AMC is succeeding by breaking the rules of legacy television

AMC hit it's Golden Age of TV programming with that trio, but clearly have shown that they have issues with the handling of heavy creative talent, what with the issues that Weiner and Gilligan have publicly had, and the volatility of the showrunner position on the Walking Dead. (which subsequently also resulted in one of the actors leaving the show). On top of that, they expanded the number of episodes of S4 while reducing the budget per episode. And of course, milked the coverage of these shows with vacuous Talking Bad/Talking Dead.

I wouldn't be surprised if talented writers avoided that network like the plague.

AMC seems to be trying to replicate the formula that made those two shows so successful, but in doing so have somehow created an empty shell that has no resonance with the audience.

It's looking like it might take a while before AMC finds itself a winner again. The channel that seems to be poised to take up the mantle is FX. John Landgraf, the CEO, is one of the few executives who seems to really care about the quality of the shows he's responsible for. Justified is easily among the top tier of shows airing today. Louie is most likely the first of an entirely new genre of autobiographical shows that blend drama and comedy. The Americans is one of the best shows to premiere in 2013. They might just have a shot at this if they could only pick up some awards attention.

Hasn't FX been trying for the quality-original-programming thing for over a decade (at least since "The Shield" in 2002), with limited success?

There's also probably a certain degree of tension between being "showrunner friendly" and being concerned with "quality programming".

It rarely makes sense to give away new content on Netflix for next to free. You see it happen, but only rarely and in very select circumstances.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo...

What shows are you referring to? (Downton Abbey is not BBC, its aried on ITV in the UK.)

Because shows are distributed by different companies in different territories.

In many cases the company that airs the show doesn't produce it. You even have cases where a show airs on one network but another network has digital distribution rights and a third has physical distribution rights, and that's only in the US.

International media rights are an extremely complicated thing and usually each show is negotiated individually.

I work in this space and it's crazy how complicated it can get.

All, full episodes are there.

Compared to what they earn from regular viewers - subscription fees and commercials - that pricing is nuts.

The West Wing was the last great show put out by the major broadcast networks before the rise of cable and the it pales in comparison to the output what has been dubbed "The Golden Age of Television". It's actually an embarrassment of riches right now on the television front.

This ruins the economics of the 'mid-sized' film, since if you have to tack on $60 MM of marketing onto the production budget anyway, even the smaller films generally have a high level of risk. Thus the whole market has bifurcated between enormous $200 MM behemoths and $2 MM indie movies with limited theatrical distribution trying to promote themselves virally.

It's a similar model though. Make lots of cheap movies and make money off of all of them.

You talk as if noone is doing this. But you appear to be ignoring all the Euro cinema produced each year.

I have a friend who does it. Writes, directs, acts, produces. He works constantly, 12-14 hours a day. I feel bad for his new wife. Trust me, the movie craft cannot be scaled like this by solo players who aren't part of the establishment. Not with the current state of the art.

with as many talented screenwriters as there are, there have to be good scripts that go unoptioned.

Sure, but can you spot them? Are you capable of spotting a right script which would make a good profitable movie? Or do you know someone who can? Check out http://blcklst.com/

Cast talented character and stage actors instead of big name (big $$) star talent

Stage acting and film acting are two different disciplines. Vastly different in technique and experience needed. Another point here is that 'big star' talent brings marketing power to the table as well, something you haven't touched upon on at all. Marketing is big part of the game. That's why usually in 'smaller' productions you get a lead or co-star 'big name' with rest of the cast relatively unknown. Not everyone unknown. Not to mention casting is a difficult job in itself. You may find an actor that suits role perfectly, but all of the cast has to function together on screen as well.

Think $15-20 million budgets

$20m range falls in small production range, so that checks out. Productions are not spending happy, remember that when you see those vertigo inducing budgets. They have thought through their spending well.

The idea is to have a deep catalog that quitely does well, instead of trying for massive blockbusters that can be $200m losses if they bomb.

Why not both? That's what studios do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tent-pole_(entertainment) Otherwise you'd better have deep pockets in order to churn out multiple films and 'hope' some of them will rake in cash. That's because most of the films on smaller budgets aren't profitable at all. It's a numbers game in your proposal then, more risky than tent pole approach. What you propose would be a YC for films, where budgets aren't $10k because they can't be for various reasons and production time isn't two months, but two years.

HBO shows you can produce regular TV drama (Sopranos, etc) at an R rated level and be incredibly profitable, well, at least as long as there's practically no competition.

Hmmm. Whats between G/PG and R that could be popular... PG-13! So that's how you get gory zombie blood splatter and meth cooking on a TV show, and its a profitable sweet spot.

All this discussion about people really liking AMC because they put episodes on netflix is nonsense. They like AMC because "regular TV" isn't obscene enough and HBO is a bit too obscene. Or risque, or "adult" (I hate that characterization). They simply are better targeted to their audience.

Netflix has no shortage of goofy failed major network sitcoms / cop / lawyer / doctor dramas, and no shortage of gore and sex series/movies, so its not merely being on netflix that makes AMC beat the others.

Until Breaking Bad and Mad Men, nobody - nobody - cared about AMC. They were that crappy high-40s channel that you flipped through on your way to interesting stuff. Take into consideration the fact that Mad Men and Breaking Bad - AMCs two crown jewels - are about to wrap up. Also consider that they're subsidized by the tens of millions of people who subscribe to basic cable but don't care about their content.

Here's the thing. Your idea of "what I don't watch" and someone else's idea of "what I don't watch" are going to be vastly different. By eliminating bundling (the practice of forcing cable companies to carry secondary channels to get access to the primary ones) you'll force a race back to the bottom in terms of content. It will be like the old days of the OTA networks where you have to appeal to the most people to survive.

Things like Science and the Military channel almost certainly would not survive in an a la carte world. Without a subsidy the cost of programming will be too high and ratings too low to be fully supported by advertising.

They could have equally floundered in their choice of scripted shows. The difference is that compared to network TV they don't have a dearth of "original" programming to fall back on and hide the fails

to get AMC on your network, you also have to accept some of AMC Networks other products, such as WeTV and IFC. They can lose a little money on AMC itself as long as advertising on their other channels makes it.

AMC didn't invent the strategy of going for the high end, HBO did, and lots of networks have tried the same strategy since. AMC has done well by it, but others have not -- see Showtime and Starz for examples. This despite the quality of their programming; Showtime's Dexter is well-regarded, for instance, but has failed to give a "halo" to the rest of the network. Starz has been trying to move up-market with shows like Boss and Magic City, but for whatever reason none of those shows ever really found an audience. (Even AMC's efforts have been fitful -- for every Mad Men or Breaking Bad there's a Rubicon and Hell on Wheels.)

So betting on "excellence" is a tough thing to do, because you have to spend a ton of money without any guarantees that the public will like the results. But the results of cost-cutting are very predictable, in the near term at least; it takes a long time for a run of really bad programming to tarnish a network so much that people stop tuning in. So for the bean-counters the "logical" choice is obvious.