asterisk-free marker of television greatness, this year’s awards reminded me and everyone else who follows the Emmys too closely that there will never be evidence to support any of our conclusions. We will never know exactly why a given series or performer or writer or director won an Emmy award. It is beyond our reach.

And yet lest the above read as an outright rejection of Emmys narratives, this was nonetheless a night that reinforced how the swirling subjectivity of industry awards can transform such that objective consensus emerges. Fitting given the night’s controversial spoiler-laden montage of series finales—which would’ve been harmless with fewer climactic moments chosen in editing—this was a night where two actors had their last chance to win an Emmy for a role that will define their career. And whereas Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler had her chance swept away by the HBO tide, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm emerged victorious, winning his first Emmy—and the first acting Emmy for any actor on the AMC series, inconceivably—and earning a standing ovation in the process.

Technically, that win inspires just as many questions. Had the tape system and limited voting pools held an often-reprehensible character back in previous years? Did all those HBO-happy voters feel about The Newsroom the way I felt about The Newsroom? And yet those questions don’t matter as much when the victory feels just, as was also the case when Viola Davis—the clear standout of the uneven How To Get Away With Murder—took to the stage after winning Lead Actress in a Drama Series and spoke eloquently and righteously about the struggle facing actresses of color when you don’t see people like you standing on that stage winning Emmys. It doesn’t matter if this new voting system was responsible for Davis’ win, because it was both a deserving performance—although there’s that subjectivity again—and because it represents a small step toward addressing the Academy’s longstanding struggle with diversity.

You could argue that “it doesn’t matter” describes the whole evening, and not just the various procedures that preceded it: it is very possible to overstate the importance of the Emmy Awards, as HBO publicity will helpfully—if deservedly—demonstrate over the next 24-72 hours. But Davis’ win stands out as an example of an Emmys moment that unquestionably matters, and pushes a deeper consideration into not simply who wins Emmys, but how they win them, and how that remains an area where greater work in diversity and representation can and should be explored by the Television Academy. And perhaps here we can make a distinction, then: it may be impossible to safely predict the Emmys, but it’s very possible to investigate that process with a critical eye, one that hopefully with move beyond procedures to the politics that underlie them in the years that follow.

UnREAL, Unwatched

Myles McNUTT, Old Dominion University: It seems important to acknowledge in any conversation about an original scripted cable drama in the contemporary moment that, if it’s not The Walking Dead, chances are very few people are watching it. In the case of UnREAL, this is particularly true: the ratings have not been good, despite Lifetime going out of their way to give the first four episodes available to binge for free after the premiere.

That UnREAL lives to see a second season is, itself, not a huge surprise: it’s one of the first Lifetime dramas produced in-house, the critical acclaim gives them a foothold to brand rearticulation, and the show’s strengths give them a chance to woo the Hollywood Foreign Press Association into some valuable Golden Globes attention. A second season is the kind of calculated risk that the primary profit participant in a TV drama tends to take: if the show streams well, and if critical acclaim helps international sales, and if live viewership manages to tick upward, there’s a chance this turns into a hit.

UnREAL says a lot about the reality TV industry as a text, but it also says a lot about cable branding, discourses of quality, and metrics of success as a product of the television industry more broadly. How far is Lifetime willing to hold onto a show like UnREAL for theoretical value to its brand if no one is watching? It’s easy to look at the ways that UnREAL helps Lifetime’s cause, expanding its brand to audiences that may have previously dismissed it. But at what point do they stop touting the “viewership across platforms” statistic—still mostly meaningless to advertisers—and give up if they fail to see tangible improvement?

Phillip Maciak, Louisiana State University: If I say Lena Dunham’s name one more time she’ll appear, right? I’m not invested in any qualitative comparisons between Girls and UnREAL, but it’s hard not to notice that the numbers UnREAL is sporting right now that are causing us so much concern are very similar to the numbers Girls has been pulling for four seasons. There are differences in streaming platforms, OnDemand numbers, etc, but it seems like we’ve got yet another water-cooler favorite of the critterati taking up proportionally more space in arts and culture verticals than its viewership would seem to warrant. As you mentioned before, though, Myles, this show is radically off-brand for Lifetime. Or, at least it’s pushing hard at the edges of the brand. Is it possible, do we think, that UnREAL‘s financial success might mean less than its perceived critical success for the network? In other words, is it more important for UnREAL to lure viewers or for UnREAL‘s critical success to lure writers to produce a different kind of content for Lifetime?

Myles: After I wrote my response, FX’s John Landgraf suggested they follow a “2 out of 3” model for renewing their shows: FX, “Experts,” and viewers (or ratings, if we prefer) all get a vote, and if it gets 2 out of 3, it’s getting renewed. It’s far from an easy calculus, but it gives you an example of how a basic cable channel with experience in programming sees that uneasy mix of needing to compete on a branding level with premium channels but also have to be more aware of the number of people watching (versus simply the type of people watching, which serves HBO well in the case of Girls).

The issue with drawing a comparison between Girls and UnREAL, though, is that I’m pretty sure we—as in academics/critics/journalists—are the only people talking about UnREAL. This isn’t an actual watercooler show: it’s a watercooler show in the corners of the internet we frequent, and a complete non-entity everywhere else even despite Lifetime’s pretty significant efforts to get it out there. While it certainly has a bit more buzz than something like Terriers—which is an historical example of FX overriding their “2 of 3” model—it still strikes me as something that has had very minimal “cultural impact” once we move beyond these circles.

Jason Mittell, Middlebury College: One series that UnREAL reminds me of a lot in a number of ways is The Joe Schmo Show, which is one of my favorite unheralded television programs of the century. Joe Schmo also provides a critical take on reality TV, albeit through the “reality hoax” mode rather than scripted drama, and the amazing second season offered a similarly biting critique of The Bachelor (seriously, if you haven’t watched Joe Schmo Show 2, it’s dirt cheap on Amazon and I promise you won’t regret it!). Joe Schmo aired on Spike TV, Lifetime’s binary counterpart branded as “The First Network for Men” (apparently, besides all the other ones…). Both programs simultaneously fit with and resist their home channel’s brand identity—although Joe Schmo did often include events with bikini models or porn stars to pander to the assumed Spike audience, it was far more critical than celebratory of the bro lifestyle. Likewise, UnREAL seems to be addressing a much different type of viewer (or at least, mode of viewing) than Dance Moms or Bring It! This makes me wonder if UnREAL becoming a hit (if it builds a following once the first season is available on streaming and attracts attention through awards and year-end accolades) might actually be a danger to Lifetime’s brand—after all, the temptation to go upscale and legit might be too tempting for parent company A&E, whose various networks have all struggled to find their equivalent of The Shield or Mad Men that might give them a foothold into the quality brand.

Kristen Warner, University of Alabama: I wonder if a better parallel between series trying to push the edges of their current brand is UnReal and USA’s Mr. Robot? Both shows push their respective networks into darker content while simultaneously targeting different demographics than they’ve been able to capture previously. Is Mr. Robot, despite its premiere at a film festival, its tie to Anonymous Content and ultimately to David Fincher, and its (annoyingly heavy) borrowing of style from high brow auteurs, similarly unwatched?

Myles: It’s drawing close to twice as many viewers as UnREAL, but compared to what USA used to draw in the era of Monk, no one is watching Mr. Robot.

Kristen: Interesting. So do its similarities keep it as a potential comparison?

Myles: I think both offer a case study in how much discursive framing of “success” is becoming a creative exercise in the television industry right now—whether it’s USA picking up Mr. Robot before its premiere or Lifetime releasing all four episodes of UnREAL online, they’re asking us to see a show as successful so as to attain brand value from that. And there’s a point at which the “Emperor’s New Clothes” model of brand development starts to fall apart.

Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame: One of my mom’s must-see shows is Devious Maids, which airs before UnREAL on Lifetime’s schedule. On a recent family vacation, I tried to convince her to watch UnREAL with me, but she showed no interest and seemed to not even know what it was, despite the fact promos for it surely aired during Devious Maids (maybe she’s watching on a DVR and fast-forwarding through the ad breaks—the challenge of marketing a series/channel lineup today). I now regret not digging deeper into her reluctance, especially given that she’s the one who first instilled a love of melodrama and soap opera in me. But this example would seem to affirm that UnREAL is outside of Lifetime’s typical purview. My mom doesn’t like it when her soaps get too “real” or violent (she stopped watching General Hospital because of the mob stuff, as sanitized as it is there compared to, say, The Sopranos). And UnREAL might look too intense to her. She also doesn’t really watch reality TV, so that could be another reason it wouldn’t hook her. Finally, I don’t watch Devious Maids, but I do know that it has “Erica Kane” (perhaps my mom’s favorite character/actress of any medium ever), plus, putting together the title with the cast list, I presume it features Latinas as maids, so it might stay within my mom’s acceptable range of racial representations too. Which leads to another topic I’d like to see discussed:

UnREAL and Race

Christine: And here I gratuitously invite Kristen to chime in, because she has expressed on social media such insightful readings of the show and of reality TV from a racial perspective, and I want to hear more. I’ve found the racial critique UnREAL offers to be among its most revealing aspects, perhaps because the gender critiques are more familiar to me, so the deconstruction of the rigged racial game in reality TV, both on screen and (especially) offscreen, feels even more revelatory.

Kristen: Oh Chris, where to begin? Regarding its take on industry, in many ways UnREAL proves that with mild exception (and the exceptions in the instance of this series fail), the film and television industry really reproduces itself in the image of those who run it: i.e., white men and women. There’s very clearly three generations of white lady producers (and I mostly predicted that all three would be producers prior to the finale so where’s my ribbon) who all are at different phases of the same career. And while these white women face very real and painful oppressions, I am still gobsmacked that no one has noticed how, it is the certainty of whiteness that allows them to push through those constraints (at all kinds of costs) and succeed.

Nevertheless, the exceptions like Shia and Jay don’t. Also at all kinds of costs—and firings. So this little micro model is useful in thinking about the difficulties that folks of color face in breaking into industry work while getting close enough to see the next level—even trying to create opportunities for themselves at the cost of some moral and legal scruples—but still unable to make it because they aren’t in the image of the person in charge. What’s more, thinking more about Shia, in an interview Sarah Gertrude Shapiro talked about how she feels sympathy for Shia because she’s been misunderstood: “she just wants to be loved.” “She’s not as pretty or whatever.” Besides the obvious yet unintentional infantilization of that woman of color that quote implies (who to be honest I was glad to see go as that character was far too on the nose for my liking—her strategies negotiating her precarity didn’t prove to me she realized she was living that precarious life—a pitfall of blindcasting I would argue), Shapiro didn’t seem to realize she played into the very tropes that her show within the show tried so hard to bust up from the very beginning. Simply put there’s no future for Shia. We knew this going in. Just like we know there’s no future for Shamequa or Athena.

Last point: While UnREAL is so astute about explicitly stating what people REALLY say about racialized bodies (the first five minutes of the pilot, the scene between Jay and the two black competitors, the moment where Adam’s grandmother tells him they don’t marry the brown people), there’s still huge blind spots among their own reflexivity at the level of production.

Phil: Yes to all of this. And, just to tie in Kristen’s comments with earlier discussions of labor and competence, it’s interesting (troubling) to me how Shia was presented, from the very first episode, as the kind of inverse of Rachel. So much is made of Rachel’s genius as a producer for this show, but we learn that Rachel’s special by repeatedly seeing how Shia isn’t. Seeing Shia struggle is how we understand the grotesque artistry of what Rachel and Quinn do. Rachel has a natural facility with manipulation; Shia’s attempts are forced and awkward. Rachel operates precisely and responsibly, cutting just enough to hurt but not enough to kill the patient; Shia operates sloppily and irresponsibly, blood spraying everywhere, corpses piling up. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a compliment to say that Shia isn’t quite the virtuosic sociopath that Rachel is, but, within the economy of the show, it means she’s less worthy of everyone’s time. (Literally so, inasmuch as she disappears from the series.) In any case, it’s curious not only that one of the show’s few people of color is marginalized but that we’re supposed to see that marginalization as deserved. Shia isn’t allowed into the structuring female mentorship relationship at the center of this show, and the show is very clear that it’s because Shia’s missing something innate that Quinn and Rachel have.

Jason: One thing I struggle with is how much this portrayal of the perpetuation of white success within the industry is presented as object of critique, the simple reality of how it works, and/or an unquestioned normalization. I want to believe the former is the dominant tone, and that they chose to make the racial critique overt in the production of Everlasting but more subtle in the production of UnREAL. After all, the three producers are explicitly pitted against each other in a contest. The failure of ethnically-unmarked-but-nonwhite Shia leads to her erasure from the cast, just as most of the non-white contestants disappear once suitor Adam has not found anything noteworthy to hold onto; likewise, Jay is sent packing once both shows have no need of the “black bitch.” Madison’s unexpected (to everyone but Kristen!) elevation mirrors the last-minute return of Britney to the cast, both elevated by Chet in reward for their oral services, highlighting that “success” is open to white women willing to leverage their sexuality. UnREAL highlights the role of sex as career advancement (including one of my favorite lines of Chet’s utter sleezeballery—in defending his Madison dalliance to Quinn, his exasperated explanation is “she’s a mouth!”), but leaves the racial dimension unspoken. I noticed the parallels, and took it as a subtle commentary to avoid on-the-nose gesturing, rather than unquestioned normalization, but I grant that when it comes to such matters of calling out white privilege, subtlety is dangerous.

Kristen: It’s very dangerous, Jason. So much so that subtlety to most untrained eyes who never see the precarity of intersectional identity in industry labor called out explicitly—unless it’s by racialized bodies who they can then characterize as being too sensitive or overly cautious—will be able to ignore it or just miss it completely. And, listen, on a show that examines how white women explicitly navigate the labor game through whatever strategies they can maneuver, it’s not a difficult thing to ask that they be explicit about the fact that it’s THEM who keep and maintain power because it’s their “mouths” that are desired. The Latina contestant is probably the closest voice to one who acknowledges how stuck she is between the trope she fulfills and the fact that she knows she has to play that trope in order to get to where she wants to be. That is most certainly a labor issue and it is handled well. But it reveals, similar to the conversation Jay has with Athena and Shamiqua, Shapiro’s comfort discussing race, gender, and talent as labor but not race, gender, gatekeepers, and labor. And that is unfortunate because as Phillip mentioned earlier, if we do not signal for the fact that Shia is a woman of color in an industry where she is always already at the margins, how do we understand her utter failures and Rachel’s inate “know-how” as anything outside of the traditional binaries of racial competencies? This show ain’t subtle about shit so I can’t buy that it’s taking a quiet tack on the race stuff. It’s more likely that its writers just missed it on that front in the service of diversity without considering for the problems that may occur or the reinforcement of the status quo they’ve maintained (which, I mean, it’s true, so…).

Chris: I was going to reply to Jason’s comment with something along the lines that none of the other critiques made by the show are subtle, which makes me question if they’d make the racial labor critique subtle, but Kristen takes care of that just fine with “This show ain’t subtle about shit.”

Jason: Okay, I’ll grant that my reading of the parallels between producers and contestants as a veiled racial critique is overly generous. And “This show ain’t subtle about shit” is as good as a conclusion as we’re going to find!

Thanks to everyone for participating in, and reading, this conversation! Continue on in the comments…

With news that HBO has negotiated a five-year deal with Sesame Workshop to broadcast Sesame Street first, and to embargo new episodes elsewhere for nine months (which would then be given free to PBS), the prospective scenarios and jokes write themselves. One envisions a new segment called You Know Nothing, John Snow. A David Milch-penned Ian McShane will now voice Oscar the Grouch, joined by his new apprentice Reek. Lena Dunham will take over Abby Cadabby’s Flying Fairy School, with comically awkward full frontal nudity from all the fairies. We’ve probably all heard that Maria is leaving Sesame Street after 44 years, but rumors have it that she does so in a gruesome “Blue Wedding” scene involving a starving Cookie Monster. Or perhaps she leaves (with Elmo, let’s hope) in a second Sudden Departure in Season 2 of The Leftovers. Today’s word is “guilt,” as introduced by special guest star Robert Durst. Bert and Ernie welcome new roommates Patrick and Frankie. Grover and Big Bird join the guys at Pied Piper. And so forth (such jokes remind me of this classic video).

But what are we to make of the deal?

Many are justifiably concerned about access for those without HBO. Sesame Street began with dreams of closing an achievement gap between middle class kids beginning school with good pre-K education, and working class kids without any such education. Thus, moving the show to the emperor of pay cable raises all sorts of concerns. See here for a smart articulation of these concerns. That said, it’s unclear as of yet how much access will be affected: if all kids can still watch later, will Sesame’s planned curriculum work at a discount nine months on? Will Sesame Workshop’s promise to produce more episodes ultimately be a net positive? Watch this space.

I’ve also heard plenty of concern being voiced about what this will do to content (see the jokes above). This concern, I believe, is unwarranted. Sure, corporate ownership affects texts, but Sesame Street isn’t a new show trying to find its feet: it’s the most successful, beloved text in American TV history. It has earned the privilege to call its own shots, and surely any deal keeps that agency alive. For what it’s worth, too, HBO doesn’t have ads, whereas PBS does (oh, okay, they’re “sponsors”), so it will actually be easier to watch Sesame Street without any ads on HBO than on PBS. HBO could undoubtedly find ways to screw the show up, but I find this highly unlikely, and if they try, surely Sesame could pack up and go elsewhere.

What worries me most is what this means for PBS, and for its other kids shows. Sesame Workshop and (before his death in 2003) Fred Rogers always provided PBS with its very best rhetorical defense, as evident when Mitt Romney’s 2012 suggestion that he’d cut PBS’ funding was popularly translated as Mitt stupidly wanting to “kill Big Bird” (see below). The GOP has long hated PBS, and regrets every tax dollar that goes to it instead of buying nuclear submarines. But they’ve never quite been able to break through the dam that is the public’s love and respect for Big Bird and friends. The dam is now gone. It is now oh-so-easy for a Republican Congress to say, “see, commercial television makes Sesame possible. Game over.” In such a scenario, Sesame Street lives on. But what’s downstream from the dam is everything else on PBS, especially all of its other non-tentpole children’s programming.

I want to temper that concern somewhat, though. As Laurie Ouellette’s brilliant Viewers Like You? does, we can and should criticize PBS from the left, not just from the right. PBS has regularly understood its remit to play programming that commercial television won’t play as a command instead to go even more highbrow, not to serve those consumers and citizens eschewed by advertiser-led programming. Along the way, it’s taken on ads, and often closely resembles that which it was meant to counter-program. When your most prominent non-kids show is a wet dream of British aristocracy sponsored by Viking River Cruises (whose website is currently proud of a “deal” that “only” costs $3762 per person, assuming double occupancy) and Ralph Lauren, your claim to carry the banner of the masses is laughable. PBS has long aspired to be HBO (even before there was an HBO!), so in some senses this custody agreement over Sesame Street shouldn’t seem so odd.

PBS’s greatest offering to American society has come from its kids programming, though, so the concern is still valid, the threat still real. Even PBS’ worst kids shows aspire to educational status. The joke that is “E/I” labeling on commercial television, wherein channels can say that anything with a happy ending is “educational” because “it teaches good morals,” is so deeply cynical, yet I’ve never found PBS cynical in this regard.

Admittedly, PBS’ educational programming isn’t the only game in town. Amazon is doing some great things, with Tumble Leaf and Annedroids, even Creative Galaxy, impressing me considerably. I was also very proud to be part of the Peabody Award jury that acknowledged Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins for its own work. So I don’t want to overstate: even if Sesame Workshop’s deal with HBO breaks the dam, not every good, educational, important kid’s show stands to be destroyed if PBS disappears or is further commercialized. There are enough inhabitants below that dam, though, that it’s reason to worry.

It’s easy, then, to get pissed off at Sesame Workshop for this move. Personally, though, I’m inclined to say that after all they’ve done for families with televisions around the world, and after being the dam that held back the GOP’s attack on PBS for so long, it’s hard to argue that they owe us even more. They earned a right to be selfish, to think about how they – not children’s educational programming or public broadcasting writ large – will remain afloat. If there’s someone to be angry at, therefore, it’s still (1) the GOP for forcing this hand; (2) PBS for never truly being what they should’ve been in the first place, and thus for requiring Sesame Workshop and Fred Rogers to protect them from successive rounds of attacks on their funding; and (3) generations of PBS’ well-to-do “viewers like you” for demanding more British period dramas instead of realizing the channel was never meant to be there to satisfy their bourgeois needs.

A final thought on the deal, though, is about what this means for HBO. The jokes with which I began are so easy to pen because HBO’s brand identity and Sesame Street have seemed so distant from each other. HBO has put a lot of time and money into presenting themselves as the choice of discerning upper middle class adults. Indeed, a recent set of ads for HBO GO were clearly pitched at youth who thought themselves old enough for HBO’s parade of violence, sex, and profanity, and at parents hip and wise enough to realize that their kids weren’t kids any more. Thus, as much as the public discussion of this move has understandably focused on what the deal means for Sesame Street and for PBS, it’s interesting to consider this as a major shift in strategy for HBO. With the advent of HBO Now, HBO clearly has aspirations to become a premier streaming service. Netflix has its deal with Disney that will soon reap its greatest rewards; Amazon has its impressive slate of kids shows; and HBO has often had nothing remotely worthwhile for kids (Fraggle Rock ended 28 years ago). So for them to go out and buy the most famous kids show ever sends a loud message that they don’t just want to be for adults anymore. It may tell us that HBO has decided that being a streaming service heavyweight requires kids programming. Perhaps streaming services are the future and lifeblood of kid’s television; indeed, between this deal and Amazon’s interest in creating yet more high quality kids shows, clearly something is going on. But we should still worry about the coming flood that might wash away a great deal of what was PBS at its very best.

Hagai Levi on the cover of Haaretz weekly magazine, with the accompanying headline, “Curse of Success” (Leora Hadas’ translation).

Post by Leora Hadas, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor is Leora Hadas, PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies in our department, a PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies in our department who begins teaching film and television in the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University in China in January 2016. 

The multiple-award-winning The Affair (Showtime, 2014–), now airing in the UK, has once again placed Israeli television on the global stage, although most viewers may never know it. The series was co-created by Israeli writer-director Hagai Levi, previously responsible for Be’Tipul/In Treatment (HBO, 2008-2010). The show’s purchase and adaptation by the major cable channel has since become a model for success to which creators throughout the Israeli television industry aspire. Israeli television shows and formats are enjoying a remarkable reception not only in the United States, but across the globe. Dramas such as In Treatment and Homeland (Showtime, 2011–), as well as successful reality television formats such as Rising Star (HaKokhav HaBa), have led to the New York Times calling Israel “a kind of global entrepôt for creative TV.”

The reach of the Israeli television industry is disproportionate to its tiny size and relative youth, but according to Georgia State University’s Sharon Shahaf, originates in just these qualities. Small budgets force a focus on storytelling and characterization, and an inexperienced industry has more leeway for personal and innovative creativity. Israeli dramas seldom employ a writing team, and are often written entirely by their creators. The convergence of creator and head writer, while fraying in the U.S., adds to the status of Israeli drama as essentially personal form of storytelling. As chief executive of Keshet Broadcasting Avi Nir says, “Israeli dramas are very much driven by auteurs, by people who have their own unique story and own unique voice to tell it.” Yet Levi left the Showtime production of The Affair, citing creative differences, telling Israeli news site Ynet that the show “started out as art, and there was a specific moment when I started to recognize that it was moving away from that.”

Title card from Israeli TV series Fauda. The show’s tagline is “In this war, everything’s personal.”

Levi’s experience in the transition between Tel Aviv and Hollywood reveals the contradictory position of scripted-series creators in Israeli television. Like their U.S. counterparts, creators in Israel are cultural legitimators, whose presence validates their shows as works of art and personal vision. Many of them work in multiple media, and enjoy a broad presence in more legitimate cultural spaces such as film, novels (Ron Leshem, Ta Gordin), theatre (Reshef Levi, HaBorer) or even political criticism (Sa’id Kashua, Avoda Arvit). Others are actors who star in semi-autobiographical shows, drawing on nationally specific experience – as IDF soldiers (Lior Raz, Fauda) or as minorities within Israel’s complex social mosaic (Maor Zegori, Zegori Imperia).

At the same time, the possibility of selling a show to Hollywood slots well into the “making an exit” narrative of the Israeli IT industry. The dream scenario pitched by Alon Dolev, founder of the TV Format Fund, is that of a start-up: an idea that is successfully sold on abroad, giving its originators “a regular, sometimes lifelong income” (my translation) while the buyer undertake the task of further management. To sell a show to the U.S. specifically is to “make it” in an industry that is increasingly oriented outwards, aiming for the international market from the get-go.

The reality behind the discourse is, naturally, more complex. Shows might “make an exit,” but creator seldom will. If episodes of HBO’s In Treatment were often taken verbatim from the original Be’Tipul, further Israel-drama adaptations usually borrow little but the initial idea, which loses much of its cultural identity in the process – as when Hatufim, or “Abductees,” was Americanized as Homeland. A growing focus on the selling of formats often means a complete dissociation between creator and show, even for the most reputedly personal of dramas. Distributors such as Keshet, Dori Media and Tedy Productions, though representing Israeli performers, do not deal in behind-the-scenes talent. Normally, their modus operandi is to get complete control over distribution rights and leave production companies out of the loop, a practice that continues to generate fierce public debate.

There results a paradox, in which the ultimate success is a personal Israeli story sold in Hollywood to an entirely new creative team. As Israeli television increasingly thinks in global terms, drama creators are in a curious split position between auteur and, in the uniquely Israeli term, “startupist.” They are expected to represent a locally and culturally grounded authenticity, yet end their role when the local goes global. Perhaps also as a result of its youth, Israeli television is not familiar with the figure of the showrunner: the writer-creator who also function as producer and as the main face of and power behind his or her show.

An Israeli-US co-production, Dig advertises Israeli producer Gideon Raff’s involvement. In Israel, creator names never feature in poster or trailer content.

For all their cultural presence, the discussion around format sales and resultant power struggles between producers and distributors almost entirely excludes creators. The fact is that the only means for an Israeli creator to receive either royalties on creative control over a show is to be directly hired into the adaptation’s writing team – a practice that remains very rare, going as it does against distributor interests. Essentially, while Israeli television drama is celebrated for its auteurial quality, Hagai Levi is but one among many creators who prefers to be, in the words of the Hebrew theme to Hatufim, “coming home.”

Besides the morbid subject matter, I found two developments in this show particularly disturbing. The first is the way in which cinematic stylings are used to bring this documentary in line with HBO’s aesthetic. The second is the rhetorical position Jarecki places himself in, in regards to his role as a documentarian. Although these two developments seem unrelated, they interact to create a dangerous documentary television standard.

I wasn’t overly concerned with Durst’s story, especially in regards to his guilt or innocence. As the series progressed, it became more clear that little trust could be placed in the highly stylized version of events depicted in the show. The cinematic aesthetic, standard in HBO shows, were especially macabre and out-of-place when applied to a true-crime story. The title sequence, for instance, is indistinguishable that of a fictional crime story that might air on any prestige television channel. The show makes frequent use of crime reenactments, like one might see on a 60-Minutes special, but the high production value of an HBO show make these sequences uncomfortable; the fact that Susan Berman really was shot in the head and died on the floor of her bedroom makes the frequent cuts to the reenactment footage downright grisly, as the editing lingers over shots of spreading pools of blood. Assumably the aesthetic is meant to act as a cross-legitimation: to make the show seem up to HBO’s high standards, and to make the high standards of HBO shows live up to real life. Yet instead it ends up fictionalizing real life to make it more theatrical, adding slow motion and color filters to the cold murder of a real woman.

The plot’s timeline obscures when interviews and other filming took place in relation to each other. The issues with the timeline, as seen in the show compared to what director Andrew Jarecki says, has been much discussed online. The dangerous part of the questionable timeline of police involvement is the suggestions that Jarecki specifically withheld evidence in order to maximize publicity. The audience is allowed increasingly long sections of behind-the-scenes footage of Jarecki and the rest of the crew. The more background information we got, the more concerned I was about the rhetorical position in which Jarecki places himself.

It’s not particularly unusual for a documentarian to be included in the story that they’re filming. One might argue it’s inevitable that the presence of a film crew will have an effect on the events they’re filming. Yet Jarecki includes a lot of footage of himself struggling to come to terms with the potential guilt of the subject at hand, arguing aloud that he liked Durst personally, which made it hard to believe he might be guilty of two murders (in addition to the shooting and dismemberment of Black, events with Durst does not deny happened). At some point in the timeline, the crew uncovers new, potentially damning evidence in the form of a sample of Durst’s handwriting that seems to match that of a letter sent to the police in regards to Berman’s body. Although Jarecki claims to have been working with the police and with legal advice throughout the process, it becomes clear from the behind-the-scenes footage that there was no official supervision guiding them when they found the handwriting sample. Rather than informing the police or an attorney of their find—a find which could potentially reopen the case against Durst—Jarecki removes it from the premises and conducts an extensive investigation, calling on the expertise of a handwriting analyst to compare samples. Although this makes for absorbing television, it also completely destroys the chain of custody on this evidence, putting its potential use in a legal context up for question.

The disregard for legal procedure becomes especially underlined when Jarecki states that he’s out to get “justice.” Rather than attempting to record the truth of a situation—ostensibly the purpose of a documentarian—Jarecki explicitly sets himself up as a vigilante, using film-making to correct injustices in the world. It’s not that documentaries can’t be used to change the world or to correct injustices, in general. However, they do so by using small, specific examples to expose larger, systemic problems. The large systematic problems in the legal system are there, starting with the fact that there was evidence like this handwriting sample waiting to be found. The Jinx doesn’t offer any particular critique of the law, though. Rather, it sets Jarecki and his crew up as vigilante investigators, coming to the truth of the situation where the law couldn’t (and all while the cameras happen to be rolling).

Because of HBO’s prestige branding. The Jinx‘s presence on the network legitimizes the show as an acceptable approach to documentary making. Supporting vigilante documentary as an acceptable approach to seeking “justice” is a potentially dangerous trend.  That Jarecki’s publicity grab worked so effectively to draw eyes (including, I’m sad to say in retrospect, my own) spells out a troubling direction for television to move towards.

The media industry mantra “Content is king” once reflected the legacy industry’s power to dictate terms of media consumption through oligopolistic distribution and pricing. But technological change has undermined content control, and so at last many in the media industry are acknowledging a new ruler: the audience. Fortunately, the audience has an insatiable demand for content. Hurrah: long live content the king!

I saw this shift in industry discourse first hand at the 2012 and 2014 Time Warner’s Thought Leadership Faculty Seminars. As I previously reported, presenters in the July 2012 seminar insisted that TW was committed to “bolstering the ecosystem,” that is, the old business models. I saw presentations on the evils of “piracy” and the importance of physical media (DVDs), and I heard confident predictions that time-shifting millennials will enjoy linear viewing and commercial interruptions once they get a bit older.

TW executives toed a different line in July 2014. Opening the seminar, the Warner Bros. Senior Advisor of Media Research explained that TW executives are kept awake at night worrying about how “to protect our assets” from the “volatility of the media ecosystem.” Rather than sustain the “status quo” (translation: fight a rear guard action against change), TW must adapt to the “disruptive forces that challenge our business models.” Within the past decade TW has shrunk from a behemoth conglomerate to only three companies: HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros. Reducing its dependence on advertising revenues by spinning off Time Magazines and AOL, TW is now a “pure content play,” which will, executives claim, continue to thrive however distribution platforms evolve. HBO, as one of these executives baldly announced, plans to “feed the addiction” for its content. HBO’s recent deal with Amazon may indicate it is studying Amazon’s strategies for building consumer dependency.

When asked about the threat of piracy, the HBO executive neatly “pivoted” to piracy’s value as a form of market research: “Our learnings are that hits drive pirating behavior; hits attract pirates; and if we can convert pirates to paying customers, maybe one in ten, that will add up to real dollars.”  Another TW executive described a new “consumer friendly” approach to handling unauthorized access to content. “We want to give consumers easier access,” she explained, because “that’s where innovation is going on.” So TW is “piloting in the sand, not in concrete, because the world is changing.” TW wants to be flexible enough to follow consumers wherever they go (although the metaphor of sand seems an unfortunate one).

Though they conceded that young viewers timeshift, TW executives still insisted on the primacy of scheduled linear viewing, pointing to the “water cooler” value of Game of Thrones episodes. The HBO executive noted that social media chatter spikes when an episode is first released, then trails off. To “manage this conversation” and “keep subscribers engaged over time,” HBO simply has “too much investment in shows to release all episodes at once,” Netflix-style. HBO’s subscription strategy depends on an artificial scarcity of episodes (“We want to retain subscribers”), possibly because HBO is still dependent on MSOs to deliver their customers. Recently, however, TW CEO Jeff Bewkes has openly noted that HBO is trying to become more like Netflix, not the other way around, indicating a possible shift away from the strategy of content withholding.

A CW executive explained the changing economics of television advertising. In 2012, TW executives insisted that online (“digital”) episodes should have the same ad load as linear TV. Advertisers, however, were reluctant to pay for online viewership without the demographic data Nielsen supplies for linear viewership. In 2014, knowing the majority of its young audience timeshifted on digital platforms, the CW partnered Nielsen and Doubleclick data to prove that at least half of their digital viewers were the targeted 18-34 year olds. By offering to charge advertisers only for the 18-34 year olds (in other words, providing a 50% discount), the CW was able to sell more ads, doubling the ad load per episode, and thus to come out even. The CW also offered advertisers more buying flexibility. Most networks force advertisers who want to buy time on a top-rated program to buy time also on a lower-rated one; the CW allowed advertisers to buy only on the programs they wanted. The CW executive noted, however, that viewing and click-through metrics for digital commercials seemed to have much more to do with the quality of the commercial “creative” (the ad idea and execution) than with the quality of the program interrupted by that commercial. All these changes favor the advertiser, not the audience: eschewing policies such as YouTube’s True View, in which audiences may skip a commercial, the CW, like most of the rest of the television industry, continues to search for the holy grail: a technology that makes everybody watch the commercials.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, once the revenue powerhouse driving DVD sales, is now focusing on how to take TW film and TV content and “monetize it downstream.” Noting that physical media is a dying market, a Home Entertainment executive explained the new strategy of “electronic sell through.” In 2012, WB promoted Ultraviolet, a difficult-to-use digital service; in 2014, WB is simplifying consumer sharing experiences (although the “legal team is nervous”) and experimenting with social media, online communities of fans (WB A-list), and “long tail” content (WB Archive Instant has “rabid fans”).

Although the Time Warner Thought Leadership Faculty Seminar is designed by its media research executives, and so reflects only one company’s views, I recommend that scholars interested in learning more about the changing media industries attend these free events. Unlike trade press articles or industry conferences, they allow us to ask questions directly of industry executives, who likewise may benefit from hearing our perspectives. The 2014 seminar ended with TW executives making a plea for collaborative research with academics: as one executive put it, professors can research “longer term future ideas” that TW can’t get to because they “have to deal with today.” Whether or not we choose to collaborate with TW, this two-day seminar can teach us a lot about how such a legacy media conglomerate is hoping to transform disruption into “opportunity.”

There is plenty to talk about regarding that future. Will audiences who currently subscribe to HBO be more likely to cut the cord if they could access (only select) HBO programming three years later than if they subscribed to the service? Probably not. Will existing—particularly young—cordcutters become more likely to subscribe to HBO in the future when they’re in a financial position to do so if they’re more engaged with the channel’s library? Maybe. Will HBO ever make current flagship series Game of Thrones available on Amazon Prime while it’s still airing? Doubtful.

As interesting as those questions are, I want to consider how this deal reflects the history of HBO embracing new forms of distribution in the interest of connecting with audiences unable to afford or unwilling to pay for HBO subscriptions. Although often marginalized within these conversations in the contemporary moment, both syndication and home video were once similar points of outreach for HBO and other cable channels, and they are implicitly a significant factor in HBO’s current streaming strategy even if they go unnamed in official press releases.

HBO’s decision may be primarily focused on the streaming future, but it is predicated on the home video past. In an age before streaming, DVD sets were how you caught up with a show like The Wire, and even in the wake of HBO GO it was how you caught up with The Wire without having to subscribe to cable (at least if you weren’t borrowing someone else’s HBO GO password). With premium price tags and elaborate packaging, sets for series like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Rome, and Deadwood were a key space where HBO could package their prestige programming for a different audience.

If that DVD market were still healthy, one imagines HBO might have been more resistant to signing streaming deals that will further limit the appeal of those library titles: although DVD/Blu-Rays of current series will retain value (both for collectors and those unwilling to wait three years for them to arrive to Amazon), I would be interested to see if the company’s print runs on legacy DVD sets begin to shrink even further. Without knowing the financial details behind the Amazon deal, it seems safe to say that HBO ran the numbers of how this might affect their DVD business, and that their decision to embrace off-channel streaming is a tacit acknowledgement that the TV on DVD bubble burst some time ago.

If the Amazon deal signals HBO moving past its legacy DVD business, however, it simultaneously signals their inability to completely move past its limited foray into syndication. Notably absent from the deal are three comedy series that were sold into both basic cable and broadcast syndication: Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Sex and the City. Although the first two were quickly pulled from broadcast syndication after heavy editing gutted their appeal, edited episodes of Sex and the City had a stronger run on broadcast, a banner run on TBS, and currently air on E!, while both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage retain cable syndication deals on TV Land and Comedy Central, respectively.

Although all three are offered as part of HBO GO, they are absent from the Amazon announcement, implying that the nature of HBO’s contracts prohibits their sale of that content to streaming services while existing syndication deals are in place. In the case of Sex and the City, which entered into syndication before streaming was even a thing that existed, its most recent deals have been explicit about the role of streaming: reporting about its current deal with E! suggests online rights were included in the deal. While streaming deals and syndication deals may function somewhat differently, more recent syndication deals would appear to have offered streaming as part of the package, which seemingly makes it impossible for HBO to re-license that content to a third party in any capacity while existing deals are in place.

Premium cable’s relationship with streaming has always been complicated: Showtime and Starz each ended content deals with Netflix in order to build greater value into their own subscription streaming services, with Showtime only recently returning to Netflix with Dexter following the series’ conclusion. None have jumped in head first because they run on business models that require careful cultivation of value centered on subscriptions but relying on these sources of ancillary revenue (and exposure). The delay in HBO’s case is tied to both their efforts to translate their library into a subscription incentive through HBO GO—which were clearly not so successful that HBO could refuse Amazon’s likely rich financial offer—and the fact that they remain linked to previous equivalents to streaming’s ability to extend their content beyond the premium cable paywall.

HBO’s deal with Amazon signals their willingness to move past one of those models, and their inability to move past another, at least until the current syndication deals run out. When that happens, though, we will gain greater insight into how these two forms of value compare. If cable channels remain willing to pay a premium for edited versions of Sex and the City, are Amazon’s terms lucrative enough to compete? While our focus on the future makes the choice of streaming seem like common sense, HBO’s focus on the bottom line could make a different decision with streaming than it did with its legacy DVD business when the time comes.

True Detective

It’s HBO.

True Detective has rapidly entered the pantheon of television drama shared by luminaries such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and so on. Indeed, the adventures of Marty and Ruste Cohle have kept this commentator on the edge of his seat for eight weeks now. But what I am interested here is the audience of forensic textual foragers that, like the true detectives themselves, followed the scattered bread crumbs that led towards, not the yellow brick road, but the yellow king and the city of Carcosa.

The tail-end of episode 1 had Charlie Lang mention a king, but it is in episode two when the motif is concretised as Rust reads aloud from Dora Lang’s diary: “I closed my eyes and saw the king in yellow moving through the forest. The king’s children are marked, they all become his angels.”

The camera zooms in on the diary and we see fragmented quotations that turn out to be lifted from a collection of short stories by Robert W. Chambers first published in 1895 titled The King in Yellow. Michael Hughes wrote an interesting and illuminating article for i09 in February which details the connections between True Detective and The King in Yellow. I do not wish to tread the same ground here.

Rather, what interests me is how references to The King in Yellow spawned an online man-hunt for the killer of Dora Lang by participants reading the Chambers collection as a code-breaking device to solve the crime within the show. Indeed, the creativity and dedication of the viewing populace never ceases to astound me no matter how many times I witness it. I am guessing that a great deal more people just watched the show’s mysteries unfold in their living rooms rather than deputising themselves and microscopically examining a 19^th Century text for clues; but for some viewers, True Detective’s enigmatic coding frequencies invited them into the text to play in the sand-box of textuality and allusion. The sudden surge in popularity of the book turned an obscure ‘weird fiction’ text into a bestseller on Amazon almost overnight based solely on references within True Detective. Anna Russell, writing for Speakeasy, states that the book ‘shot up 71% in 24-hours to reach number 7 on Amazon’s bestseller list.’

Of course, the concept of participatory engagement is nothing radically new and has been discussed at length by Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Gray, among other scholars. But laying intertextual ‘Easter eggs’ within a HBO show that invites audience members to partake in the hunt for a serial killer? That strikes me as quite a departure.

Or, at least, it did. For I am making the assumption that the creators of True Detective knew instinctively that this is what would happen; that by threading oblique references within the text, the interactive viewer would not be able to help themselves exclaiming, ‘the game’s afoot,’ as they grasp deerstalker hat and magnifying glass to join the hunt for the yellow king.

On the other hand, perhaps the show’s creators understand the twenty-first century viewer, or at least a portion of it, and the penchant for extra-curricular investigations. The ABC show, Lost, crafted a sprawling online metropolis for dedicated fans to join a quest to solve the island’s mysteries while also laying intertextually furnished motifs in an array of locations that explicitly referenced The Wizard of Oz, for example, and other cultural artefacts.

Clearly, True Detective does not function on the same-level as Lost’s postmodern campaign. But then Lost is not a HBO show. True Detective is.

I wonder if anyone out there mapped audience reactions and theories as the show aired. Of course, in this era of digital communication and web 2.0, the internet is rife with websites and forums that do not simply vanish overnight and this is certainly an area for further study.

I, for one, intend on re-watching True Detective through the prism of Chamber’s collection. The game is afoot, indeed.

1) Our top story sees what could be a monumental shift in the battle between online streaming and cable operators, as Comcast has plans to offer a new promotion called “Internet Plus,” a broadband internet bundle that includes limited basic TV and, for the first time being offered through a broadband package, HBO and HBO Go. The move is seen as a reaction to recent gains in Netflix subscribers, the rise in piracy (particularly of HBO), and the increasing number of cord-cutters throughout the nation. This would be the first time HBO is available to consumers without a cable package, placing them in a better position to challenge Netflix.

2) The timing of the (apparently) insider information is intriguing, as just last week reports came out that Netflix was in talks with pay-TV companies like Comcast about making the streaming service available via set-top boxes. While Netflix is available on other entertainment boxes like Roku, XBox, and PlayStation, this would be the first time Netflix would be available through a cable company’s box. The report comes alongside even more good news, as Netflix has come to its first production deal with a major Hollywood studio, Sony Pictures Television. The order is for 13-episodes to be released exclusively on Netflix. All this news was good for Wall Street, as Netflix shares went up 8 percent following the reports.

3) FilmOn X, the broadcast-streaming rival to Aereo with a terrible name, is faring poorly in the courts, as a U.S. District Judge has refused to lift a near-nationwide injunction against the service as part of its lawsuit with multiple broadcasters. After restarting transmissions in Boston after Aereo won a similar (but different) ruling, Judge Rosemary Collyer was so upset with FilmOn X, she threatened to hold the company in contempt if they are unable to provide evidence as to why she should not. Meanwhile, Aereo continues to avoid injunctions, though broadcasters in that case are now petitioning the Supreme Court to address the suit.

4) One of the Internet’s largest BitTorrent websites, isoHunt has officially been disabled following a piracy lawsuit that saw the site settling for $110 million. The settlement was made between the operators of isoHunt and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) after the site was being sued by multiple Hollywood studios. And with this settlement, Hollywood will never have to worry about piracy again!

5) A new challenger approaches… The world’s largest toy manufacturer, Mattel has entered the original entertainment market with the launch of Playground Productions, an in-house studio devoted to multiplatform storytelling arm that will utilize a variety of Mattel brands like Hot Wheels, Barbie, He-Man, and more. The move is seen as a way for Mattel to retain more control over its intellectual properties, as well as a way to more directly enter the lucrative entertainment market of TV, video games, and direct-to-video titles. The approach known as “push-to-play” emphasizes how Mattel wants the entertainment properties to encourage kids to play with the toys associated with the property.

6) The Federal government shutdown might be over, but Ted Cruz is still devoted to making sure nothing gets accomplished on Capitol Hill. The Texas Senator and Tea Party favorite has blocked the nomination of Tom Wheeler as the next FCC chairman. The hold, according to Cruz, is due to Wheeler not addressing a question about whether the FCC has the authority to require campaign spots to reveal the source of their funding. So, once again, hooray Congress!

7) Break out those checkbooks but keep the memo to 140 characters, as Twitter has set its IPO price at $17-$20 per share. The social media company anticipates selling 70 million shares, which would come out to… well, the company would be valued at $12 billion. #baller

8) In the latest update to the ongoing legal troubles of SiriusXM, the satellite radio company has struck back against the class action lawsuit brought against them for distributing pre-1972 recordings without license. The company contends that no state law requires them to pay such fees, and federal copyright of sound recordings didn’t apply before 1972. SiriusXM claims the lawsuit would upend traditional practice for use of pre-1972 sound recordings, massively shifting the industry and causing major harm.

9) Sticking with music, Sony Music is suing United Airlines for copyright infringement, claiming the airline did not obtain permission for use of licensed music for inflight entertainment. Sony is seeking an injunction and damages, citing the music system on the airline being “interactive, on-demand” means the use is not covered by an outside royalty collection firm.

10) A new study out of Cologne University in Germany has finally answered the question no-one realized was being asked: Eating popcorn makes theater ads less effective. The awesomely-titled report “Popcorn in the Cinema: Oral Interference Sabotages Advertising Effects,” is in the latest issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Since announcing his retirement from filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh amped up his famously prolific output, releasing a staggering eight films between 2009 and 2013. This phase contains some of the most-successful and best-reviewed works of his career, including Contagion, Magic Mike, Haywire, Side Effects, and the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last week.

With the airing of Candelabra – the highest rated film for HBO since 2004  – Soderbergh announced that while he sees this as his last movie, this does not mean that he is retiring from artistic ventures per se. Instead, the director has been setting the stage for his second-act as TV/stage director-painter-novelist-t-shirt entrepreneur and headphone designer-hyphenate.

Some of these roles are obviously on the traditional side of art and industry, as are his plans to direct for the Broadway stage – several plays that screenwriter partner Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!, Contagion, and Side Effects) wrote – and two musicals. The first of these is the inevitable stage adaptation of Magic Mike, slated for Broadway next season and which could feature audience participation in the form of lap dances. The director plans to stage his long-gestating Cleopatra musical, possibly starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The director’s recent statements at the State of Cinema Address at the San Francisco Film Festival seemingly provide his rationale for leaving filmmaking. In the 45-minute speech, Soderbergh described the new conservatism of Hollywood Studios. In the current economic climate,  these risk-averse studios will not even fund pre-sold properties with A-list stars such as Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. According to the director, every studio turned Candelabra away, because the film was deemed “too gay.”

Given the film’s extremely positive reviews, its bravura performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and its big numbers for HBO, Soderbergh may not simply be having the last laugh, but is leaving the film industry on a high note and under his own terms.

Citing the creative possibilities of the medium and the sophistication of TV audiences, it may not be too surprising that the director announced that he is migrating to the medium. First up, he will be making a ten-part series, entitled “The Knick” – a series which takes place in the Knickerbocker Hospital at the turn of the 20^th Century for HBO affiliate, Cinemax. Soderbergh is also adapting John Barthes’ cult 1960s novel The Sot-Weed Factor into a 12-episode series that he intends to either distribute through television or via Netflix.

Soderbergh is also exploring the creative possibilities of the Internet. One such project is his live-tweeting a spy novella entitled “Glue” via his twitter handle @bitchuation. The novella is distinguished by way of its second-person narration and is occasionally accentuated by pictures of its European setting.

Perhaps even more strange is the release of Soderbergh’s new website Extension 765 (itself an obscure reference to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation). The site is billed as a “One-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh” and fans can not only purchase souvenir items from his various productions (such as the clapboard from Erin Brockovich) but can also buy one of Soderbergh’s new film-savvy line of T-Shirts, each of which contains an obscure reference to a canonical film.

Strangest of all is a page related to the director’s enterprise as a would-be Bolivian liquor salesman – which consists of some purple prose describing the drink, a bizarre poster of Soderbergh as spokesman, and a brief video of a roller derby team in motion, rendered in the director’s signature style. To my mind, the page and the website verge on the territory explored by Banksy in Exit Through the Gift-Shop and I would not be entirely surprised if, given the director’s proclivity for experimentation combined with dry wit if the whole Bolivian liquor venture turned out to be the director’s attempt to synthesize advertising, enterprise and art.

While many artists have famously crossed into other arts and enterprises and back again, what seems unique in this case is how determined Soderbergh is to free himself of the constraints of studio filmmaking at the height of their conservatism and find a new sandbox to play in. Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of the director’s career is his uncanny ability to be on the cutting edge of new technologies (which may also account for his desire to collaborate on a headphone line with the makers of the RED-one camera) and to ride ahead of the crest of industry trends. Perhaps even more ironically, Soderbergh’s new role as a media polymath and industry soothsayer seems to have given Soderbergh some the best press of his career, not to mention the auteur status that has largely eluded him for most of his time as a filmmaker.

Clearly, Soderbergh is not going anywhere. Instead, he may simply be migrating to where he believes his audiences are, finding the best ways to interact with them — whether by way of television, via twitter or by simply inventing his own marketplace from scratch.