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Comment by tharris0101 | Hacker News Reader

With Mad Men and Breaking Bad winding down, I wonder if AMC can maintain it. They seem to have garnered the reputation of being hard on showrunners (Both Matthew Weiner and Vince Gilligan have had issues with the network). Walking Dead is on it's third showrunner.

Another network, FX, seems to be trying the HBO/AMC model in getting quality programming and is going out of their way to appear showrunner friendly. It'll be interesting to see if they can capitalize on some of AMC's missteps in nickel-and-diming their own shows.

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You pretty much wrote what I was going to say.

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.

>which subsequently also resulted in one of the actors leaving the show

Which actor is this?

Jon Bernthal. Whose character was already outliving what the creators were planning.

AMC is also in a tough spot. They don't have the revenue to support the creative folks properly. The long lag between great content and an increase in the affiliate fee, makes the financials tricky. The death of DVD sales is not helping much either, as there is less to promise on the backend.

I think AMC gets $.35 per subscriber compared to ~$5 for ESPN. It is going take decades of hit shows before AMC is paid the $1-2 they actually deserve.

Hopefully eventually its a la carte. I'd pay $2/mo for AMC. I dont need the ESPN. The problem though is there sister channels. IFC is good but I could leave the rest.

That is what John Malone thinks will happen (de-bundling).

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100637283

My bet is that TV-over-IP eats the market before de-bundling occurs. In terms of cost, distribution, quality, and ease-of-use, digital downloads beat cable every time. The only piece of the puzzle networks still own is content production. With House Of Cards and Arrested Development, Netflix made a strong entry into the TV-making club, and struck the first blow against that monopoly.

In my view, we're two innovations away from internet tv for the masses: independent content production that can rival the networks for quality, and an easy-to-use streaming box to supply it. The latter is easily possible with technology on the market right now (Roku, Apple TV, etc.), and the former seems all but inevitable.

The tough part about that for the networks is building out the infrastructure and giving up all the free advertising that the cable companies give them.

By packaging their content as a standalone service, a la HBO Go, they've now given up being bundled in tiers with other networks. And they've got to build out their own delivery networks & apps. Or... they can join up with groups of other networks, create a service that advertises and bundles networks together and takes care of all the infrastructure.

Shit.

We just built cable again.

Or a series of third parties can compete to offer the infrastructure, which is just a CDN tied to a small computer with an HDMI out, and the former networks and new production houses can offer their programming on one, some, or all of them.

BTW this is one reason net neutrality is so important. If we're going to start rebuilding existing services over dumb lines (IP) then it's imperative that we maintain competition. The big problem with cable right now is that it's an oligopoly (monopoly in many places). By separating the infrastructure from the content delivery we can hopefully avoid many of the issues people currently have with cable. If we allow Verizon to charge an extra $50 to carry any non-Verizon-based "TV show bundle" then we really will be right back in the cable boat.

It's pretty amazing though that Moto wants $800 for a cable box and Western Digital can sell the same thing for $150. Shows what competition gets you.

HBO Go is NOT effectively a standalone service. You have to subscribe to HBO before you can get HBO Go. It's just streaming of things you already paid for on cable.

Which sucks. I would pay for HBO Go if I could get it at a decent rate. But like hell I'm going to pay for cable and the crazy upcharge for HBO just to use HBO Go. As a result, Netflix and Amazon Prime get all my money, and HBO gets nothing.

Yeah, sorry, I meant similar to HBO Go in terms of standalone app + network built distribution. And the reason you can't buy HBO Go without cable are exactly what I outlined above.

I'm in Australia. I'd pay $2/month+ for AMC, too.

But the problem for the next AMC is whether anyone would have been paying $0.25/month for them before they had "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men". A la carte where everyone picks the 10-20 channels they currently watch at $1-$20/each instead of 100-200 channels at $0.25-$5/each means there really can't be another fledgling AMC who exploits their existing (cheap) position on the "dial" to build an audience with quality content and then demands more money.

Of course it seems a bit silly to be talking about channels these days. This problem will sort itself out somehow because I can't believe anyone who wants a "channel" to every device with a screen in the country won't be able to acquire one in a few years' time.

A whole $2 a month! You're a god damned saint with such selfless generosity.

AMC makes 30 million a month off subscribers. At $2 a month they'd need 15 million monthly subscribers to equal what they currently earn. Historically speaking Breaking Bad has averaged 2 to 3 million viewers. After five and a half seasons its highly anticipated premiere had almost 6 million viewers.

So yes, go ahead, keep thinking that two dollars a month is a reasonable price.

Initial reviews of one of the shows poised to take over the mantle of Mad Men and Breaking Bad - Low Winter Sun - have been negative all around.

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.

> Another network, FX, seems to be trying the HBO/AMC model in getting quality programming and is going out of their way to appear showrunner friendly. It'll be interesting to see if they can capitalize on some of AMC's missteps in nickel-and-diming their own shows.

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".

I was under the impression that FX gave showrunners more freedom, but a tighter budget.

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