It’s apparently time to ask how long the golden age can stay golden. “All those weird little shows that streaming executives used to want to take a risk on a few years ago—it’s just not happening anymore,” says a writer who specializes in prestige television. “You have to find ways to Trojan-horse that into big blockbuster genre projects that they will greenlight, because if you front-load a pitch with anything that feels too boundary-pushing these days, it’s just an automatic no.”
Wasn’t streaming supposed to be a wild new frontier of no-rules TV? Taboos broken, formats melted and recombined, artists let off the leash?
The reality is more complicated. Since streamers came to dominate the landscape, the assumption has been that broadcast TV is seriously endangered—that it’s struggling to reach new generations of viewers, partly because of its risk-averse rules and its devotion to broad, inoffensive content. That existential threat is real. But some see a worrisome irony emerging: The streamers are acting more and more like the cautious industry they revolutionized. Streamers are pursuing what they call “elevated broadcast,” making sitcoms, dramas, procedurals, and reality TV central to their platforms. Some also appear to be pulling back from the challenging content that attracted audiences in hopes of scooping up every viewer the networks have left.
Insiders say streaming executives are becoming less adventurous—or more populist, depending on your point of view—because they’re spooked by the overcrowded market and uncertain about how to keep expanding (and retaining) their subscriber bases. Netflix’s stock price plunged after an earnings report projected a loss of 2 million global subscribers by June. A top executive there also said that they are exploring a lower-priced subscription that would include commercials. “I’m always a little bit worried that half the streamers will go away at a certain point,” says Alan Yang, cocreator of unconventional comedies like Netflix’s Master of None, Amazon’s Forever, and Apple TV+’s upcoming Loot. “Can the market sustain all of them spending the way they are and making the number of shows that they make?”
Netflix now abounds in escapist fare à la Emily in Paris and Love Is Blind. Amazon, famously the home of Transparent and Fleabag, dedicates an immense amount of money to epics like The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Paramount+ is building a universe around Taylor Sheridan, creator of the Western megahit Yellowstone. And Peacock is betting on pop culture reboots to reel in both the nostalgic older audience and younger viewers who respond to tried-and-true templates. “I hear this panic around the idea that some of these streamers are not going to exist in three years, and people get very conservative when that happens,” says a showrunner. “There’s a real directive to agents and writers to ‘broaden the appeal,’ which is crazily disheartening.”
The streaming industry pumps a staggering amount of content into our homes, including series in many languages, because the platforms have executives around the world commissioning shows designed to appeal to local audiences. So the concern is not that a drought of edgy, challenging content will arrive tomorrow. It’s more that the age of audacious streaming shows may be winding down.
“Are we not still in that golden moment? Is that over already?” says Netflix’s global head of TV Bela Bajaria, smiling. (The interview was conducted weeks prior to the streamer's earnings report.) “I don’t believe streaming is becoming network. We just have so many different kinds of shows that can be in so many different tones and formats. I look at shows on our slate that were really bold and distinct, like The Queen’s Gambit, Maid, Squid Game. Those things really resonated with an audience too.” Bajaria spent much of her career at CBS and Universal Studios, creating network (and later streaming) shows and championing series like The Mindy Project and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that drew outside conventional lines. She acknowledges that there’s a place on the streamer for shows that want to bring absolutely everyone into the tent and points to the postapocalyptic fantasy series Sweet Tooth as an example: “I agree that elevated broadcast is a thing.”
One industry insider says that Shonda Rhimes’s Bridgerton was a particular game changer. “I know that there’s a real push at Netflix to make other shows into that elevated broadcast sensibility because of its success,” says the source. Once the crown jewel of ABC, Rhimes knows how to create seductive, boundary-pushing hits. But she jumped at the chance to experiment with the costume-drama genre inside the streaming format. “What was cool that we could do on Netflix is tell a closed-ended tale: Here’s this season. Here’s a fully formed romance,” Rhimes told V.F. last year. “[On network] you have to take that romance and stretch it out for as many seasons as you possibly can and keep coming up with reasons why they’re having a new conflict.”
Network shows also have a fixed number of episodes per season, and episodes have a set number of minutes. Potential series are tested via pilot episodes. Shows are designed around advertising breaks and are expected to be widely appealing and uncontroversial. The word vajayjay became popularized after it was used in Rhimes’s own Grey’s Anatomy in order to get around ABC’s standards-and-practices executives, who wouldn’t let a fictional doctor say vagina.
Creating a hit network series once represented the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for creatives working in television, with their giant syndication deals that could set you up for life. Everybody dreamed of making the next Friends or Modern Family. And now? “There’s still a lot of money to be made in broadcast,” one insider says. “But the majority of creators don’t want to be working there if they don’t have to.” An executive producer recently hesitated to take a network gig: “I felt it would actually be damaging to my career if I had this credit on my résumé—especially because I’ve spent the last few years not doing that so I could have streaming credits.” Another showrunner talked about the extra income from network shows (which usually have more episodes than streaming shows) as a “distaste bonus.”
Young viewers do still watch network shows—not just classics like The Office but new breakout hits like ABC’s Abbott Elementary—except that they’re often watching them on streaming platforms. “I have a soul-crushing example of that,” says an exec named George Cheeks. His teenage nephew recently told him that his new favorite show was a comedy called Ghosts, about a young couple who inherit a haunted house. Cheeks pointed out that it was on CBS, to which his nephew replied, “What’s CBS?” Cheeks bursts out laughing as he recalls the conversation. “I am the CEO of CBS!” he says. “But he’s only seen it in streaming and had no idea that it actually existed on a broadcast network.”
The big four broadcast networks all have streamers of their own now, which allows them to capture more youthful viewers. Cheeks, who also oversees Paramount+, says the average age of people watching Survivor on CBS is 60—and 37 for those streaming it on Paramount+. He sees this as a good thing, saying, “We are reaching that unduplicated younger audience in streaming.”
If broadcast viewers are quickly approaching retirement, though, why don’t networks just focus all their energies on their streamers? Prepare to be shocked: money. A 30-second spot run during a popular broadcast show can still bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The economics of streaming are trickier, with the constant risk that subscribers will binge a favorite show and then cancel. So media companies are determined to wring every last drop out of broadcast, even as ratings continue to shrink. “What was 25 million viewers became 18 million viewers, which is now, like, 7 million viewers,” says a showrunner, “but [networks] don’t change the model, because they’re afraid to alienate the people that they have.”
Whatever they say about network TV, though, streaming executives are now devoted to replicating its successes because they feel a pressure to be all things to all people—to be superstores of programming. So Netflix has created (extremely popular) competition shows. Hulu has scooped up the Kardashians. And Amazon—immediately upon buying James Bond’s parent company, MGM—greenlighted a global competition called 007’s Road to a Million. Disney has chosen to move one of ABC’s top shows, Dancing with the Stars, from that network to Disney+. There are sure to be more developments like this, since unscripted fare costs less than premium drama. “There’s a high level of audience engagement in the elimination shows,” says Channing Dungey, the chairwoman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Studios. “So if some shows that promote engagement can be made at unscripted dollar prices, you’re doing really well.” Even live TV has come to the streamers. “Live has been a big part of our streaming strategy, whether it’s sporting events that we have on ESPN+ or the live-TV service that we have as part of Hulu,” says Disney streaming president Michael Paull. Disney+ hosted its first livestreamed event in February: the 94th Academy Awards nominations.
Increasingly, streamers are even rethinking one of their most lifestyle-altering inventions: the binge. Instead of dropping an entire series all at once, they’re rationing out episodes weekly as in days of yore, so that viewers have time to digest—and buzz about—each one. One television writer says his teenagers didn’t even understand the concept of appointment TV until the addictive Euphoria began streaming on HBO Max; now they watch it live en masse.
The notion that streamers are seeking elevated broadcast makes Susan Rovner chuckle. She’s the chair of entertainment content for NBC-Universal television and streaming, overseeing original content for NBC’s broadcast network, cable channels, and its two-year-old streaming service, Peacock. “I love hearing that,” she says. “Definitely that applies to Peacock.”
Rovner—along with Frances Berwick, NBCUniversal chairwoman of entertainment networks—is in charge of entertainment across NBCUniversal’s whole television landscape, so she can find a home for a variety of content. “There are some shows that are smaller and a bit more niche that we’re really proud of and we absolutely love, but we are definitely taking some big swings on shows with that broad appeal,” she says, name-checking Bel-Air, Peacock’s reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. On the other hand, Joe vs. Carole (a scripted take on the duo made infamous by the Netflix docuseries Tiger King) was initially supposed to be shared between NBC, USA, and Peacock. “As we got into the development of the story,” says Rovner, “it was very clear the content would be watered down if it stayed on NBC.”
The network-streamer relationship is similarly symbiotic for Craig Erwich, who oversees both Hulu and ABC’s broadcast programming. Shows like The Rookie and The Good Doctor air on ABC’s broadcast schedule, and then hours later they’re available on Hulu: “So right off the bat, we have elevated broadcast television on Hulu.” That leaves room for more niche programming made expressly for the streamers—“shows that have a very dedicated fan base, that don’t have to be for everybody,” like the irreverent, auteurish Ramy. Hulu also has the benefit of streaming content from FX, the high-end cable network behind Atlanta and Better Things.
It would be a savage irony if streaming, so long a haven for surprising and sometimes disturbing visions, evolved into a younger version of the networks. This scenario is still a ways off, to be clear. Amazon’s Small Axe, Apple TV+’s Severance, and HBO Max’s Station Eleven would all be unimaginable on a conventional network. But can platforms under financial pressure in an increasingly competitive marketplace continue to support this kind of work? Or will only a small number of privileged creators with overall deals be allowed to make work that doesn’t slot into the four-quadrant formula? Dungey points to HBO’s Euphoria as proof that there’s room for dark, edgy material on TV, but says she does see a shift at Netflix, where she was previously an executive. “They came out of the gate really looking to sort of zig where everybody else was zagging, and I think that they have been moving a little bit more toward the mainstream in some of their choices.”
Netflix, which relies heavily on mysterious internal metrics, has upset some fans and showrunners by unceremoniously canceling some unorthodox shows. Rachel Shukert’s critically beloved series about preteen girls, The Baby-Sitters Club, was canned after two seasons. Recently, Shukert told Vulture that when she started working at Netflix in 2016 on the series Glow, “it was okay to have a smaller audience and be quirkier or more particular.” The philosophy was to support talented creators and trust their projects will find an audience. “As they’ve grown, I think that philosophy has changed somewhat.… Something that was fine three months ago is suddenly not what they need.”
Here’s hoping there remains a place for everything under the sun, especially now that we’ve all had a glimpse of what’s possible. “[Streamers] did make a lot of stuff that no one was watching, but it was beautiful,” says Master of None’s Alan Yang. He pauses thoughtfully. “I say that in the past tense, because the winds might be changing. Ultimately, the executives need eyeballs on their stuff.”
Additional reporting by Chris Murphy
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