Tasha Oren, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:

Throughout the week-long series of captivating panels, an intriguing, contradictory through-line quickly emerged: TV is where it’s at for creative concepts and serious long-form storytelling; its three-tiered system of network/cable/premium and its monetized structure of ads, fees, syndication and subscriptions is optimized, robust and plenty profitable; and yet, TV as we know it is living on borrowed time. For the ad-supported (and measurement-dependent) aspect of the industry in particular, the decade-long, incremental growth of streaming options, preference for DVR and binge-watching, and content competition has been heating to a boil. As many acknowledged over the week, the industry is reluctant and slow to change. How various sectors and networks are dealing with the inevitability/opportunity of change present a fascinating study in industry culture and the guesswork around audience-habits.

A green screen studio under construction at the brand new YouTube Hanger production facility in Los Angeles.

Three consecutive panels were illustrative of the strange co-existence of the glacial with the seismic in the TV ecosystem: midway through the seminar, we toured the Warners Bros. multi-camera studio sets for Conan, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men as veteran production designer John Shaffner spoke lovingly about the process of design and fabrication, the long history and weekly routine of the multi-camera production, the craft’s apprentice-based tradition, and the current sitcom revival on network.

The following day found us at the nearly completed headquarters of the YouTube Hanger, a slick, massive production facility that houses sound stages, green screen stations, editing and sound bays, a plush screening room, and various upholstered and funkified conversation nooks, all designed for comfort and spontaneous collaboration. This, Liam Collins, Head of YouTube LA Creative Space, told us would be the incubator for talent, where creators learn new skills, collaborate, and use the equipment (for free!) to develop original content. YouTube’s audience measurement emphasis, we learned, was rapidly shifting away from a “hits based” model to repeat views, as it encouraged its successful content-makers to look towards channel-based structures. At the LA hanger (as well as networked and similar facilities in New York, London and Tokyo), “top channel creators” would be invited to produce content, enhance their skills and raise production values, all with an eye towards series-development and long-form content. YouTube, we whispered to each other, was growing a TV network.

The panel with network schedulers was held at ABC Studios.

Yet the broadcast network schedulers we met on the final day of the seminar calmly swatted away our “YouTube’s coming for ya!” provocation. Content, they insisted, isn’t easy, and the skill to deliver good content, satisfying storytelling, and branded experience was the industry’s hard-earned, years-in-the-making edge over all shortcutting upstarts, no matter their Google-sized pockets. However, the radical changes in audience habits and content delivery options are producing changes, albeit slowly. CW, among others, has struck a direct up-put deal with Netflix, which now functions as a de facto syndicator (the more veteran the show, the higher the fee). Network schedule-logic is also slowly shifting from managing audience behavior and shepherding specific time and day viewership to managing content assets and nourishing shows. Networks are less quick to pull programming as popular viewership patterns (as well as ratings collection) expand in time. Season demarcations are loosening with the proliferation of cable-inspired, short order runs and more flexible episodes-per-season configurations. And, perhaps most dramatically, “brand envelopes” and single-sponsorship models for content are now discussed as valid and even likely alternatives to traditional spot-advertising.

The vexing problem of launching a new show in an on-demand universe prompted many schedulers to insist on the relevance of the grid-and-season logic of conventional television. What’s more, they suggested, adult audiences continue to gravitate towards the comfy sofa and the largest screen in the house for evening viewing. “Yes,” Kelly Kahl of CBS concluded, “we’ll get you in the end…”

Kim Owczarski, Texas Christian University:

As professors from varying types of higher education institutions across the United States, many of us tried to ask questions about what opportunities the current television industry holds for our students entering the marketplace in the near future. During one panel, a television producer/director stressed that students should be making “shitty films” and posting them given that the access to distribution has been critically aided by the Internet. He argued that you can buy equipment from Amazon and return it 28 days later, so you don’t even need to truly own cameras and such any more to be making art.

YouTube Hanger's lobby indicates that even in a new era of professionalized content, cat videos will still be revered.

Yet, our trip to the brand new, state-of-the-art YouTube Hangar suggested that the distribution platform is seeking professionalized content above that grade. With YouTube bringing in a new class of content creators every quarter, it seems that the company is moving away from the “shitty films” category to a more optimized strategy of monetizing content that is similar to what the television networks produce. It did not seem that the company’s resources were really within the realm of the novice filmmaker any more.

As far as first jobs, other professionals stressed the importance of moving to Los Angeles and working in those first low paid jobs as production assistants or in the mail room, and that as long as you worked harder than anyone else, you will be fine. Though runaway production and its impact on the television employment sector of Los Angeles kept coming up, few of the panelists thought it was a good idea to chase the jobs elsewhere as many key aspects of the industry—including writing, editing, scheduling, and marketing—continued to be centered in California.

The issue of the importance of long-term, stable employment seemed to be an important focus for those working in the industry, albeit rarely was it discussed in a direct fashion. During our tour of the Warner Bros. studios, John Shaffner stressed how great the three-camera setup of a traditional sitcom is for those who need to pay for their kids’ college educations. He also discussed at length what dealing with Charlie Sheen on that last season of Two and a Half Men was like for a below-the-line crew depending upon a regular paycheck.

During the panel with the five scheduling heads of the broadcast networks, the idea of shorter versus longer seasons was debated about its overall impact on a network. One mentioned that it would be great to have shorter seasons on broadcast in order to buff up their international appeal (as foreign broadcasters seem to prefer the shorter, more quality based seasons of cable) while another quipped that he’d love to release 30 episodes of his top shows if he could. As we learned from the panel with the showrunners, putting out 22 quality episodes a season is an extremely difficult proposition given the time and financial constraints operating on most television programs. But regardless of whether a show pumps out 13 episodes or 22 in a season, it goes without saying that the stability it provides for a large assortment of professionals is a big reason why the broadcast networks are hesitant to fully embrace the cable model despite the change in series quality such a move might engender.

Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame:

Tasha’s observation about mixed signals also holds for what various speakers said about the value of social media in the TV ecosystem. For instance, the showrunners insisted they paid social media activity little mind, but then each followed with an example of when they drew from its value. Former House showrunner Greg Yaitanes said that because such a small percentage of viewers tweet, you can’t consider their reactions to be representative or to offer any kind of consensus, but he then discussed how useful fan input was for the creation of a House app, which presumably brought in revenue. Similarly, The Middle showrunner DeAnn Heline expressed surprise that people out there write up lengthy blog posts on individual episodes (“These people care more than I do,” she joked) and stressed that writers wouldn’t change their approach based on what people are tweeting, but then acknowledged that her writers did see people tweeting about watching The Middle together as a family and now bear that in mind.

Faculty Seminar participant Max Dawson was awarded two Emmys for his astute comments and questions.

The network schedulers were just as dismissive of Twitter and its brethren, noting that while it might offer some marketing utility, social media activity does not correlate with their revenue currency, Nielsen ratings. The network scheduling panel moderator was the COO of the TV Academy, and he pointed out that the “OMG, Tracy Morgan just passed out on stage at the Emmys, turn on ABC” moment trended instantly on Twitter but didn’t bring so much as a blip in the ratings. Seminar participant and Northwestern professor Max Dawson then pointed out that many of the tweets were about how stupid this gimmick was. Dawson also asked CBS’s programmer Kelly Kahl why the network bothers with generating on-screen hashtags during Survivor episodes if they don’t see Twitter as particularly valuable, and Kahl responded that the network will do anything it can to suck in viewers, plus it’s no extra cost to throw a hashtag up on the screen. So it’s not useful except when maybe it is.

I certainly get the bottom line idea that tweets aren’t ratings and that Twitter activity can misrepresent where the real value of a show lies. And the network programmer who recently told EW that TV fans can only save shows from cancellation by watching the programs and their advertisements within three days is partially right. But his statement doesn’t acknowledge that only Nielsen households have this power, not TV fans. Incidentally, this programmer was anonymous in the article, but identified himself on Twitter. Part of the gratification of social media is feeling like someone might actually be paying attention to what you’re saying. Given the battle for viewer engagement taking place on screens of all sorts, you would figure there has to be monetary value in that too.

 
Matthew J. Smith, Wittenberg University:

Curatorial. It’s a curious word that I must admit I don’t recall having used myself to describe anything that I do as a teacher of media, but it’s one a number of the presenters involved in the Faculty Seminar used to describe their roles in selecting and presenting materials for and about television. I had never thought of the work of television producers as likened to the informed discretion of museum and art gallery directors, but the usage makes perfect sense now. Each selection in terms of what goes into a finished television production is borne of that curatorial sensibility, as producers make paradigmatic choices among a host of alternatives and exercise their insight to achieve a product that—when at its best—proves to help storytelling reach its ideal impact.

As I thought more about our week, curatorial also seems to be a perfect term to describe the avocations of many elements of the experience. When we arrived at the Academy headquarters at the start of the seminar, our first stop was the “Hall of Fame Plaza” where statues, busts, and reliefs of some of the most potent figures in television history were thoughtfully laid out over an acre of North Hollywood real estate. We also met employees of the Academy whose job it was to preserve the history of the medium. Karen Herman heads the Archive of American Television, a phenomenal oral history project whose fruits are online and available at the click of a mouse. There was John Leverence, Vice President of Awards, who has coordinated the primetime Emmys since the early 1980s. He introduced us to the history of the statuette and the awards program. And then there was our trip to Warner Bros. Studios, where our guide, production designer John Shaffner, gave us a tour of the historic studio. Outside each sound stage hangs a plaque commemorating the individual television series produced therein, including one where Shaffner had designed the sets for Friends.

Although much of our week was focused on how television is produced and where it might go next, I was gratified to encounter a good deal of the history of how we got to this point. I’m happy to curate such experiences into my own teaching of the medium and its history henceforth.

Todd Sodano, St. John Fisher College:

Over the last decade, storytellers have flocked to HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Cinemax, not merely because of premium cable networks’ inherent freedom to use strong language, sexual content, and brutal violence. Rather, their freedom to tell a compelling story on those platforms is paramount. Jenni Sherwood, senior vice president of development and production at HBO, said on a panel focusing on HBO’s Game Change that decisions at her network are made based on a script: “Where is the intelligence in this? [Where is] the creativity? How is it going to be received?” Neither she nor anybody else who works in cable and who spoke at the Faculty Seminar yearns to offer nudity, language, or violence simply because they can. Greg Yaitanes, showrunner of the forthcoming Cinemax series Banshee, said these elements “come from a place of character or story.” HBO painfully learned more than a decade ago (see The Mind of the Married Men – actually, don’t see it) that having four men speak candidly about sex and relationships wasn’t a recipe for instant success just because it mirrored the spirit of Sex and the City.

Variety’s Brian Lowry, who moderated the showrunner panel discussion with Yaitanes, Cynthia Cidre (TNT’s Dallas) and DeAnn Heline (ABC’s The Middle), acknowledged that writers boast how the best part of working in pay cable is not having act breaks. In advertiser-supported television, the tail (commercials) wags the dog (programming); conforming to this traditional structure can challenge and frustrate the writer. Yaitanes, who used to run Fox’s House, said that, as a writer, eventually “you start thinking you’re there to fill in the spaces between the ad breaks.” The ability to pursue narratives that avoid the six-act structure is strong incentive for storytellers. Starz CEO Chris Albrecht (formerly of HBO) told Lowry that the absence of the ad breaks was the most important freedom on his old network. Perhaps one of the most important lessons to pass along to our students who are pursuing careers in film and television is to understand storytelling and structures. Cidre declared, “Structure is key. Who wants what, and who’s keeping them from getting it? This is the basic structure of everything.”

Randy Caspersen, Northern Illinois University:

Each of my visits to Los Angeles becomes more bittersweet than the last. I lived there for nine years where I worked in television production. My best friends still live there. While I was making new friends and learning a ton about television biz at the Academy of Television Art & Sciences Foundations Faculty Seminar by day, I moonlit with friends at night. One, a big producer on the biggest new competition show on television, launched me into the audience of a live taping. Another friend, a make-up artist for the highest-rated show in syndication, recounted her recent staph infection from breast expanders after her double mastectomy. My oldest friend, a beloved roommate from college undergraduate days, told me about how he has been unemployed on and off and just borrowed $300 from his parents while standing in front of his bookcase which uses two of his three Emmys as bookends.

When I returned to Northern Illinois University, I prepared my lecture for my Introduction to Studio Production students with two slides. The first is a “Greetings from Los Angeles” postcard circa 1940’s which shows the city name in block letters with the city’s famous buildings illustrated inside each letter. The second slide, a modern re-imagining of the same, filled the letters in with cartoony portraits of a drug bust, police chase, an overdone plastic surgery victim, an overcrowded freeway and a prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard. I launched into my lecture about the great things I saw during the Academy’s seminar—the showrunners, the above- and below-the-line job panels, the tours of studios and special effects houses, the fever surrounding emerging technologies—along with the caveat that there is a dark side to this land of dreams.

We got a lot of advice to bring home to our students from the very talented industry professionals. Internships are a great start. You must start at the bottom, work your way up through the ranks and hold out for a decent job for at least a ten-year period. The key thread to everything—whether you are the production designer for The Big Bang Theory or the showrunner for Dallas or the DP for American Horror Story—was that everyone is storyteller at heart and that television is no longer cinema’s simpler, uglier sister.

My students still wonder: what is that “dark side of LA” and “how am I going to make it?” I wonder that question, too. I left the city because I never saw myself “making it” even though I was a producer on a hit show. Maybe the greatest lesson of the seminar came from Nashville executive producer R.J. Cutler who said, crude paraphrasing here, that the people who make it aren’t the geniuses but those who are willing to stick it out over time and work the connections they made when they first came to town. He said genuine curiosity into how human beings behave continues to drive him toward creating non-fiction and narrative media. Oh, yeah, and if you make it, there is big money in that creation. I guess the dark truth of LA is that it will always be looking for how it can monetize all creative media pursuits. And so it is nice to visit Los Angeles and also nice to leave.

1. Most “Tribal Knowledge” About Rights is 100% Wrong
A few words on copyright and clearance rights: If you are a writer, don’t just register your script with the WGA West or East. The best way to legally protect your script and yourself is to buy a copyright. If production designer or set decorator, don’t think that because you bought a picture on the wall or a painting, or got permission from a home owner to shoot in their house, that you now have any right to show that picture or painting in your series. It’s a separate permission, and without it, you might end up spending thousands of dollars after the fact to get the rights or digitally erase it. If you are a prop master, make sure that a character doesn’t get killed with a Heinz 57 bottle. Bad things should never happen with commercial products. You’ll never get the rights. If you are a casting agent, make sure that the least ethical person in your docudrama is played by your most famous—and most attractive—actor.

2. Being a Showrunner is a Benevolent Dictatorship.
The appeal of being a showrunner is that you have an enormous amount of control over your project; you are the CEO of the show. The downside, is that that all of these other commitments take you away from what you love: the writing. That can be a blessing and a curse, since many writers agree that TV writing is the ideal job for people who hate being alone even more than they hate writing.

Showrunners Panel: Deb Curtis (Programming Exec/Moderator), James Duff (The Closer), Jenji Kohan (Weeds), Bill Lawrence (Cougar Town), Matt Weiner (Mad Men)

3. The Primetime Game Show Will Return
Two-and-a-half years ago there were seven game shows on primetime television. Now there are zero. We hear they will return! Fox’s Million Dollar Money Drop might just kick off the resurgence in December.

4. Barney McNulty Was the Creator of Cue Cards
Of course someone created them, but now we know who.

5. If You Know What You Are Doing, You Can Make $8 Million in Fifteen Minutes
When a championship game goes into overtime, the operations producer at the network gets on the phone and starts creating his own match-ups. As the clock wore down in a close football game last year, Fox Sports VP Jack Simmons got on the phone and built another series of commercial breaks, found new inventory, and made his network a ton of money. Just don’t ask him the score at the end of the game. He’ll watch it on the DVR when he gets home.

Jack Simmons, Senior VP Production, Fox Sports

6. The DVR Has Changed Everything and Nothing
The “Network called DVR” is contemporary TV’s frenemy. Writers now have to work in a four-act structure for a 30-minute show, thanks to TiVo. While Live Plus ratings have given networks some breathing room to still benefit from time-shifted viewing, when Hulu puts a show up within three days of it airing, the Live+3 numbers go down substantially. At the same time, overall ratings are 15% higher in DVR homes than in non-DVR homes. People with DVRs watch more TV. But DVRs are still the minority in most American homes, so today, successful shows still get 40%-50% of their audience from the lead-in. The bottom line, according to broadcast programming executives: flow and scheduling still matter.