Why were TV watchers more conformist in the early to mid 2010s?

[NickGOT456]

I remember when BSG ended in back 2009 there was nothing to replace it. From 2010 to 2014 there was no show with a spaceship in it. This was also a time where reality shows were popular. People were considered normal if they watched reality shows or doctor soap operas but considered people who lived in basements if they watched "BSG".

This is not the case now with shows like "The Expanse", "Star Trek Discovery", "Raised by Wolves", and "The Mandalorian" as well as all these astronaut themed shows but why did pop culture and society lose interest in space during that time period? Why were TV viewers back then pressured to conform?

What happened in the 90s or 2000s to make society so vapid?

 

[aceluby]

Has nothing to do with 'society' and everything to do with technology.  Streaming vs cable/DVR.  Reddit/Twitter/etc vs AOL/Yahoo message boards.  Maximizing viewership for commercials vs Maximizing subscriptions (more niche content).  So there are more options provided by streaming companies, to drive more monthly subscriptions, and when they are good they get more attention due to social media.

[Werthead]

I'm not sure why we continue to humour these posts, since the OP will no doubt just vanish, not engage with any responses and come back in six months with another rhetorical question based on false assumptions, but whatever.

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This was also a time where reality shows were popular. People were considered normal if they watched reality shows or doctor soap operas but considered people who lived in basements if they watched "BSG".

No, they didn't. BSG was a crossover success, attracted widespread critical acclaim, was covered in media outlets that normally ignored SF and won mainstream awards, most notably the Peabody. The cast and crew even did a special presentation on the show's achievements at the United Nations.

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From 2010 to 2014 there was no show with a spaceship in it.

You mean apart from Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Futurama, StarGate: Universe, Falling Skies, Caprica, Blood & Chrome, Defiance and Rick & Morty, among others?

[Jussi]

Also The 100, which premiered in March 2014.

[Werthead]

15 minutes ago, Jussi said:

Also The 100, which premiered in March 2014.

I thought about that, but it was really a space station and a couple of rickety atmospheric entry shuttles, not spacecraft in the conventional sense.

[Cas Stark]

Aw.  I haven't thought of Caprica in years, I was so disappointed they didn't give it at least another season to find its footing.  

Not sure about OP premise, but it starts to feel like the new golden age of TV has peaked.  Streaming services are still throwing tens of millions at producers, but ROI seems to be diminishing, and at least Netflix does not give two fucks about their audience getting some kind of closure on a show, they ax it and move on.

[Werthead]

13 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Aw.  I haven't thought of Caprica in years, I was so disappointed they didn't give it at least another season to find its footing.  

Not sure about OP premise, but it starts to feel like the new golden age of TV has peaked.  Streaming services are still throwing tens of millions at producers, but ROI seems to be diminishing, and at least Netflix does not give two fucks about their audience getting some kind of closure on a show, they ax it and move on.

Reportedly, Netflix is telling all new producers pitching that they should only have a 3-season plan max and if the show is more successful than that, they'll make it up from there. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of more ambitious projects now bypassing Netflix and going to Amazon, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO instead.

The cost of the COVID crisis is also enormous: making sets COVID-proof is costing upwards of $500K per episode, and if your show's budget is only $3 million or less per episode anyway, you're not going to be making the show. The analysis I saw is that Halt and Catch Fire - which was one of the best shows of the decade and only stayed on air with tiny viewership because it was also one of the cheapest - would have been cancelled immediately because it would have been unaffordable. GLOW and several other shows have been cancelled specifically for that reason (GLOW also had the issue where you can't make wrestling COVID-safe). Apparently that's already had a huge impact, with the number of new scripted TV series in 2020-21 expected to fall heavily from the 2019 peak of almost 600 shows in the US alone.

Even Star Trek has problems, and they're now switching to the Mandalorian artificial wall technology to remove the risks from going out on location for future seasons of Discovery and Strange New Worlds.

[Annara Snow]

41 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Reportedly, Netflix is telling all new producers pitching that they should only have a 3-season plan max and if the show is more successful than that, they'll make it up from there. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of more ambitious projects now bypassing Netflix and going to Amazon, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO instead.

The cost of the COVID crisis is also enormous: making sets COVID-proof is costing upwards of $500K per episode, and if your show's budget is only $3 million or less per episode anyway, you're not going to be making the show. The analysis I saw is that Halt and Catch Fire - which was one of the best shows of the decade and only stayed on air with tiny viewership because it was also one of the cheapest - would have been cancelled immediately because it would have been unaffordable. GLOW and several other shows have been cancelled specifically for that reason (GLOW also had the issue where you can't make wrestling COVID-safe). Apparently that's already had a huge impact, with the number of new scripted TV series in 2020-21 expected to fall heavily from the 2019 peak of almost 600 shows in the US alone.

Even Star Trek has problems, and they're now switching to the Mandalorian artificial wall technology to remove the risks from going out on location for future seasons of Discovery and Strange New Worlds.

Why don't they just make a pause of a year or two and wait for the pandemic to die down/vaccine to be found, instead of cancelling shows? It's not like it's unheard of. The Sopranos had some big breaks between the seasons, same thing with some of the UK TV shows.

[Werthead]

56 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

Why don't they just make a pause of a year or two and wait for the pandemic to die down/vaccine to be found, instead of cancelling shows? It's not like it's unheard of. The Sopranos had some big breaks between the seasons, same thing with some of the UK TV shows.

It's to do with momentum, the cost of shutting down and then rebooting things, and the perceived need for constant new content to keep people interested. There's also the fact that making the entire TV industry and everyone who works in it or in the supply chain (which is many, many hundreds of thousands up to a million or so people) go on hiatus would be crippling.

I know a lot of people have joked that it'd be good for no new TV shows to be made for 2-5 years so they can catch up with everything on their watch list, but in practice that's not really practical.

[dbunting]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm not sure why we continue to humour these posts, since the OP will no doubt just vanish, not engage with any responses and come back in six months with another rhetorical question based on false assumptions, but whatever.

 

The poster is kind of like Punxsutawney Phil in the U.S. He pops out every once in a while to essentially do nothing but get held up by the Mayor/ask a question that usually doesn't make sense, then goes back in his hole again.

[Martini Sigil]

TV execs are visionless, gutless and don;t give a fuck about what kind of shows get put on the air as long as it makes money... they aren't fans... sci fi shows are expensive, so it better be a huge success it hopes to stay on the air... add to that the failure of so many good sci fi shows --Firefly come to mind-- so now there's a sci fi trend with Star Wars and Star Trek back on TV... so they'll try to ride the wave as long as they can

 

[Annara Snow]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's to do with momentum, the cost of shutting down and then rebooting things, and the perceived need for constant new content to keep people interested. There's also the fact that making the entire TV industry and everyone who works in it or in the supply chain (which is many, many hundreds of thousands up to a million or so people) go on hiatus would be crippling.

I know a lot of people have joked that it'd be good for no new TV shows to be made for 2-5 years so they can catch up with everything on their watch list, but in practice that's not really practical.

1) That's based on the assumption that TV viewers are incredibly fickle and will forget about any show that doesn't air every year, which is demonstrably false. Besides, what are TV promos for? Not to mention - how in the world is it easier to get people interested in a new show compared to one they already know and love?

2) How many shows are they able to shoot during the pandemic? Unless they'll switch fully to animation.

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Why don't they just make a pause of a year or two and wait for the pandemic to die down/vaccine to be found, instead of cancelling shows? It's not like it's unheard of.

Netflix were axing shows after two or three seasons long before the pandemic. Basically a combination of their algorithms telling them a steady stream of new shows is better for their subscriber count than keeping on old ones, and their model for creation meaning they have more at stake on any given show, since (1) they don't do pilots, they order straight to series and (2) they pay more of the cost of the show than is historically typical, and as far as I can tell more of it up front, since the producers don't typically have the prospect of syndication giving them a boost down the line so they can't put as much of their own money in for a return on the investment.

In any case while I do expect Wert is right that many creators will avoid Netflix now, and also that the creators till now who weren't expecting it were hard done by, I also think that a lot of TV shows would frankly have benefited from limiting themselves to an initial three-season plan. Just coz it's a TV show doesn't mean it has to be open-ended forever. Long-form TV has become the standard, woohoo I love it, let's now start learning that 'long-form' doesn't mean 'infinite'. It may well actually give us some tighter shows from those who do commit to it.

[Werthead]

Netflix also have a premium agreement where the cost of each new season rises significantly compared to the one before. Unless the show is a Stranger Things/Witcher-level megahit, that means the shows automatically self-destruct somewhere around Season 3 because they become unproduceable.

[Inkdaub]

The answer to all of this is for Netflix to make twenty more seasons of Daredevil.

[polishgenius]

To caveat my previous point having thought about it some: while some creators may avoid Netflix, the simple fact is that their funding model means many others will take the gamble because Netflix supposedly funding the entire show themselves rather than covering a part and expecting creators/other networks to find the rest means they'd never be able to make the same show to the same level as Netflix's style gives them. I've also not really heard of Netflix actually throwing executive interference in (though that might be wrong) and certainly there's no timeslot fuckery obviously, so there are benefits to the way they do it even with the risk of early cancellation- which lets be fair is not unique to them.


Basically it's easy to get mad at them for the cancelling and sometimes they will just be wrong and overreactive to their algorithms but we shouldn't forget that they're taking chances traditional networks would never have and making shows that would never have gotten a season or two or three at all. They are now not the only ones doing that but let's not kid ourselves that Amazon or Apple or HBOMax will be any kinder if they see the numbers tightening- but the first two of those do have the benefit of being subsiduaries of two massive companies* who can work on a loss to try to win over the market whereas Netflix don't have that luxury.

*so are HBO obviously but I don't think WB are as willing to play that game as Amazon and Apple might be.

[Werthead]

On 10/24/2020 at 1:11 PM, polishgenius said:

To caveat my previous point having thought about it some: while some creators may avoid Netflix, the simple fact is that their funding model means many others will take the gamble because Netflix supposedly funding the entire show themselves rather than covering a part and expecting creators/other networks to find the rest means they'd never be able to make the same show to the same level as Netflix's style gives them. I've also not really heard of Netflix actually throwing executive interference in (though that might be wrong) and certainly there's no timeslot fuckery obviously, so there are benefits to the way they do it even with the risk of early cancellation- which lets be fair is not unique to them.


Basically it's easy to get mad at them for the cancelling and sometimes they will just be wrong and overreactive to their algorithms but we shouldn't forget that they're taking chances traditional networks would never have and making shows that would never have gotten a season or two or three at all. They are now not the only ones doing that but let's not kid ourselves that Amazon or Apple or HBOMax will be any kinder if they see the numbers tightening- but the first two of those do have the benefit of being subsiduaries of two massive companies* who can work on a loss to try to win over the market whereas Netflix don't have that luxury.

*so are HBO obviously but I don't think WB are as willing to play that game as Amazon and Apple might be.

Netflix actually are now interfering in shows more (which is why the Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunners quit) so even that appeal has gone out of the window.