Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffys Corner: Eric Deggans Discusses The Emmys And Future Of TV

Episode Date: July 23, 2016

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Get moving at real estate agents. I trust.com. You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show. All right. Joining us today, Eric Deggans. How about that? TV critic, journalist, author, pundit.

Bon vivant. You can call yourself that if you want. I don't want to call you that. I'm in too good a mood to call you that. I'm not sure what that means, but I just like the sound of it. And television critic for NPR. Eric, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Always a pleasure First I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the Emmys We had the big Emmys Coming up and they released They released the list of Nominees A week or so ago And how did you feel about those nominees overall

It's interesting I sort of felt like You know I've been covering TV for a long time Since 1995 And usually when the Emmys roll around You write that column where you just complain about all the stuff they missed. And, you know, the Emmys for many years had this reputation for honoring shows well-past when they should have honored them, you know.

So somebody would win an Emmy, and really the show that they were on was great, say, two seasons ago, you know. One of the most recent examples is last year they nominated this actress Tatiana Maslani from this show called Orphan Black, on BBC America, and she plays a character that's been cloned several times, so she actually plays six or seven different versions of the same person. Right. One's Ukrainian. One is sort of a bohemian. One is sort of an uptight housewife, you know.

It's an acting tour to force, and she did that show for three years before she got nominated. And so you just, you get used to Emmy. being behind the curve. And this list of nominations this year is not that. It is so not that. They seem to have really made an effort to recognize shows when they're good. So Blackish, for example, on ABC, got a lot of nominations, including Best Actor in a Comedy for the Star Anthony Anderson and Best Actress in a Comedy for Tracy Ellis Ross.

That's a show that hit its creative peak just this past season. and so it's perfect that it would get those nominations now because the show is really good. It's one of the best ones. It's one of the best comedies on television. There's also a show also on ABC called American Crime. It's one of these interesting anthology series where they have the same cast, but they put them in different roles and they tell a different story every season. So the show debuted last year, and it was about the murder of,

This guy in his apartment and supposedly his wife, I think, had been sexually assaulted, but then they found out that might not have happened. And it involved a multiplicity of characters of ethnicities and ages and races. And then they took that same cast, and they told a different story this year, which was about a kid who was sexually assaulted in a high school. And a lot of the same actors, but they were playing totally different roles. Right. So the show was much better this year, and it got Emmy nominations this year as opposed to last year. Okay, I see that that's the outstanding. There's a wrong way of saying that Emmy is right on the curve now.

They're right. They're honoring these shows when they're good, and it's something that critics like me have been asking for for a long time. So I see, actually, speaking of American crime, that they're in the outstanding limited series, do you think they have a chance against the people v. O.J. Simpson this year? Probably not, but what's interesting is that that limited series category has been a place to park series that are not sort of your conventional series. You know, People versus O.J. Simpson is, that's a series that's, they're going to do it again next year, but it won't be the OJ. Simpson case. It's going to be Hurricane Katrina. So the series is called American Crime Story.

That's on FX. Right. And this year they did the O.J. Simpson trial. Next year, they're going to do Hurricane Katrina in the aftermath, and they may tackle another crime story after that. So that's in the same category as Fargo, which is also on FX. And that's a show where it's based on the movie, right? And the first season took place at one time, and it had one cast of characters.

The second season, which it's being nominated for now, took place 30 years earlier and has an entirely different cast. Wow. And even though there's just two characters that are the same and both editions of the show, those characters are much younger in the 30-year-year-ear-earlier versions they were played by different people. So you have all these, you know, it's their series, you know, on the one hand, but they change a lot from season to season.

So they get parked in this category called Limited Series. Roots is also there. Now, Roots, they redid the classic mini-series on the History Channel, and that's just a one-time thing. They redid it this year. So that show is competing in the same category as People v. O.J. Simpson and American Crime and Pargo. And they're all very different, but there's a little less competition in this category than best drama. So I think that's why some of these shows get slated at this. Right.

Before we talk a little bit about some of the different networks or producing networks for shows, let's talk a little bit about since I'm a little biased toward a show called The Walking Dead, which I love, the Emmys don't seem to like that show. And I'm really kind of surprised why, since it's one of the top shows on television. maybe that's why. But by... You want me to explain it? Yes, I do.

Emmy did not like what we call genre shows. So those are shows that are... All right. All right. All right. Stop, Eric. Eric. Science fiction shows.

But... Stop for a moment. I want to stop you at they don't like genre shows and let you see the list of Game of Thrones nominations in this list from the Emmys. Okay? Well, for every rule, there's an exception, right? Okay.

Game of Thrones is such an achievement in terms of production and it airs on HBO, which always gets a lot of love from the Emmys. There's a lot of reasons why that show deserves and gets the most Emmy nominations. But then you look at the rest of the shows that get nominated. And there's hardly any of them are genre shows, right? Game of Thrones is the one exception. But I think that's one reason why, you know, earlier I talked about Orphan Black and the star of that show. I think one reason why it took her so long to get nominated is because Orphan Black is a science fiction show. And Emmy generally, you know, cast a skeptical eye towards shows like that.

So even though you have a show, like for me, I think a show like The Flash on the CW has incredible acting on it. It has great writing. It is a really well-made network TV show. But it will never get nominated because Emmy just it doesn't give a lot of cachet to a show like that in part, I think, because it's based around a superhero. So I would say The Walking Dead is a show that has been sort of conspicuously snubbed over the years. I know. They do a lot of great work in makeup and special effects and staging and production. And there's also a lot of good acting.

Now, I will also say, though, as a critic, that I feel like their last season is probably one of their weaker seasons. I would say only the second season of the show was worse than this one. I might actually have to give you that one. Yeah, I think they took some. some chances that didn't pay off. And it wound up weakening the show to the point where I'm not surprised that they didn't get nominated this year. But last, the last Emmys, there were some really standout episodes that I think deserved recognition

and they just didn't get it. I know. But look, they still are able to walk away with, you know, possibly walking away with outstanding prosthetic makeup for a series. So, I mean, who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want that? Exactly. But there's some great acting on that show and it gets overlooked and that's unfortunate.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how the Emmys have changed when you talked about FX. You mentioned HBO. We're talking about Walking Dead on AMC. And we're talking about a look at the shows coming at you from Netflix, Bloodline, House of Cards. Those are great shows. Look how the ground has changed. now on television. It is, for me, I love it.

I mean, there's no better time on television than right now, as far as I'm concerned. Exactly. I think most people who love television should love television right now because television right now is all about the will of the consumer. It is the reason why we have all these different platforms doing all this original programming is that the advent of online technology and streaming services have created this environment where the user, the viewer, has more control than they've ever had. Love it.

You know, you can, you know, I have a DVR that I got from my cable provider, and it can record six channels at once, and it can hold an incredible amount of programming. so I could spend maybe about 20 or 30 minutes programming it, and then I never have to watch a minute of television I don't want to watch. See? And that creates an environment where these channels have to give you shows that you want. Well, it's a catch-22 for them, though, because when you – I mean, I'll give you that there's no better time for television. However, having seen it a little bit from the inside, and I'm not an expert by any means,

but having seen it from the inside a little bit here working for the Blaze Television Network as well as Blaze Radio, you know, you're caught in a catch-22 because without, if you if you just start picking shows, let's say AMC, we'll use Walking Dead for an example. Without Netflix, Walking Dead would be already over right now because there wasn't going to be any money. They made a couple of years and nobody, you know, was just kind of okay. Okay, that's kind of a cool show. But then they threw it up on Netflix, and it was huge. So if you just simply stick with cable and hope that somebody watches a show,

AMC has not enough money to produce these shows. And so all these little other separate networks, FX and down the line, you know, they can't get the money without the cable money to do it on their own. It's pretty tough to make a living doing that. Right, right. Well, I'm not, you know, I said this is a great time for people who watch television. It's a great time for people who make television. Right, right, right, right, right.

But I would disagree with you a little bit, specifically on the Walking Dead example. The Walking Dead, so far, is the most watched scripted television amongst 18 to 49 demographic on television. Understand. So they are making money off of the cable runs of that show. I understand that, but it's not been that way for the entire seven years. No, it hasn't been that way for the entire seven years, but it's been that way for a good portion of it. And without, but that was my point. What Netflix is doing is Netflix is doing what syndicated TV used to do.

So think back to law and order, okay, the original law and order. You know, old heads in your audience will remember this young people won't. But when Law & Order first started on NBC, it kind of floundered and almost got canceled in its first season. They revamped the show. And then a few years into its run, they started rerunning it on A&E, the A&E network. And people started finding it there because it would air three times, three different windows on A&E. So it was easy to watch. And because it was law and order, all the episodes were encapsulated.

It was easy to just catch one episode and kind of enjoy it. And so it created an awareness of the show that fed people into watch the new episodes on NBC, and then it became a huge hit, right? So that was a case of syndication creating an audience for the show that then helped the actual show. So that's what's happened with Netflix, with Breaking Bad, and with The Walking Dead in particular. now those reruns go to Netflix and it cultivates an audience that wants to see the new episodes and then, you know, they come to the new episodes. So the viewership for Breaking Bad exploded in its fourth and fifth year because people got into the third season on Netflix

and the same thing happened with The Walking Dead. So this has been happening on TV for a long time. It's just it's happening on Netflix and Hulu now instead of syndicated television. I am so spoiled with not watching commercials that for a while I had canceled cable. And then I got it back because they broke into my house and, you know, just put it in my house. I couldn't stop them. It was an ugly scene, ugly. But I went completely streaming.

I'm really spoiled with commercials now. And I'm going to tell you, it's going to be harder and harder for these networks to make money. I wish I was the one that could come up with the idea of how these networks can. make money and not actually have commercials because somebody's going to have to, I hope it's me. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, the thing that's interesting, too, about this moment is that the technology makes it harder to make money off of advertising, right?

Because in broadcast television, they put the commercials in the show, and they assume that if you watch the show, you saw the commercials. Right. Right. But with DVRs now, I record everything. I almost never watch something live. I know because you want to watch it on your time. Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, I want to see it when I want to see it. You know, I don't want to see it when it airs. I want to see it when I have time to watch it. Correct. And also, I don't want to sit through the commercials, right? So I use my DVR to breeze right through the commercials, and now they can't assume that just because I'm part of that three-day rating. Because now in advertising, as you know, they sell commercial time on the three-day rating,

not just who watches it when it airs, but who watches it for the next three days. Right. So they can't assume that because I saw it, that I actually saw the commercials. So what's happening is they're doing a lot more product placement. They're putting products. And you see that more and more. You see that more and more. They're figuring out ways to configure the commercials so it will stop you while you're fast-forwarding through them.

And that's actually been kind of effective. Like if you watch Saturday Night Live is a great example. Nobody watches or very few people watch Saturday Night Live. Right. You know, they either watch it online or they DVR and they watch it later. I watch it on Sunday mornings. So when I'm fast-forwarding through the commercials, they have a little interstitial bit where they show you,

they show them setting up the next sketch that's going to come up. So they have the two stars of the sketch. They're usually standing around. You know, figuring out where they're going to stand when the sketch starts, and the makeup people are working on them or whatever. And they show the logo in the corner of the screen. If you're fast-forwarding, it looks like the show's starting back. Right.

So you stop. So you might stop. And I know they do this, and I still do it all the time. I will stop to see if the show is restarted. Right. And then I wind up seeing the commercial that ears right after that. Because you don't want to fast forward and miss it because you know it's coming up in another minute. That's the, you know, the argument, though, to that.

And that's funny that you, I was kind of the three-day rating. They ought to, they should actually do that for a couple more days out because you think about that. Like if a show is on Monday and I DVR it, and they usually do it for like seven days, sometimes more. If I watch it on demand, I can't fast forward the new shows. If I DVR it, then, you know, obviously you're, you know, flying through them as much as you can because nobody wants to see the commercials, which is weird because I love commercials. But for some reason, when I'm watching a show, it seems like I'm supposed to hate them. So I fast forward to them.

I'm not quite sure I understand that either. But they should push that a little bit farther out, but that's another story in itself. Well, actually, I mean, I think the industry is there are some, TV providers who sell advertising based on the seven-day model. And there are some TV providers, there's some cable TV channels that, for example, will only put out press releases with ratings for the seven days. The problem is that it takes so long to find out what the rating is that it's hard for journalists like me to know how successful the show was.

All right, so hold on, Eric. I got a break and then we'll get right back to you. Eric Deggans joining me here on the Jeff Fisher Radio Show on the Blaze Radio Network more in a moment. All right, joining me on the broadcast is Eric Deggans, NPR, a television critic, and what did you call yourself again? Bon vivant. Yeah, yeah, that word. I'm not calling you that.

I can't call you that. I get in trouble if I call you that. We were talking a little bit about the Emmys. They don't let you use French. We were talking about it. little bit about the Emmys and television and then I kind of wanted to talk to Eric a little bit about you know we see the future of television as it is is breaking out do you think that this plethora of television and online streaming is are we going to are we going to get farther and farther away

from from cable companies well that's that's a challenge right now there's I think it's a generational thing. Young consumers do not want to pay for a bunch of channels that they don't watch. Again, you know, as I said earlier, TV right now is about what the viewer

wants, you know, and anybody who provides television who doesn't have top of mind catering to the whims of the viewer is going to lose out. And the cable companies, I take my hat off to them in a way, because

they've managed to avoid giving viewers what they want for a long time. But now we've reached a point where the technology is just inescapable. Right. And so now, you know, you have Sling TV and you have these, what they call skinny bundles. You know, everybody's figuring out ways to give, especially younger consumers, smaller bundles of channels because they're alive. Well, I mean, they have to. Look.

The younger consumers especially are not going to pay for 50, channels they don't watch. Right. I mean, when I, when I canceled cable, not long ago, when I pulled the plug, I couldn't, it was financially bad for me to completely pull it out. They made it, you know, so look, if you just want to keep your internet, it'll be cheaper if you keep your internet and the basic cable. Right. Okay, so I'm like, okay, well, all right, well, then I'll just keep the basic cable then, fine, because I'm not going to, you know, why spend, you know, $30 or $40 more a month on just streaming, I mean, that's just stupid. I mean, I'm dumb.

I got it, but I'm not stupid. And so, I mean, they are finding ways around it. Sooner or later, though, that is even going to stop. I mean, you say the younger generation, I mean, I'm 155 years old, and I get it. I don't even want to do it. You know what I mean? I don't even want to do it. You know, you look amazing.

Thank you. Thank you very much. You got to tell me what you do. Yeah, it's a skin cream. Yeah, yeah, it's totally true. I mean, you know, we're talking averages. You know, we're averaging over, you know, millions of consumers. But, yeah, there's lots of people who are age and older who also don't like the idea of paying for a bunch of cable channels they don't watch.

And, you know, there was an interview with Les Moonvez, who's the president of CBS, where he was talking about this. He's saying that this is the new thing now is the skinny bundles of channels so that people can pay a smaller fee. usually it's streaming, you know, usually it's some kind of streaming service, and they pay a smaller fee, and then they have access to a smaller, very niche-focused... Welcome to the party, Les. Welcome to the party, Les. Appreciate it. Exactly.

Well, you know, and it's interesting because all of these, you know, CBS and Showtime and HBO, you know, they all have these standalone streaming services now where, you know, if all you want is HBO, you know, you can pay them, you know, X number of dollars a month and just have that. I like the CBO service. Yeah, I like the CBS. Yeah, the CBS plan is actually pretty good where they, you can, they let you stream the new shows for free within the first, I think, seven days or something. And then if you want anything like that, then you have to subscribe.

And that's pretty good. I mean, that's a pretty good plan because they're on every cable network anyway. I think is like $6, like $7.9. $6.99 a month, I think is what it is. I mean, this stuff starts to add up. It sure does. You have Shoe and you have Showtime and you have CBS. It sure does.

But that's all you want. Yeah. I mean, it adds up quick. It adds up quick. And then the next thing you know, you're paying, you know, $290 in cable and pl on top of everything else. And then you're hearing a female in the house that you're married to be unhappy. Well, you know, when you think about it, though, I mean, if you're not, I mean, I think sports is one of the places where live events.

It's still very problematic. Live events, man. It's hard to guarantee if you're a sports or not, you're going to be able to see everything you want without having a cable. But if you don't care about that, then you could get Slink TV, which has like 20, I think 20 channels on it, including ESPN. And you could get HBO, you know, direct. You could even get CBS direct. And you paid less than if you bought the kind of packages that would give you all those channels and cable, which would also include all these other channels that you don't care about. So I think for the person who has kind of a focused media diet, it makes sense.

But for somebody like me who, you know, like one day I want to watch, you know, CNN and then the next day I want to watch MTV Live. and then the next day I want to watch HBO, and the next day I want to watch, you know, stars. And then I want to binge on Netflix. It still makes more sense to have cable. Yes, it does. I know. I know.

That's why they came back and they broke into my house, Eric. That's why. That's exactly why they did that. Just when you got you're out, they put you back in. All right. So Eric Deggans from NPR, television critic. Also an author, an author of a book called Race Bader, how the media.

wheels dangerous words to divide the nation. Eric? Yes. I'm part of the media. That hurts. What's that? I'm part of the media. That hurts.

You are. That hurts. That hurts. I don't want to divide the nation, Eric. Oh, you know, I haven't listened to your show enough to know if you said in that definition. You know, Blembeck, you're in the book. That's all I'm going to say. I know that.

I know that, Eric. Trust me. He's in the book. So the book itself talks about how there are some media outlets and some programs where their stance on race and the way they talk about race is an essential part of their appeal. And, you know, I'll use an example that's not in-house. I'll talk about Fox News, which has been in the news lately. Yes, they have. You know, Fox News, there's a vision.

that guides that channel. It was created by Roger Ailes, the creator of the channel, and it is a vision that is pretty much middle-aged, politically conservative white guy, you know, and what appears on that channel and the way it's framed and the anchors that deliver that framing are all, from the perspective, friendly to, appealing to middle-aged, conservative white males. the guys who are anchors on the channel all fit that mold, the women who are on that channel all appeal to that kind of sensibility. They're attractive to that kind of sensibility. And the stories and the way they're discussed and the punditry and the way they discuss things, it's all framed from that point of view. And so that means that, your surveys, and in the book I talk about it, surveys and studies tell us that that demographic

has a certain way of viewing racial relations, racial issues, racial prejudice, the idea of institutional prejudice that there are institutions in American life like the criminal justice system or media that have prejudice and stereotypes embedded in them. You know, that demographic has a certain way of viewing all those issues, and Fox News talks about those issues from that viewpoint. And so that viewpoint sort of benefits one side of the equation and doesn't the other. and treats one side of the equation as sort of the embodiment of truth and other parts of that equation less so. And, you know, in my book, I sort of dissect how Fox News talks about a few different racial controversies.

And it's obvious which sensibility is guiding the conversation. And so what happens is when people of color and women are not able to have their point of view adequately represent it, then that ends up being divisive because people get frustrated and they have to find a way to have their perspectives acknowledged as much as other people's perspective. That's where the dividing the nation part comes from. This has been out for three or four years now. It might be time for part two.

There's a lot of within that time period. I'm thinking about a way of updating it. Yeah, within that time period from now, until the time you put this out. There's been a lot going on. It's been quite a bit happening. You know, sort of the advent of, I mean, just, you know, Netflix and online stuff was in its emphasis when I wrote the book.

So that's one thing that's really important. But also, you know, network television has changed a lot. And so the chapter that talks about network television talked about network television right before it got this huge influx of diversity. So that chapter certainly needs updating. And, of course, the book came out right. It came out in October 2012, so it was right before the election with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. So there was a whole chapter on politics and media that was very much focused on the 2012 election.

And now, of course, you know, that whole political landscape is very different. Yeah, quite a bit. Quite a bit. It's a bit different. It's huge. It is hugely different. It is absolutely hugely different. And you know what?

We're just going to leave it right there. We're going to leave it right there, Eric, because I don't know that I can pull any more hair out of my head. Eric Deggans, NPR. I appreciate it very much. You look like him if you did. Hey. Where's my rim shot?

Thank you. Thank you very much. It was there. You might not have heard it, but it was there, I promise. Eric Deggans, NPR. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, man. Always a pleasure.

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