The Watch - The Content Wars of TV’s Gilded Age | The Watch (Ep.281)

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald give an update on the current state of television’s content wars, including the upcoming slate of shows to get excited for (15:40), how networks are responding to Netflix’s domination, and which networks will survive the arms race in TV’s gilded age (40:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Hotel Tonight. If you love to score amazing deals at incredible hotels, you will love Hotel Tonight, Hotel Tonight partners with hotels. To help them sell their unsold rooms helping you find sweet deals at cool, top-rated hotels. And even though their name is Hotel Tonight, you can also book in advance for spontaneous weekend getaways, staycations, three-day weekends, road trips, business bookings, and more. It's easy. Book hotels in 10 seconds in just three taps and a swipe. Get the Hotel Tonight app now to start scoring amazing deals at Incredible. hotels. That's Hotel Tonight, the only booking app you need.

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the wringer.com and joining me in the studio going through Succession Withdrawal. It's Andy Greenwald. I appreciate the honesty. Today's a very emotional, emotionally raw and present day. This is our last podcast in person with each other for a minute. For a little while, man. While you go off. into the desert to make your art.

I'm on a different trip now, man. I just got back from the lake. You've not even remarked upon my beard. Do you have a beard? Did you really not shave? Do you know how much I talk to my wife about, like, should I shave? Should I not? And then I fucked up.

I shaved too much of my neck. Are you growing a beard? I was trying to. I'm really in a different zone right now. Wow. I came in here with my own cone of feelings. Yeah. I was like, oh, he doesn't notice.

Maybe it's not that noticeable. I fully didn't notice. I mean, you look, you look like your normal, handsome smiling self. Greenwald, it's Monday. I'm back from vacation. We're going to talk about, I think we're going to talk about our lives, man. We're going to talk about each other. I think, look.

And then we're going to talk about content wars because we have, there's a bunch of like little news things from TCA's announcements of shows that are coming up. And I kind of was just like looking at all these stories coming out of the last few weeks. And I felt like it would be a good time to do a content. Wars update. You see the big picture now, man. Well, you know, I work with Fennessee. I just see the chessboard. Yeah. No, Sean, we wanted to talk about Sean's article today about the Oscars,

and we didn't get a chance to talk about that last week, but you should listen to the emergency big picture that Sean, Amanda, and Willie Simmons did on that one. But I was just thinking about today about, like, you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting moment. I feel like there was a flood of announcements of acquisitions, of new shows, of new seasons of shows, and it positioned all these different.

different networks that we tend to talk about a lot in a very interesting counterpoint to Netflix, which is essentially the big bad right now. Not the big bad in terms of its morality or it's evil or not, but it's like that's the, that's the boss level. Everyone's reacting to Netflix. Of course. And they are actually now articulating that. So I thought we would go through a couple of the networks that we tend to talk about and look at their slates and look at their position in the game. But first, let's talk about, let's just talk about what's going on with us. I just think that's important. I think that after this many years of doing a podcast together, many years of friendship. We even shared a photo from our friendship.

Thanks for the comments on my hair, guys. Mislabeled. People were like, this was 20 years ago. Nah. That's just 10. That's just 10 years ago. 13. 13. I just feel like there's space for us, you know. There's space for us to just be real with people. Let it rip, man. Like, let's just be honest. It's your hour. Look, I'm the one taking all the flack.

Are you? For unpopular ice cream opinions. Okay? Yeah. Like, that's still, that fire is still small around. That was some fuck shit. Dude. Look, I'm, I'm great. I want, first of all, one thing I've learned from being a TV critic and watching a lot of television is that any time a male character of a certain age says, guys, I'm great. In fact, I've never been better.

I'm not a bad man. He's telling the truth. Yeah. I want to hear about your time up north. Yeah. You were rafting. I was in Lake Tahoe. You were consuming some content, though, while you were there that I feel like, did you want to talk about that?

We can't. I think, so here's the thing. I think Patrick Hoffman talked about this book, dog. Soldiers while I was... Patrick Hoffman, author of Every Man of Menace. Yeah. It's just probably my favorite book of the last few years. And we got a chance to have him on the podcast. He was part of the Double Down Book Club.

If you haven't read Every Man of Menace, I highly, highly recommend it. People are reading it. I think he mentioned Dog Soldiers, which is a novel by Robert Stone. I think it's from 1975. Okay. Won the National Book Award. It was made into a movie called Who Will Stop the Rain with Nick Nulte? Like in the late 70s?

The movie was called Who Will Stop the Rain with Nick Nolty? Yes, exactly. What if they started calling things like John Travolta and Kirsty Alley, look who's talking. They did. That's accurate. Spoiler, it was the baby. Yeah. I read this book while I was gone, man. It really put me in a different place. You're different now. Yeah. You have a beard, sort of. It's about, surprisingly enough, it's about a journalist in Vietnam towards the end of the war who decides to smuggle heroin back to California. Wow.

And he enlists his friend, quote unquote, Nick Nolte. Nolty. named Hicks to do it for him. And when Hicks gets to California, he's supposed to bring the drugs to the main character, John Converse's estranged wife, Marge, who works in a porn theater in San Francisco. This is rich stuff. And they're going to sell the dope. And it goes very wrong. But it is like this incredible journey from Saigon to San Francisco down to L.A.

and Hollywood Laurel Canyon of the early 70s, and it was really, really great. It reminded me a little bit of Don DeLolo's Running Dog. They're very good companion books. Because they're about dogs. They're just about the collapse of like the late 60s and what the void that was left afterwards, which I think is increasingly becoming my favorite thing to read about.

Well, I wanted to go there because, first of all, I'll let's break some news on this podcast, ordered myself up a copy of the book. Yes! I have... Clutch. I'm going to have a lot of free nights in the desert coming up. There are no free nights in the desert.

You can only do peyote and talk to coyotes, you know, six out of every seven nights. So that's taken care of. It might, in fact, become a double-down book club selection. Yeah, I love that. People want to get a jump on that. I love that. But when you were describing it to me, I realized that you and I and all of us, and probably a lot of our listeners, have cultural sweet spots where there are eras that we will basically consume any culture related to.

And I think, I think you just admitted it, but I've increasingly realized that for you, it is that kind of late period Vietnam, post-Vietnam reordering of the world post-hippy reckoning. Yeah, yeah. James Crumley, Last Good Kiss, which was one of our double-down book club selections is from that. I'm kind of wondering whether we're like,

cyclically, like, culturally we're entering into a similar moment right now, where basically like, I think that as a society, or maybe people's, concept of society becomes unmoored from a baseline of like stability. Right. And faith in institutions and faith in your own psych, like consciousness is starting to falter. A lot of these characters in dog soldiers and in other books from around this era are experimenting with expanding their consciousness or have gone through whether they've like experimented with Zen Buddhism

in the wake of the beats and psychedelia with the 60s and now they're maybe getting into harder stuff and maybe they're getting into some of the new age, cultier ideas that were around after the 60s. And that's in the air. And there's something about this time, although like I love a pretty sheltered, bubbled life. Well, you've got a beard now, so all bets are off. That's true. I mean, you know, but there's something about the way that this time feels where I think that, you know, regardless of where you are, like, you probably have less faith in institutions now than maybe you did two or three years ago. Well, so what are, I'm putting you totally on the spot. fun. You want to throw out a couple other

pieces of this era as canon for you? Yeah, so I like I said, Running Dog which is a pretty underrated Don DeLillo novel which is about it's very complicated but it's essentially about a countercultural

literary journal and an investigation into a political corruption but it's Delillo so it's not really about that. I think obviously like White Album is is a sort of seminal text for that period Not the Beatles record, but the Joan Didion. Right. And then I think, honestly, we've talked a lot about this, but Cromley.

James Cromley is a detective novelist who was essentially writing in the vein of Raymond Chandler, but was writing about these kind of burnouts out in the west, out in the West, from Montana to San Francisco and Point South, that were kind of grappling with this rapidly changing modern society. So I think that those are some of the big ones. I'd throw an author named Newton Thornburg onto their, cutter and bone and Dreamland are two books. For me, my... Can you tell it's August that we're talking about early 70s?

No, this is great. This is great. This is the kind of stuff that you can't get on any other popular podcast or even this one, which is losing readership or listenership by the moment. I think my era for cultural whatever is like 81, 82 to 87. If it's in that period, I am completely obsessed with it. I feel like my child... My childhood is...

But not like Goonies. No, no, no, no. Literature movies, I think for me, because that's an era that I remember texturally. Like, I remember when things looked the way they do in those movies, but I was very little and had no interaction with it, of course. And yet, so it feels like it's constantly slipping out of my grasp. Like, I feel like I should know it. It was happening, but I was in kindergarten.

Right. You know, so I didn't know it. In kindergarten watching crimes and misdemeanor. This is based more on like, on a sort of weird. creeping like nostalgia feeling. You know, like you just kind of want to touch it and understand it because you were there, but you weren't. And for me, like, I think it's brought on by a lot of music.

I feel like my childhood was soundtrack by the horns on Paul Simon's Graceland and the horns on Billy Joel's an innocent man. I feel like those are like Citizen Kane's Rosebud Sled for me. Can I tell you something? Quick aside. So there's a radio station in Lake Tahoe called The River. Classic. This is good stuff already.

And I was driving back from rafting. Down A? And they had like, you know, like, it was really funny because, like, I just didn't, we just had a rental car. And it wasn't like, we had serious. And I didn't plug my iPhone in. So it was just like letting the radio do it. And they were like, it's so funny. Like, when you go back.

And they're like, you're not going to believe it. But coming up next seven songs back to back. And you're like, congratulations, guys. Commercial free. Things have changed. And, you know, you're driving along Lake Tahoe and a lot of the art. architecture and the sort of like campsites and stuff look very Camp Crystal Lake. They look very 80s.

And they were playing like Tommy Two Tone, 867, 5309 and bad by YouTube and big time by Peter Gabriel. And I was like, God damn, this music is good. You know what does that? It's weird to find yourself like in that moment where you're like the actual out, what I'm looking at out my window matches perfectly with what I'm listening to. I love that. Yeah. I like another song that you're reminding me of.

that I used to hear a lot driving to day camp. Genesis is invisible touch. Oh, yeah. That's still a champ. Phil. But I would just say, like, obviously that music, but like I think a lot about this, whatever, you guys know what I like in ice cream now,

so I'm leaving it all on the table. But like, in the film Hannah and her sisters, Sam Waterston wears like a tweed jacket and dates caterers. And I'm like, that was a thing? Like, Sam Waterson in that movie is younger than we are now. And he's just like, Diane Weist, let me take you to my favorite opera. Like, for real? Yeah.

That is as far away seeming to me as Daniel Day Lewis's behavior in the age of innocence. And yet, we were alive. So I'm just fascinated by that. Fascinated by that. Anything else you want to do? Yeah, I just want to throw one other book on the pile for people. I'm really enjoying. There's a New York Review of Books, they publish books also.

And they've been republishing books that have gone out of print, and you can't really go wrong with a lot of what they put out. But recently they put out a book called Ivory Pearl by one of my first. favorite writer is a French mystery writer named Jean-Patrick Manchette. And he made a, he wrote a couple books that I strongly recommend, super dark noir. Like, he thinks adjectives in these books are really frilly. And one of them is called the prone gunman that was made into a bad Sean Penn movie a year or two ago. Oh yeah, the gunman, yeah. Not that bad. The book's great. Really? Did you see it? I just assumed it was bad. Basically, the thing with that movie is that everybody who's good is in it, like Elba's in it. Yeah. I think Bardam is in it. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty, it's pretty,

Free Brollock. All right, so let's check it out for the pod. But anyway, read the book. Also a book called Fatal. But Ivory Pearl, those books were huge successes, like revolutionized the mystery, modern mystery in France, and then he just didn't know what else to do. So he fell silent for about a decade and, like,

translated Watchman in the comic book. Then a friendship with an author that he met at a mystery convention named Ross Thomas, who is my favorite writer, who wrote the book Briar Patch that I'm making the TV show based on, inspired him to start. Oh, you're making Briar Patch? Because I have a competing Briar Patch. Sam S. Mills Breyer Patch, according to the trades, which is fine. He was inspired to try something new, and he imagined a book that would basically do what you really like in books,

a shadow history of the 20th century told through fiction. And Ivory Pearl was going to be the first book in the series, and it goes from Paris to Cuba to Hungary. It's set in the 50s. Oh, wow. It is awesome. Did he finish? He died of cancer the same year, Ross Thomas did, and he didn't finish this book. So it's an incredible feeling of reading the first of reading the first year, Ross Thomas did, and he didn't finish this book.

So it's an incredible feeling of reading the first of. book feeling like every, you can hear the engines and the propellers starting on what was going to be this incredible alt history, this literary adventure, and it doesn't end. And his son wrote this introduction, and the book ends with Manchette's notes how he wanted to end the book. It doesn't even end with anyone finishing it for him. And I really recommend it. I recommend his other books. I did want to ask you, since this is just fun time, variety hour, how do you feel about unfinished business? Like, are you a fan of books or records or movies that were never finished or finished by others, do you think of that as a separate category?

For me, it drives me crazy the thought of it. It's so painful. So I guess it's a different... I'm not mad at demos in music. Yeah. So I, you know, and ever since, like, you know, remember the Bob Dylan Bootlegs series? And, like, I'm pretty into, like,

oh, I want to hear, like, the alt version of this. I want to hear it when they're just, like, tuning. And they started playing Tonight's Tonight's Night for the first time. But when it comes to movies, movies and books, like I don't really need it to be finished by someone else. Yeah, I kind of don't want to be finished. I understand why, like, say, like, I know they're like a long-running fantasy and sci-fi series that people have come on to finish because, like, we were talking about a major investment,

but also like a major and emotional investment on the part of fans. Like a song of ice and fire by George R. Martin. There's like, isn't Wheel of Time? I don't want to get it wrong, but one of those is like has been finished by someone else. I am such a completist, though, even about thing in my mind. Like it's probably on some level like fictional OCD or something. Sure. You know Sue Grafton, the novelist, Mr. Novelist, who wrote A is 4, B, S4, and she had this long-running series.

Big book and playing airports all over America. She passed away before writing the Z book. That's a bummer. Her last book is, I mean, it's a bummer for a hundred reasons. She seems like a wonderful person and left behind a family and a great legacy of literature. But she didn't get there. And she said that out. She's like, I'm going to write 26 books, I guess.

That's wild, right? Yeah. Makes me crazy. We should transition to talking about things on TV. I do want to say, because Chris asked me this off mic before we started, I'm going to have time to watch stuff and we're behind. The shows that I'm excited to check in on, either for Thursday or Monday or a combination of the two, Insecure is back for third season.

I love that show. I'm very eager to watch it. You should check out the recapables, Trayvon, Alison Herman, and Michael Peters to recapables on that one, yeah. Also nice to see a show really rise to its moment. Like that's kind of a, it's almost old-fashioned that insecure is in its third season and everyone's like, oh, this is great now. And it has a whole community behind it. Lodge 49, interesting show we've heard some things about on AMC. And then it's airing on AMC with Better Call Saul, a show that you are a season behind on, but I will.

I'm getting caught up, actually. Are you? It's good, right? It's great. It's Better Call Saul. It's like, it's almost like too good to remark upon, but I like, I don't mean that to be, like, faint praise. No, it's just brilliantly engineered excellence. and although I will be interested to see,

I loved watching that show. We have to talk about it though because like this, it is one of the most interesting examples of, you know, IP colliding with originality and this idea that this like train is hitting the Breaking Bad station pretty soon, or soon enough, you know?

So we will get to all those things. And a couple of other things coming in August. We obviously have Ozark coming back. That's why I'm leaving, honestly. And Jack Ryan will be on Amazon. So there's a lot of stuff coming. And that, I guess, leads us up to talking about the content wars. So why don't we take a quick break to hear from our sponsor,

and we'll be back and we'll kind of go through all these networks. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by UDEMI. UDEMI is the largest and most accessible online learning marketplace with the most courses, teachers, and opportunities for students everywhere around the globe. UDEMI has over 65,000 courses from coding to comic book art, available anywhere on their website and app. So whether you're at home, at the desk, on the computer, or using their app, UDEMI gives you access to new knowledge wherever you are. UDEMI is a great learning tool and has helped students all over the world improve their skills, their careers, and their lives.

I've been dabbling, dabbling, we're trying to learn another language, and I've been checking out some of these UDEMI courses, and they're really awesome. They have beginner-level courses, especially for someone, you know, like me who doesn't have a ton of time. It's great to be able to just access on the fly. So I recommend if you've been thinking about learning a new trade, a new field of knowledge, a new skill, check out UDEMI. Go to UD-E.m-Y-slash-watch right now, and you get 90% off when you sign up for classes. And make sure you download their app for your phone so you can stream your studies wherever you are. That's U-D-M-Y-slash-W-D-E-D-E-D-M-Y-slash-watch. Greenwald, we're back.

I just want to say also before we get into the real conversation here, that we have these shirts, man, and they're like a hot property. I love this. Watch t-shirts. It says, great job, Bransky on it. You can get them at ringer.com slash shop.

The last time we had them, we sold it out pretty quick. So cop a shirt if you want it. It's quite lovely. That color would really complement your beard. Well, a compliment my tan. I have like a tan now, so my eyes are popping.

So maybe that, I don't know if it would be too intense. You look, you know, you look a little ruddy. Like you've been out, You've been out doing some, like, work with the dog soldiers. That's what you look like. That's what you think? Yeah. Is that a compliment?

You're smiling so big right now. You want... This is a compliment for you. I don't like ruddy. Like Irish washerwoman? No, first of all. Clean clothes is never something to be ashamed of. No, I just mean, like, you know, in movies when people, like, smugglers land the plane at the

airfield cut out of the jungle somewhere? Yeah. And there's the guy in all khaki waiting for the delivery. Yeah, Jeff Fahy, he's there? That's you. Okay. That's ruddy. That's what I'm picturing.

Okay. So what I did is I basically broke down a bunch of these networks and talked a little bit, we want to talk a little bit about where they are right now. Jeff Faye? Yeah. You still got it. Frank, man. I love it.

And then we're not going to talk about Netflix. Here's why. Okay. Everybody is reacting to Netflix, whether consciously or unconsciously. And a lot of these networks have explicitly stated, they've figured out their line that they're going to use in opposition to Netflix. is something that you noticed coming out of each network's presentation at the TCA, the television critic association. Yeah, because typically what happens is network presidents show up at the TCA's and they give a sort of

state of the union speech about their network, but also about the state of television in general. And this is an act sort of popularized by FX as John Landgraf, who coined, you know, peak TV, I think, right, at this. He's also, in return, was dubbed the mayor of TV. The mayor TV and came back with another chapter of this sort of long-running commentary about the state of television that he has now dubbed

the Gilded Age of television which we're going to get into. But now Casey Blois from HBO does it and David Nevins does it and David Madden, I believe, from AMC does it and everybody is kind of giving their spiel. And increasingly what you're hearing is there is, we're at a moment of scale

so everybody is producing a ton of stuff and if they're not, they're going to be. They're doing that in response to Netflix and what they see as pretty soon Netflix. I mean, Netflix is already producing an unprecedented amount of original content across docs, non-scripted, scripted, and movies.

Every category, yeah. Right. But that's, so places like HBO, places like FX, places like AMC, have to sort of re-contextualize themselves in the face of that. Now, Andy and I in the past maybe year or so have been like, huh, you know, it's like, what's up, what's going on with the FX now?

Or like, what's going on with it? Like, we kind of just are like, Those are just television networks. But there's something about the last couple of weeks where I feel like they've at least represented themselves as, yeah, we're a television network and we are curators or we are this in the face of that.

So I kind of want to just go through a couple of these networks. FX is one that I think is pretty interesting. We haven't talked a ton about their shows in a while. I'm sure, you know, since obviously Atlanta was something that we talked about quite a bit and taboos remains near and dear to my heart. And trust, but we didn't, you know,

it fell off, both in terms of quality and also our commentary about it. But I wanted to talk a little bit about their presentation. So Landgraf gave this speech at TCA's called and basically dubbed this era the Gilded Age. And this is a quote from him, the number of new series I've seen announced just this week, including ours alone, makes me suspect that the Golden Age of Television has become the gilded age of television. There is an epic battle between various now, very large companies that are going to be competing in the streaming business.

And as long as that competition is red hot, and as long as those services are scaling up, I think there's likely to be a fairly substantial investment, even increasing investment in scripted content. So I think my earlier estimates that Peaked TV would have peaked are wrong now. I think it's a ways away. And in almost response to that, FX announced a frankly mouth-watering slate. Yes. This was classic FX, which, you know, I think it's because of the stability of the leadership over there,

Landgraf at the top, and Nick Grad and Eric Shrier just below him. And Grad's been on the pod before he. and Gina Baleon. They are a very consistently managed company. I mean, obviously, we'll see what happens with the Disney sale. But one of the benefits of that has allowed them to basically stay the course. And they did not overreact or underreact to all the upheaval in television in the last two years. And I think acknowledged well before we even noticed the potential disadvantages of the heavily invested Autour model that they

had trailblazed, right? And we talked about that, that by heavily investing in Louis C.K. And Noah Hawley and Ryan Murphy, you run the risk of having a year where those people don't really feel like doing their signature shows because you've encouraged them not to. Or you run the risk of Louis CK becoming, you know, news coming out about Louis CK and severing your business relationship with him or Ryan Murphy going to Netflix. It does seem like they were aware of that behind the scenes, leading to a classic FX day at TCA where Landgraft can stroke his chin and speak very wisely about the state of play, and then, you know, sort of politely cough and, you know, almost as if businesses beneath them unveil this dope slate. Yes. That seems ready to compete with everybody

on FX's turn. So FX is a really good example, as is HBO, who we will get to, of in the face of scale, they're eventizing. They made every show that they announced feel special. It's not, you know, even Fargo, which they announced is returning for a fourth season, it would was the splashiest possible announcement for Fargo, not in terms of like the scale of the announcement or anything, but just if I said,

hey, Fargo's going to come back. You're like, oh, cool, cool, cool. I love Fargo. If I told you Fargo's coming back and it's starring Chris Rock and it's set in 1950s Kansas City and it's about a crime war between two criminal syndicates,

one Italian, one African American, you're watching it. Yeah, and because the other thing about this is no one is going to say this. I have not spoken to No about this. I've not spoken to Nick or anyone at FX about this. But this does seem like the best case scenario version for Fargo,

which I'm not alone in saying this, I thought went a little too heady in its third season. It did not entirely work for me. The second season was the most beautiful marriage of head and heart. Sure. It was, you know, it became, look, it was a gang show,

and that's what people really like watching on TV. This version of it, with this story, in this era, with that actor, they waited for the right moment. It makes the decision to let people call their shot. It makes it look incredibly smart. Yeah, and then they basically announced a series of event-style programming,

Shogun, which is about as event as you can get. It's an old-school miniseries. It was a huge miniseries back in the 80s with Richard Chamberlain. They're remaking it. It's set in Feudal Japan. They've also got devs, the Alex Garland show, starring Nick Offerman,

about a mysterious sci-fi, a mysterious software development. And Sonoya Mizuna, who was in Ex Machina. Yeah. And I believe was in the same. suit at the end of annihilation as well. This is the first fruit from what I'm sure was a very lucrative investment in Alex Garland with an overall deal just announced a few months ago. Yeah. So you've got Shogun, you got devs. The thing I'm most excited for possibly is the

untitled Gwen Verdon Bob Fosse show with Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell, which is executive produced by Lynn Manwell Miranda and directed by Thomas Kale, obviously the team behind Hamilton. I don't, you know, people have listened to this podcast for a while, know that all that jazz is one of my favorite movies. And the idea of Sam Rockwell taking on that role that Roy Shider, you know, did so well, it'll be a fascinating experiment. You know, and the other thing that I'll say here is that this might be, again, I know nothing.

I know no tea leaves here, but there are some of the speculation about the Disney Fox merger, not merger, the purchase, where Disney was buying the Fox assets, there's a catastrophic version of this where the stable culture we discuss at FX is shaken to its core or picked clean for parts. But there's another version of it

where Disney looks at what it has and what it doesn't have and what it doesn't have is a prestige arm. Which they've suggested that they will invest in FX and Fox Searchley. And if that's the case, FX is putting its absolute best face forward saying we can't compete on this,

we can't compete on that, we're not going to do a cake baking show, but we will get an newly minted Oscar winner and Michelle Williams making something that is going to gobble up headline space on culture blogs. It's going to dominate Twitter. It's going to win awards. And on top of that, it might be really good.

Yeah. It's smart. FX has always been a... I think the FX had gone through a period of transition and they've arrived at something. Another network that has obviously gone through a period of transition, even though they've had a consistent bell cow in the Walking Dead franchise is AMC. And AMC is interesting because I think that they were

accidental forerunners in prestige TV. I don't mean to belittle their accomplishments, but having Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and the early season of The Walking Dead, all in around the same era, gave them this foothold. And then I don't know that we really feel like they've done what we'd hoped with it.

You know what I mean? I think that they've, they've in recent years, fallen a little short of expectations given where they were, say, 10 years ago. Yeah, and I think the line on AMC has been, they don't have the ammunition. You know, it's AMC networks does not have the deep-pocketed corporate overlord. They don't have a phone company behind them. They don't have endless,

apparently, investors' faith and capital behind them. So they were in many ways the best positioned for the future, but what they really were was the best positioned for the previous era. Yeah. You know, they were in front of everyone in terms of the Autour era, in terms of of allowing talented people to take the scripts that they use to get other jobs and make them, which is the case of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. They took the chance on Walking Dead when FX famously passed. It was originally developed for broadcast TV, which is shocking to imagine now. It's not a sad story.

I don't know why I'm starting to use that kind of terminology. It does seem like there was a missed opportunity, despite them consistently making good programming or good programming decisions. There's been incredible stuff on Sundance. the investments they've made in foreign co-productions has paid off for them. You know, the... Well, we really liked...

I really liked McMafia. McMafia was a recent example of that. And also... Honorable Woman. Well, Honorable Woman, one of our favorite shows the last few years. No, I'm thinking of the La Care...

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, Night Manager from a couple of years ago and they'll have a little drummer girl coming. So let's get into that because David Madden did a little bit of his own landgrafing by sort of positioning AMC as prestige popcorn.

That was his quote. And if you look at their slate through that lens, it's really interesting. It's this idea of trying to pick off people who want genre stuff that's a little intellectually stimulating. That's intellectually stimulating.

So you have the Walking Dead Empire. You have Better Call Saul, which I think is like breaking... It may never hit breaking bad levels of zeitgeist capturing, but it will probably continue to develop an audience as it stays on Netflix.

And it's a valuable chip for future streaming libraries. And it's a valuable chip. McMafia is going to come back for a second season. I'm happy about that, but I know that some people thought it was kind of empty, but I didn't. You know what I mean?

And then there's a couple of things that they've announced. One thing that was pretty surprising to me was that they got this Jason Segal show, which sounds really interesting. It's an anthology series called Dispatches from Elsewhere, and it's about a group of people, unrelated people who discover a, this is just the log line,

a puzzle that sort of pulls, back the veil on what they see in real life. Doesn't that sound a little bit like Utopia? A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. That was famously going to be adapted by

Gillian Flynn and David Fincher for HBO. There's a budget, fallout over budget. It is now straight to series at Amazon. I think it's about people who find a graphic novel that unlock something. Yeah, yeah. So Segal hasn't done a TV show since How I Met Your Mother. He's obviously a really talented guy. So it would be really curious to see that.

They also are doing a, horror show called Nosephiratu, which is from Stephen King's son Joe Hill. And that was part of their script to series development, which is essentially they set up writers' rooms for these possible shows, and they look at multiple scripts.

Rather than, hey, write one thing, shoot a pilot, we'll all take a look at the pilot and decide whether to move forward as a series. They look at it as, okay, we feel like we know where this is going and this is solid. Let's move forward with it. One thing that AMC has been in front of with good results and maybe not mixed

results has been trying to adapt to the climate within their financial situation. And one thing that they got roasted for during their height of their success with Walking Dead was the sort of bake-off where they would have people prepare tons of material and scripts and whatever, and then they would present them and then they would say, okay, you get to make a show. What you're speaking to about basically funding the short-term expense of building a writer's room, writing the scripts, it sort of strikes a middle ground between, you know, the older model, which is what I'm doing right now, make a pilot, and then you see, or the straight to series, which is just, you know, which is the real hammer blow that these deep-pocketed companies can do because they can afford the loss. When they get a Reese Swerthor's spoon attached to something, it goes straight to series or whatever. And they can just, they can eat it if it doesn't work, basically.

Yeah. But that's something they do often. I think they did that with Lodge 49, which we're going to talk about soon. And they did it with Strange Angel and then decided not to make the show. and then that show is made by, picked up by and made by CBS All Access. Oh, interesting. AMC also notably has Little Drumgirl, which we mentioned. It's a John LaCarrie adaption adaptation with Florence Pugh and Alexander Scarsgaard,

and it's directed by friggin' park chan Wook. Sometimes I'm just like, how the fuck does this happen? You know what I mean? It just seems like they're playing roulette with my mind, and they're just like, yeah, you like this and you like this? Let's put it all together. I can't wait for this, though. I have to say the one thing, and I wish I could speak on it more, one of the things that has blown my mind switching sides in the TV business is when companies, you know, part the curtain a little bit and they're like, I'll take a meeting with someone and they'll say, well, we've got this going on. And it does seem like genius bingo, where they're like, we have this writer whom you worship working on this bizarre idea of a period piece. Oh, and this guy who's won the palm door a can is going to direct. And it's okay. And it's so much more speculative.

than even things that we talk about here having been announced and thinking they're never going to happen. Sure. This stuff is fueling the business right now. By the way, that's why we're not doing Apple for this because I don't know even what to say. I don't know what to even say or do about Apple either. I don't, until they make a television show,

then we'll talk. Okay. I still, I still, and I say this with expectation and excitement and affection, I think they're great at the business they're in, but at that currently is the press release business. And when they make a show and they explain how we're going to watch it, we'll talk.

I also just want to mention that I'm excited for this show that's coming on AMC called In the Middle of the Street, which is a West Philadelphia set family drama written by Coleman Domingo. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, I mean, David Madden, who took over AMC networks from Joel Stillerman, who went to Hulu and has since departed from Hulu. I sat with him once. He's a very nice guy, very smart guy. And it was interesting that when AMC had an opening, they went to a veteran manager who prior to AMC was in charge of scripted at Fox. and that might bring some of the popcorn elements

of prestige popcorn you were talking about. Let's talk about HBO. Yeah. Obviously, I guess, it's worth mentioning that HBO and the ringer have had and have had a relationship. We've been, as many people know. I like Facebook. What's the relationship status?

Well, no, I mean, obviously Bill has a relationship with HBO and Andy and I were on HBO, albeit briefly. I mean, we basically had the same run. is luck, though. I thought we're on the bubble. Yeah. Oh, we're not, are you being brought back? For what it's worth, we were never officially canceled. That's true. I haven't really seen this sort of save after the Thrones billboard campaign that we've seen for like...

Yeah, where's your hashtag, bro? Like, just like the people who loved the Naomi Wad show Gypsy fucked around and got a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Like, hello, we're right here. Obviously, the AT&T deal went through. There was an initial dust storm about John Stanky's speech to HBO employees at a kind of town hall about the culture shift. I love his name is John Stanky. It does sound like you're making that up. But there was one thing that he said at that town hall that I wanted to bring up. It was basically a conversation between him and Richard Plipler.

And he brought up one thing that I think is something to keep an eye on as we go forward in the next couple of years. And it's this. A broad theme that I believe is occurring in the industry is there aren't going to be an unlimited number of platforms that have direct-to-consumer relationships. There will be a select number of platforms. of direct consumer relationships. It's not going to be 10, and it probably won't be two,

but is it going to be, now is it going to be 8, 6, or 4? I don't know if it's 4, we need to be one of the 4. And if it's 6, we need to be one of the 6. That's crucial. Does it need to be one of the 8? I just want to follow this through. I assume so. But the point is that we're seeing this sort of huge arms race going on.

Someone's going to lose the arms race. I don't even know who it really could be. You know what I mean? but there will be in an era of consolidation at some point. Yep. Right? Like they will bring the good stuff over, drop the bad stuff, and we will be left with five things to choose from.

And maybe it's your Disney over the top app that also, and you get ESPN over the top as well. There's Apple. There's Netflix. And then there's this AT&T Time Warner thing. And then after that, I don't know. You know, Hulu obviously. Well, Hulu will be Disney.

Hulu will be Disney. There's a lot of stuff out there, but now outside of that. And that's where the FX is, I guess FX goes into Disney, but AMCs. But AMCs and stars, that's where the real question marks start to come. Right. That being said. And also, there's the whole scripts business, by the way, which is unscripted mostly, so we don't talk about it. But, like, there was an article on Grub Street that I recommend a week or two ago about

what's going on with Food Network. Uh-huh. And it was pretty interesting. The head of the network was just like, look, I'm not. in the television business. I'm not in the teaching people how to cook business or to like good food business. Like people, enough people like watching home cooks screw up cupcakes that were fine. That was basically the subtext because we don't even talk about the fact that Netflix, in its spare time, was like, I'm just going to eat your whole life too. Yeah. I'm going to just eat the heart out of you

with from the high end with like ugly delicious and chef's table and the lower end like nailed it. Yeah. So it is happening to every. one and they're responding in different ways. Well, I want to talk about what HBO is doing in response to that. But first, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the Black Tucks. Wedding season is upon us. And when you're bringing a date, you want to look fresh.

That's where the Blacktucks.com comes in. It lets you rent awesome suits and tuxitos in all styles online. With the Black Tucks, you can take your style to the next level in funky, cool options like the Emerald Shawl Tuxedo. And then you blow it out for your big ones. time event and with free home try on, you can feel the quality and see the fit months before your event. After ordering, your suit will arrive 14 days before your event. If anything is less than perfect, the black tux will send you a new replacement right away. You wear it, you turn heads,

and then you send it back three days later. It's that easy. Shipping is free both ways. We've been using black tucks for any of our like after shows that we've been doing where we have to get dolled up. And we love the experience. You can pick cool suits. You get the tucks. Who really needs to buy a tux? you know, like unless you're a member of the Roy family, you don't need a tuxedo. That's right. Yeah, so just go to the Black Tucks and get souped up. To get $20 off your purchase, visit the blacktucks.com slash watch. That's the blacktucks.com slash watch.

For $20 off your first purchase, the Black Tucks premium rental suits and tuxedos delivered. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by ADT. Is your home an ADT home? Get ADT and help protect against break-ins fire and carbon monoxide. For a limited time, get ADT's lowest rate starting at just $28.99 a month from the most trusted name in home security. That's just a dollar a day. ADT is the first security company to help keep you safe at home and when you're on the go with the new ADT Go app. Not to mention ADT Go also offers a family locator private messaging, automatic check-ins, and safe driving reports.

It even includes an SOS button with 24-7 emergency response, and you get ADT Go with a purchase of any security system. Go to ADT.com slash podcast to take advantage of ADT's lowest rate. ADT tested, trusted, proven with 36-month monitoring contract, early termination installation fees apply, excludes taxes and fees applies to traditional services only, certain markets excluded, licenses available at ADT.com. Okay, so we're talking about how HBO is responding to this moment. And, you know, it's interesting what's come out since the merger because there's this piece on R-Deaf, re-def

Is R-D-F your pet name for it? No, it's just like that's how R-D-E-F is the name of the site. Oh. But it's written by Matthew Ball and it's basically this huge piece about the state of HBO and where it's going, a multi-part piece. And one just random detail in there

is this tidbit that he said that they had to pass on Globe for financial reasons. Wow. Yeah. And that's an interesting idea because we think of HBO as just this like flush star-studded every, you know, Game of Thrones, West World, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it.

But we were talking about that in terms of succession, because it's a show where it is filmed in New York. That's where it's filmed. Yes. But then they just decided to also shoot an episode. They were in that manner for three weeks. Then they shot an episode in New Mexico. And then, yeah, then they shot two or three episodes

in a mansion outside of London. Yeah. So I don't know whether HBO is back. That's a stupid thing to say. But there is definitely been an uptick in them throwing their weight around a little bit. They've got Damien Lentloff's The Watchman. That was announced a while ago.

They won what was apparently a bidding war for Joss Whedon's return to television with the Nevers, which is a Victorian set Joss Whedon show. So add in people with powers and, you know. Maybe some banter? Yes. And they've also got the first show written by J.J. Abramson's fringe, Demiomond, which is apparently about a family and a portal to another dimension. is J.J. A.

Is your mystery box? Yeah. That being said, there's also the undoing, which is a collaboration between David E. Kelly and Nicole Kidman, Lovecraft Country,

which is Jordan Peel's show, My Brilliant Friend, the adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, camping with Jennifer Garner from Nina. I'm waiting for you to say the words I want to hear, the new Pope.

The New Pope. I'm getting to, and then they have, a lot of these networks don't have this, and HBO has returning series. Now, sometimes they take a while to come back,

and sometimes they may not be as good as they were when they were there, but they've got the final season of Game of Thrones on the first half of next year. And then they've got True Detective Season 3, and they've got the new Pope, and they've got Big Little Lies Season 2 with Merrill Street. Those are like, now all of a sudden you look at that, and you're like, oh, they have like a show,

and you have to imagine Succession. I think Kieran Colkin talked about they're going to get back together in January to shoot the next season. So you're talking about five, six shows that are big conversation pieces. Now, they have a ton of work to do on scale, on how they're going to program their app, what they're going to be as like an offline kind of off-the-box kind of entity. Yeah, because, again, if we're talking about Netflix's effect,

it's not just in making these giant swings and scripted. It's the fact that Netflix is also just nibbling, nibbling, nibbling away. The stand-up comedy business has the focus seems to have shifted to Netflix. Their documentary business is just getting warmed up. And those are the kinds of things that have also been bread and butter for HBO and help their content library remain peerless. So they are fighting a lot of, they're fighting wars on a lot of fronts right now.

Exactly. HBO and Showtime have always sort of been, you get HBO, you get Showtime, you know, you get cable. And they're the sort of grandfathers of this whole shit. And Showtime is in an interesting spot. We've talked a little bit about this.

We mentioned that Dazes and Mero were going to Showtime. We mentioned, there was another, you really were with Smilf. There was a couple other things. Just, oh, well, billions, obviously. But they also have these other shows like Black Monday. Well, that's how I was going to mention this.

Upcoming Slate. Oh, let's talk upcoming slate. Yeah, so they have Black Monday, which is an 80s Wall Street crash show. Said in My Sweet Spot. Yes. Starring our friend Paul Shear and other people, Andrew Reynolds. Don Cheadle, Andrew Reynolds, Regina Hall. It was created by David Caspi, who made happy endings along with Seth Rogen and

Evan Goldberg, among other people. They have kidding with Jim Carrey, which looks like it. Michelle Gondry show. Yeah, it looks like it cost a lot. It just looks like a movie. And this is the thing with this new slate of Showtime stuff is no one show exemplifies. I think we've had a delay.

When Prestige TV was first hitting, we're like, well, this is where the 70s America cinema is going to, the spirit of 70s American cinema is going to be alive in prestige television. And then we talked about how the genre movies of the 90s and early aughts that we grew up with will now move to the small screen because everything is IP and superheroes on the big screen. I don't know that we actually saw that. This Escape from Datamura exemplifies that to me.

And it's on Showtime, and it's a miniseries. And it looks like a movie. This is the thing is like as the small screen has started to resemble the big screen more and more with these filmmakers and these, frankly, otorist filmmakers, I feel like when you watch these shows now, you're like, oh, this is the movies. We are getting, and now, a lot of these shows fall victim to too much fat.

You know, and we will see with some of these limited series, whether that was an eight-episode show that should have been six or a six that should have been three. But for now, just watching the trailer, Escape from Dana Moore, looks incredible. It looks incredible. It also looks like it understands a very specific tone, the hardest tone to do, which is serious but funny.

absurd, but engaging. And increasingly, and I say this is someone who's making a big bet that TV will support this, and audiences will find it, it seems like TV can do that. Sure. You know, that you can show audiences a lot of different, a lot of different speed pitches, basically. Succession is a perfect example of that. Exactly. And although that was, even for me, in adjustment, it took a minute and sort of catch up to it

and understand what was coming. when it premiered last year, obviously I was in ecstasyes for other reasons, but Twin Peaks is unquestionably a win for Showtime. I think when they announced it, everyone looked at that and thought, well, it's sort of a strange home for it, but Showtime needed to get into, you know, the rush on reboots and also some existing IP, get some good press, get into that kind of get back into that prestigious business that everyone else seemed. to be in. What it was really accomplishing for the network, I think, was hanging a sign outside of its door saying, we're open for business. We're ready to get weird, to play

around, to experiment. And then post Twin Peaks, you get things like Patrick Melrose, which we talked about briefly. You get the Sasha Baron Cohen show, which we haven't talked about at all. And then they still have the thrum of Homeland, which is going into its last season, shameless, which is going into its next season. Ray Donovan.

Billions, which is going to go for another five seasons, probably. They are diversified. in a way that people have been agitating for them to do for quite some time in a way that I that seems impressive now because they have a smaller slightly smaller slate they have to when they hit they have to hit big so Halo is their big Game of Thrones play and we talked we did a whole podcast about that if that doesn't hit then that's going to be a very expensive miss step yeah but you know it's it's impressive to be to be developing on two tracks I mean that we didn't do we mention city on a hill

the Kevin Bacon drama I mean that's uh Aldous Hodge and And Kevin Bacon, it's from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and it's about the 90s in Boston and a, I think a district attorney and a FBI agent who joined forces to clean up Boston. And it's got a Culkin. That's got Rory. Yeah. We talk about making big bets.

So we end with Amazon. When are we talking about USA's brilliant investment in a young, hungry, because he didn't eat breakfast really. Go on. I decided not to do USA for, you know, what do they call that? Incessuous. Conflict of interest, that's right. But with Amazon, and I really like, you know, they have the Romanoffs, they have Homecoming from our buddy Sam, they have Mrs. Ms. Maisel season two. Yes. I'm more excited about that than basically any other show.

And then they have fucking Lord of the Rings coming at some point in the distant future. They feel more like a movie studio to me. They feel like the bets that they're making are the biggest bets you can make. You put Julia Roberts in a show, you make Lord of the Rings. That's like you're basically competing with like Warner Brothers.

Well, I think, yes, but I think that's because their TV business has been in flux since the minute it was introduced. When they put Roy Price in charge of it, Roy Price has stepped down due to allegations of misbehavior. The decisions he made

were clearly driven by splashiness, potentially by ego or peak, like making it deal with Woody Allen, that's not a necessarily, in 2016, wherever he did it, regardless of the politics

around making the move, that is not a business decision. That's a press release generating, I want to work with a filmmaker who's made great films decision. You know what I mean? Jen Salky is now in charge there, and she's been in charge since April,

and she came from NBC. And so the decisions that will be made now for the next year that we'll start to see play out in the next year and a half to two years, that will say more about it. because the blockbuster part of it, which they have the ability to do, they have the money to do it.

They have a whole separate department now reporting to Jen Salki, but a department devoted to event series to the biggest possible things. Sure. But, you know, maybe this is the best way to cap off the whole conversation. If our big homie from AT&T was saying there's only going to be four companies or six companies, look, Apple's going to be one of them.

And Amazon's going to be one of them. And Amazon's going to be one of them. We know that. Those slots are taken. Apple, we're joking saying there, like being dilatantish about this, they can afford to be. They have a market cap of a trillion dollars. They can continue to sign Reese Witherspoon for shows they're going to cost $100 million a season. Never make them. Yeah. Can sign them to whatever room they have the new Newton in

and not even blink. That's not what AMC can do. Yeah. So it is incredibly difficult to try to compare these things. You know, it is almost like making a separate category for movies that are good in movies that are popular. Something we forgot to talk about. Do you want to do a riff on that before we go? Just, I mean, what is, there's not much to say now because everybody's had their say about it, and The Ringer has covered this very well. And Sean Fantasy, the sage of old Hollywood, has written really intelligently and insightfully about this. Yeah, Sean's piece today is, is awesome. If you guys have a, if you want to know what is going on here, read Sean's piece. But it is so incredibly stupid and reactionary and such an unforced error that I have to say, here's the only take that I

wanted to make about it. This sounds like something the Emmys would do. For real. I'm surprised that the Emmys have continued to resist caving in creating a separate category for Best Broadcast Show or Best Show 22 episodes versus 10 episodes as many, many people, deep-pocketed people, not as deep-pocketed as Netflix and Amazon, which is probably why they haven't done it, but have lobbied them to do to increase the scope. Because while Amazon has the most money, CBS definitely still has the most viewers and their shows rarely get nominated. This is, like, it just, I always thought that Emmys, the Emmys would, would cave, they would cater, because there used to be this sort of, you know, younger sibling thing about the TV

where if a movie, if Al Pacino showed up, he would get an award just for being there, just for sitting in the audience. But there's that streak at the Oscars that I make fun of every year and people say, you make fun of this every year, you need new material. And I say, good point, but I'm going to drag it out again, where they have those long things where the movies are like, here's some movies, you might like movies, here's some people talking about their favorite movies, movies. And we're like, we know you're movies. You know how I feel about this. You know I disagree with you. I don't know how you disagree with that. Yeah, I like the movie

montages. I thought you were saying you like the idea of a popular Oscar. Oh, I don't. It's like a participation trophy. It's idiotic. I don't think they need to do this. I don't think, I guess I'm just like hit a point where I'm tired of optimization and I'm tired of like people trying to like fix it, you know, and I get it, but this wasn't something, the Oscars can only represent the movies that come out if the popular movies aren't that good. Everybody wants to nominate like Logan or, you know, like they, I know Logan only got nominated for screenplay, but like there is a deep desire to nominate Black Panther for Best Picture. It probably was going to happen. It was going to happen.

But could I also say, especially in an era where the ceiling has been lowered for everybody in media. Lady Bird is popular. Lady Bird made a lot of money for an independent film. The Oscars nominating Lady Bird made it a lot more money and got a lot more people to watch something really good. More people watched Lady Bird than watched Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for example, probably, or Patriot. I'm just trying to name Amazon shows that they spent more money on than A24 spent on Lady Bird. Not because those aren't good also, but because what's popular? And if you are so popular that we don't even need to have this conversation

if you've made $700 million, why do you need a trophy? Why do you also need a trophy? It's like you're already a reality star show. Why do you have to be president? It's ABC, isn't it? It's ABC being like we invested a lot of money in this. We want this to be a digestible show.

We want it to have a guarantee that the biggest movies of the year are going to make appearances outside of technical categories. But it's just so weird because Disney owns Black Panther and Disney owns ABC. Jimmy Kimmel puts on a good show now. I mean, he's got that job for as long as he wants it,

and he's very good at it. It's an entertaining show. The cast of Black Panther will show up. They will look incredible in their outfits. They will present awards. We will see the familial spirit between them that we love so much on the red carpet and in the movie. Why do they also need to...

It's so bizarre, and it's such a self-inflicted wound that it's crazy. It weakens... We're talking about awards, but it weakens all of this going forward in a very strange way. But look, that may be a good capper for a show that was basically about how TV is only growing. That's true. Sorry, movies. You're done.

You're done movies. We'll be back Thursday. Let's say we'll talk Lodge and Better Call on Thursday? Insecure. I'd like to get into also. It's dealer's choice, man. You're the one on the road. I just want to say it's been a pleasure doing a podcast with you in person before I got the eagle tattoos all

over my body. And I'm not talking Doug Peterson. I will be remote for the next few weeks, but I'll be here. All right, brother. Great job, Branskins. Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by ADT, introducing ADT Go, the new family mobile safety app and service. Get ADT go with 24-7 emergency response with any ADT security system. Go to ADT.com slash podcast to learn more

today with 36-month monitoring contract. Early termination installation fees apply certain markets excluded. licenses available at ADT.com. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Hotel Tonight. If you love to score amazing deals at incredible hotels, you will love Hotel Tonight. Hotel Tonight partners with hotels to help them sell their unsold rooms, helping you find sweet deals at cool top-rated hotels. Even though their name is Hotel Tonight, you can also book in advance for spontaneous weekend,

getaways, staycations, three-day weekends, road trips, business bookings, and more. It's easy. Book hotels in 10 seconds and just three taps in a swipe. Get the Hotel Tonight app now. Start scoring amazing deals. and incredible hotels. That's Hotel Tonight, the only booking app you need.