Another Friday, another new series launch for Netflix. And given that everything Netflix touches these days seems to turn to gold, developing a new series for the streaming service might appear to be a relatively easy task. But in truth, making an original series specifically for Netflix requires, as Liam Neeson might say, a very particular set of skills.

That was what Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman and Glenn Kessler — who previously created Damages — discovered when they made Netflix’s latest binge-worthy series, the drama Bloodline. As I wrote at Quartz,

While some network series like Damages and Breaking Bad have proven well-suited for Netflix binge-viewing, they were conceived to be viewed on a traditional TV schedule: one episode per week. There is an art to creating a series for Netflix’s binge-loving subscribers, who frequently watch several episodes of a show in one sitting. Todd Kessler, with help from Daniel Zelman and Glenn Kessler, shared with Quartz how they tailored Bloodline specifically for Netflix’s audiences.

This was a fascinating look into the process of creating a show for a modern-day audience. Among the key points they highlighted: There’s no need to repeat key information in every episode.

“One huge thing for serialized storytelling is knowing that someone on Netflix will, as far as I understand, start at the beginning,” says Glenn Kessler. “They’re not going to tune into Week 7 because there is no “Week 7,” and as a storyteller, you know that they’ve seen everything that you wanted them to see at that point in the story.”

As a result, Netflix viewers are more engaged in every story beat. “Certainly on Netflix, people are exclusively sitting down to watch and be entertained,” says Glenn Kessler, as opposed to what happens “historically: people put their televisions on and do other things while they’re watching something.” That means the writers don’t have to worry about regurgitating basic information week after week for viewers joining in late, or who may have missed certain episodes. Instead, they can focus on fleshing out the story and the characters.

Before you start binge-watching Bloodline, make sure you read the story!

Here’s the recipe Netflix uses to make binge-worthy TV

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For far too long, broadcast networks have programmed shows that don’t accurately reflect the cultural backgrounds of the audiences watching them. ABC has been changing that with a far more diverse slate than its broadcast counterparts. As I wrote at Adweek, the network’s entertainment president Paul Lee talked about the strides ABC has made as he met with reporters at winter press tour.

“I think it’s our job to reflect America,” said ABC entertainment president Paul Lee at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour this week. “I really believed from the beginning that the demographic changes in America were just as important to our revolution as the technological changes.”

At the same time, Lee noted, “We didn’t pick up these shows because they were diverse, we picked them up because they were great.”

Lee addressed a variety of other topics, including anthology-style series, the death of “least objectionable television,” and why binge-watching isn’t a bad thing. He also said that he has finally gotten the message about launching music competitions after last summer’s Rising Star fared even worse than Duets two years earlier. “I don’t think we’ll try that for a little bit,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll come back to that in the future.”

ABC’s Success With Diversity Comes From Focusing on Creators, Not Just Stars

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Transparent, which debuts Friday, is not just Amazon’s first great series, but it’s fall’s best new show. At TCA, I spoke with creator Jill Soloway and star Jeffrey Tambor for this Quartz piece about this important, moving series, and why Amazon was the only place for it:

“We have this absolutely unprecedented amount of creative freedom. So Amazon to me wasn’t necessarily like a TV network, it was a really vital and vibrant distribution system that would be able to get the stuff to the people quickly,” said Soloway, who was a writer and co-executive producer on Six Feet Under. “It feels more like I got to make a five-hour movie that already had distribution in place than it did like anything I would ever do for CBS that’s an episode to episode deal. There was none of that [network] interference: these stop signs that you constantly have to deal with, that really interrupt your flow and your connection to your inspiration, in any kind of TV. This is nothing like TV! It’s not TV, it’s not HBO, it’s Amazon!”

Soloway was also frank about being wary of Amazon’s decision to release Transparent’s entire first season at once, Netflix-style.

“That was Amazon’s decision,” said Soloway. “In some ways, I was excited because it makes us like House of Cards or Orange, and I’m happy to be compared to shows like that. But I think as a showrunner, I have to get over the idea that there’s not going to be a, ‘And then next Friday, they’ll see the next piece!’ That’s different.”

You’ll also want to read what prompted Tambor to channel his Larry Sanders Show alter ego, Hank Kingsley. But even more importantly, make sure you watch Transparent!

This is how Amazon developed its first great TV series

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As Amazon prepares to launch its third pilot season, I had a lengthy chat with Amazon Studios director Roy Price about his company’s strategy, measuring success, his terrific new series Transparent and competing with Netflix. He answered so many of my questions about Amazon, including what defines a successful series for them:

The main thing we’re focusing on is making Prime fantastic. And one of the things people really respond to is original new series, so we’re paying attention to, are people engaged with the show? Does it add value to the service as a whole? So it’s about views, and talking about the shows, and if you watch the whole season, how did you rate the show…Basically, do people really seem to value the show as part of the service?

Last year, we premiered Alpha House and Betas, and they premiered at, and hung around at, the number one and two series for awhile, so that’s very encouraging, because it shows that people are really getting into it and heavily sampling the shows. That’s the kind of thing we want to see, that it becomes a meaningful part of the value that the service provides. Ultimately, you’d like to see more people joining the service, and you’d like to see that people who watch the shows and enjoy the shows renew their subscription.

Price, who was a terrific interview, also talked about Amazon’s rationale for not disclosing ratings, how the public pilot process really works and whether Amazon considered picking up beloved-but-canceled shows like Community and Enlisted.

How Amazon built a studio that’s finally challenging Netflix

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That’s a wrap on TCA summer press tour, which means that it’s time for one last story before I leave L.A.: a roundup of noteworthy developments from press tour, which reveal several new truths about the TV industry. Chief among them: Nothing is a ratings guarantee — except football.

Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 shows were paneled at press tour, but as CBS president and CEO Les Moonves pointed out, “When you come back next year, not all of them are still going to be on the air. Even ours. However, this is a sure thing.” He was referring to Thursday Night Football, which is moving to CBS for the first eight weeks of the NFL season (after which it will return to NFL Network, where it has aired since 2006).

As NFL commissioner Roger Goodell noted, “Sunday Night Football is now the number one franchise in all of television. Not just in sports, but in all of television.” Sunday Night Football was indeed the top-rated show on TV last season, averaging 21.5 million viewers. CBS and Fox’s Sunday afternoon broadcasts draw a similarly-sized audience, while ESPN’s Monday Night Football averaged 13.7 million viewers. And the Super Bowl is always the most-watched program each year, with a record 112.2 million viewers tuning in last February. As such, Goodell expects that Thursday Night Football will be “the biggest thing” to happen on TV this season.

There’s lots more about 3D TV, 4K TV, Hulu, Amazon, binge-watching, late-night and series based on comic books. Take a look; now that press tour is over, I’m going to sleep for several days!

The five ways American TV has changed forever 

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As upfronts wrap today, I wrote this Quartz piece about one big change to this year’s proceedings: the networks are finally serious about programming year-round, and they’re actually putting their money where their mouths are.

But as broadcast ratings continue to erode, those networks can no longer assume that their viewers will stay loyal and return in the fall. So when CBS took a chance on adapting Stephen King’s Under the Dome as a “limited series” last summer, and it became the highest-rated scripted summer series in 21 years, the network kept it in the same spot this year (it returns June 30). With the addition of Extant and other summer shows, CBS will have 90 hours of original programming this summer.

It’s a big change from the broadcasters’ traditional hands-off approach to summer, allowing the cable networks (and more recently, Netflix) to swoop in and take all the audiences for themselves.

Finally, instead of re-runs over the summer, new TV shows will premiere all year

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Happy new year! I rung in 2014 at Quartz with — what else? — this list of five resolutions that the networks should make for the coming year to thrive in this strange new world of streaming, stacking and binge-viewing. Among them: Plan for life after talent competitions.

For the past decade, talent competitions like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars have dominated the TV landscape, but across the board, almost all of those shows are showing signs of fatigue. Idol, Dancing, America’s Got Talent, and The X Factor’s  ratings were all down sharply this season (only relative newbie The Voice is still robustly chugging along), despite various attempts at shuffling formats and judges.

Even with the ratings drop-off, most of these shows are still solid performers, but they are definitely closer to the end of their run. Given the vast amount of real estate they occupy on their respective networks, it’s time to come up with contingency plans for when these shows do take their final bows. Otherwise they’ll be repeating the mistakes of ABC and NBC, whose respective schedules took years to recover from overreliance on the likes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Jay Leno Show. It could be argued that they still haven’t recovered.

Resolutions are easy to make, but very hard to follow. I’ll check back in with this story at the end of the year and see how many of these the networks actually stuck with.

Five ways television can save itself in 2014

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As Amazon tries to play catch-up with Netflix by streaming its first original series, it’s diverting from Netflix’s playbook in one major way: instead of releasing Alpha House’s entire first season at once a la House of Cards, Amazon will make the first three episodes available at once, and then debut one new episode each week. As I wrote at Quartz,

Amazon Studios Director Roy Price said it opted for a weekly release schedule “so that customers can chat about the shows and build up anticipation,” adding that the Netflix release model kills the conversation and buildup that surrounds a traditional release of a TV show. Since Netflix refuses to release any ratings data on its programming, there is no way to tell how many people have actually viewed its original series, or how many debut episodes were viewed as compared those later in the season.

If Amazon can keep viewers enthusiastic about its new shows for weeks and months on end, it might be able to beat Netflix at its own game.

Why Amazon, bucking the Netflix strategy, won’t release its original series all at once

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Netflix helped cultivate our binge-watching obsession, and as I wrote at Quartz, it’s now fighting with networks and cable/satellite providers over in-season binge-viewing, also known as stacking:

When it comes to binge-watching a show’s current season, options are very limited. The studio’s deals with Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu Plus usually cap the number of current episodes a network can offer via video on demand (VOD) at five. So if viewers want to binge, unless they purchase individual episodes via iTunes or Amazon on Demand, they must wait until the summer when the whole season becomes available via a streaming provider, which denies networks (and their advertisers) the opportunity to capitalize on these eager new potential viewers.

Networks are increasingly pushing to offer all episodes of a current season, what’s known as “in-season stacking rights,”on demand via VOD, online and the network’s mobile applications. “That’s where the big fight is happening now,” said Marc Graboff, president of Core Media Group, American Idol’s parent company, said at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology Summit on Oct. 21.

In short, it’s moronic that audiences don’t have the option to watch all episodes of a show’s current season, but until the networks, studios, advertisers and Netflix learn how to play nice, nothing is going to change.

Netflix’s next big battle: in-season binge-watching

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