Call it the kaleidoscopic age of TV drama. Never before has there been such a range
of colorful story lines, styles and sensibilities at work in the genre.

One program producer enthuses that hour-long series are now indisputably “the
jewel in the crown” of small-screen creativity. Inroads into schedules by reality fare
during the last decade and a recent spate of sitcom successes notwithstanding, it is
drama that still sets the tone for most broadcasters—and potentially returns the
biggest rewards to its backers.

Think high-end, high-cost American network series like Smash, Touch or The
River or the current crop of pay cable contenders like HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and
Showtime’s Homeland, as well as basic cable’s Covert Affairs on USA Network
or Breaking Bad on AMC. Never has there been a time when so many top talents,
behind and in front of the camera, were so attracted to, and adept at massaging, the
genre. Nor a time when so much money was at stake.

PRIZED ASSETS
A prime-time U.S. network drama costs upwards of $60 million to produce 22
episodes, pulls in $1.5 million to $1.7 million an episode in domestic license fees and
anywhere between $700,000 and $1.5 million per episode from foreign sales,
leaving, on average, a $24-million deficit to make up from domestic syndication, new
media and DVD deals. The good news: hours that do catch on with viewers (and run,
say, to five years or 100-plus episodes) become prized assets, returning $8 million to
$10 million a year to their producers and profit participants.

“I would say we’ve never seen it quite like this,” says Bruce Rosenblum, the president
of Warner Bros. Television Group, whose studio has for two decades been the
number one supplier of dramas to the various U.S. broadcast and cable networks.
“We are enjoying a golden age right now with so many things working both creatively
and financially.”

One of the biggest changes he points to is “the coming of age” of new media, whose
top players (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.) now act for all intents and purposes like old
media, effectively adding more outlets for content—and, increasingly, stepping up to
the plate to pay sizable fees for the privilege. Rosenblum believes more thorough,
expeditious measurement of viewership by Nielsen and others needs to become an
industry priority.

“Our biggest challenge is figuring out how to maximize the revenues for our content
by windowing our product appropriately, making sure traditional outlets remain
lucrative while newer ones are nurtured, as they catch on, into paying their fair
share. I can tell you that digital distribution deals—be they ones for our shows or
those of some of our competitors—are starting to be quite healthy.” In fact, he adds,
his company no longer distinguishes between old and new media: they’re all part of
the same ever-expanding after-market, at home and abroad.

Last fall, Warner Bros. and its partner in The CW, CBS Corporation, clinched a
groundbreaking (and reportedly billion-dollar) deal with Netflix for dramas that air
on their jointly owned netlet, including the freshman series The Secret Circle as well
as mainstays The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl. Other content providers, too, are
eyeing the benefits of an expanded distribution field: Lionsgate, for example, raked
in a stunning $800,000 an episode forMad Men, also with Netflix, forgoing the more
traditional local station syndie route for such repeats.

However, not just any drama brings home the bacon. Today’s audiences in all
territories expect more from their viewing experience—or they tune out and turn
their attention to YouTube and Facebook.

“We can’t just settle for the usual doctor, lawyer or cop show anymore,” says Robert
Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment at NBCUniversal. “We have to be
open to strange new worlds, arresting characters, fresh plotlines. Yes, dramas take
longer to put together, they’re more involved and more expensive—but getting them
right, that’s the thrill.”

Reenergizing the genre didn’t happen overnight. Not only did Dick Wolf’s Law &
Order franchise consistently apply intellectual rigor to ripped-from-the-headlines
plots and the juggernaut CSI subsequently revamp the template for procedurals, but
abroad, Brits, Germans and Danes have recently raised the bar for themselves with
engrossing mini-series, period pieces with fresh perspectives, and multi-year
policiers.

And while recognizing, and occasionally agonizing over, the challenges, most
executives, from NBCUniversal’s Greenblatt and Lionsgate’s Kevin Beggs to hands-
on producers like Tim Kring and Jan Mojto, all aver that it’s worth the candle when
these creations catch fire.

Not that it’s easy. The vast majority of new shows, in whatever format, whatever
territory, crash and burn before they can ignite or underperform just enough to wind
up under the ax. Already this season in the U.S., newcomersPrime Suspect, Pan
Am, The Playboy Club and several others have bitten the dust or disappointed such
that their renewals are in jeopardy. Sometimes, their failure to perform well enough
in the ratings can be explained rationally—the audience just didn’t respond to early
1960s camp or the show was one too many in the forensics field—or just summed up
with a quip: Maria Bello’s fedora (in the Prime Suspect revamp) was too distracting.

A SAFE BET
The challenges with drama begin, however, long before a series goes to air.

Consolidation has encouraged networks to rely increasingly on their sister studios for
projects, potentially, if not necessarily, settling for safer—some argue even stale—
material rather than actively seeking adventurous pitches from outsiders. Such a
contention is hard to prove, but there’s no doubt that the pay-TV services (HBO and
Showtime) and latterly basic cable (AMC, TNT, FX, etc.) stole a march on the
broadcast webs by putting on a number of buzzed-about dramas over the last decade,
leaving the nets momentarily in the dust. Things may now have changed further.

“In a vertically integrated world, the networks buy from their sister studios and (the
practice) is creeping into cable as well,” says Kevin Beggs, the president of Lionsgate
Television Group. “All of these cable groups now have their own in-house production
units. Everyone has good intentions, but why wouldn’t you help the mother ship at
all costs?”

Another tendency is for commissioning executives to prefer what another indie
producer, David Zucker, the president of television at Scott Free Productions, calls
“the pre-packaged, formatted, branded” project, which could mean that untried and
unheralded talent and unorthodox themes get overlooked or ignored.

Once a show is up and running, its hurdles don’t end. That so many projects are
vying for back-end play in secondary markets and on new platforms means that

cutting through the noise is increasingly difficult. And with European territories in
such economic straits, extracting healthy license fees from key foreign broadcasters
is no cinch. In short, money is always an issue, which means that despite the renewed
enthusiasm of viewers for drama on the small screen, a producer has to jump
through a number of hoops.

TIPPING THE SCALE
“Before we decide to go forward with something, every division of the company
weighs in,” says Sandra Stern, COO of Lionsgate Television. “Is this something that’s
likely to get a broad audience, that the international marketplace is likely to embrace,
that can be monetized downstream with DVDs? Everybody weighs in, and it’s only
when we have a consensus that this is a show that, if we don’t screw up, if we produce
well, we will be able to find an audience for, [that we proceed]. We miss sometimes,
everybody does. But it gives us a goal to strive for, and we have not missed much.”

For ambitious projects that demand financial and creative input from a multiplicity
of sources, clarity of vision and creative control are key elements that can spell the
difference between success and failure. No one wants to make plodding or muddled
mini-series, but the risks with that genre are such that very few efforts ever make it to
the screen. The good news is that there are now seasoned practitioners who are keen
on and adept at avoiding the pitfalls of the past.

Consider one of the companies behind the upcoming mini Titanic, which is being
readied for ABC in the U.S. and ITV in the U.K. as well as a dozen presale buyers
elsewhere in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the calamity at sea.
Lookout Point, which operates out of London and Los Angeles to structure the
financing for such projects, worked to bring in a Canadian and a Hungarian partner
in support of the Brits and Americans.

The multiparter’s credits boast the screenwriter Julian Fellowes and the producer
Nigel Stafford-Clark, whose involvement, in the words of Lookout Point’s chief
executive, Simon Vaughan, “translates to one and one is three.” What they’ve
managed, he says, is “a peek behind the doors of history. They pull back the curtains
on what it was like to be onboard.” A crucial element in negotiating in the mini
minefield, Vaughan adds, is settling on “the central conceit” of a project and being
clear, no matter how many entities are involved, where “the editorial center of
gravity” lies. If those elements can be aligned properly in a mini-series, then voilà,
the end result is “a special treat for the audience,” he says.

As for how to tap into the zeitgeist, different practitioners have different views and
methods for scouring the landscape, but all insist they are constantly assessing what
audiences are concerned with in their real lives—and, from there, what they might
want to experience in their leisure time. Interestingly, these practitioners see a
variety of themes that potentially resonate.

Nina Tassler, the president of CBS Entertainment, believes one focus in American
dramas will be on “characters that have a lot on their plates. It’s not unlike what’s
going on in real life,” she explains. Characters may have multiple jobs and yet strive
to be part of a family—be it extended, surrogate, dysfunctional. “At the end of the
day, it’s about finding comfort within the unit of the family, however that group is
defined by the creators of any particular show.”

EYES ON THE PRIZE
Others point to a potpourri of upcoming fictional series devoted to politics, not a
surprising development given that the U.S. is arguably in a transformative election
cycle. USA Network recently greenlit a drama about a former first family
called Political Animals; HBO is prepping a show calledVeep; NBC is readying a
series entitled 1600 Penn.

Tassler can reasonably claim that she herself belongs to a kind of family at CBS,
which, among U.S. broadcast nets, has been singularly adept at commissioning and
nurturing dramas into long-running assets, including not only the CSI and NCIS in-
house franchises, but also Criminal Minds, The Mentalist and The Good Wife. She
attributes that success partly to the fact that the top echelons at CBS have worked
together for so many years that they share “community, mutual support and a
shorthand” that management elsewhere may not benefit from.

“Our international partners know that we’re in the business of long-term growth,”
she says, pointing to CBS’s strategy with CSI as an example. “Part of the success of
that series has to do with continuity of vision,” she says, referring to the executive
producers’ ongoing involvement over many years and the relentless effort to bolster
the writing staff and refresh the on-screen talent.

“At CBS I’d say we’re in a golden age with respect to drama, our mature shows
actually growing in popularity at home and abroad,” Tassler continues. “And with
syndication, new viewers have actually been recruited to the current season of
episodes.”

Over at NBC, Greenblatt has a bigger nut to crack in trying to rev up the fourth-place
broadcast network and crank a couple of projects into long-running engines for his
schedule.

The afore-mentioned Smash is a potential contender. Brought over last year from
Greenblatt’s ten-year stint at Showtime, the musical-inspired show has undergone
tweaks that point out the differing approaches on broadcast and cable. “We lightened
the tone and minimized the characters’ dark agendas,” Greenblatt explains. To
attract a more mainstream, commercial audience, he continues, “we’ve made it less
bitter, less cynical and a little more aspirational.”

The retreat of the Hollywood studios from making edgy, iconoclastic or eyebrow-
raising theatrical movies has ironically emboldened the other side of their business,
encouraging the TV producers on the back lots and the TV suits in their corner offices
to tackle more provocative material. Not surprisingly, a slew of cinema talent, eager
to stretch themselves beyond the sequel-itis confines of studio moviedom, has
followed: Martin Scorsese directing Boardwalk Empire, Claire Danes top-lining
in Homeland and Dustin Hoffman in HBO’s Luck, Steven Spielberg exec
producing Terra Nova, The River and Smash, just to name a few.

Why else this explosion of visually stunning, viscerally appealing material?

“It’s the by-product of several developments,” states Zucker at Scott Free, whose The
Good Wife is among those series pushing the envelope at CBS. “Distribution models

have changed, tastes have become both more eclectic and more global, and the
broadcast landscape has expanded.” It used to be, he goes on to say, that there were
just three or four places to take a project, but nowadays there are more ways to set up
financing and more outlets to sell to.

“The Walking Dead—zombies, after all—couldn’t have been sold just a few years
ago,” is how Zucker sums up the difference.

Producer Tim Kring, who is currently shooting Touch with Kiefer Sutherland for
FOX, argues, “A person watching his big flat-screen TV doesn’t distinguish between
film and television. If a show looks cheap and dumb and is just a click away, say,
from a slick theatrical movie on HBO, it’s in trouble. We have to compete side by
side.”

Fortunately, Kring points out, technology has come to the rescue, offsetting the fact
that budgets to produce a show have not risen, nor have shooting schedules
expanded commensurately.

“We’re having to be ever more efficient on set,” Kring explains. The good news, he
adds, is that lighting, for example, doesn’t take as long, and special effects that just a
few years ago on his show Heroes took three weeks to put together can be done
on Touch with his special-effects specialist seated at his side with a computer in his
lap.

HOME THEATER
Another cue that small-screen producers have taken from the cinema playbook is
getting their talent out on the road promoting these properties just as assiduously as
stars are primed to do on the cinema circuit. A Mad Men junket to Cannes for
MIPCOM 18 months ago arguably catapulted that series into its current cult status in
several European territories. Not to mention Sutherland’s tireless efforts on behalf of
the global hit 24 and now for Touch.

“Kiefer [is] arguably the biggest international TV star in the world,” Kring says. “He’s
a tremendous ambassador for the show. There’s not a baby he won’t kiss nor a hand
he won’t shake.” (FOX International Channels premieredTouch day and date with
the U.S. in March in a number of foreign territories.)

It’s not only the Yanks who are turning out drama for the ages. Those perennial ace
practitioners the Brits continue to astonish, most notably this season with the
ensemble period piece Downton Abbey.

BRITISH REVOLUTION
This last is indicative of new dynamics shaping drama funding, production and
distribution worldwide. First, it was produced under the auspices not of the usual
classical drama mavens at the BBC but rather commissioned by the more
commercially minded ITV network, which is best known for its cop shows. Second,
the indie production company whose idea it was, Carnival, is actually owned by
NBCUniversal, another example of transatlantic equity both financing and
influencing the choices of material.

“What I think Downton Abbey illustrates,” says Gareth Neame, the managing
director of Carnival and of NBCU’s international TV production unit in the U.K., “is
that you can do a contemporary-style period piece—and hoover up a broader
audience than might be expected.”

From the beginning, Neame goes on to explain, “we were convinced we had
something special with the screenwriter Julian Fellowes onboard to pen it.” At its
heart, he adds, the idea was quite simple: “An episodic workplace drama, complete
with soap elements.”

As for how viewers are responding, he points out, “It’s on after The X Factoron ITV
Sunday nights and it works.” A third season has been commissioned and NBCU has
licensed the series across the globe. It remains to be seen if the Peacock will itself be
less hesitant in tackling anything Stateside that smacks of “period” as a result of this
unexpected global phenomenon. (For all its critical buzz, in the U.S. Downton
Abbey airs on the narrowly targeted PBS.)

Laura Mackie, ITV’s director of drama, says that despite the pitch coming right as the
recession hit Britain, the fact that Fellowes and company outlined “a long-term
vision with extended story arcs” for Downton gave the network confidence to go
forward. Not only has it “earned its keep” on ITV, but it has helped change the
perception of the network.

“We’re in a much better place now,” Mackie says, describing ITV’s overall schedule.
During her five-year tenure, several long-in-the-tooth series (thinkThe Bill, London’s
Burning and Heartbeat) have been retired and much of that cost-savings was
subsequently earmarked for Downton Abbey and a few contemporary dramas.
“We’re not doing as many hour shows now but they’re performing better,” she says,
citing Whitechapel, Vera and Appropriate Adult.

“Four or five years ago, reality shows and U.S. imports seemed to dominate here, and
there was a crisis of confidence as to what we were doing in drama,” Mackie
continues. “Sherlock”—on the BBC—“and Downton have helped change that.”

Indeed, the British pubcaster is also enjoying a “dramatic” resurgence. Ben
Stephenson, BBC’s controller of drama commissioning, ticks off a number of recent
highlights, including not only the “stunning reinvention” of a classic
with Sherlock but the “phenomenal” ratings for Call the Midwife, set in London’s
East End in the 1950s, and the corralling of A-listers from other media to work for
the Beeb. The playwright Tom Stoppard is adapting Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s
End, the film director Jane Campion is doing a mystery called Top of the Lake, and
the prolific Abi Morgan is writing both Birdsongand The Hour.

“I would say that writing, directing and producing talent is increasingly wherever the
best project is, in whatever medium,” Stephenson says. “And there’s no doubt in my
mind that television is getting more ambitious year by year.”

Over on the Continent, it is arguably Denmark and Germany that are making the
most waves on the drama front. The Danes, for example, have nabbed four
International Emmys for best drama over the last decade, a record only the Brits

have bettered, and one of their latest efforts, The Killing, has scooped up kudos in
both its original and its U.S. formatted versions.

TEUTONIC TALENT
Meanwhile, the longtime Munich-based producer Jan Mojto, the head of EOS, chalks
German prowess in the field up to three factors: a relatively healthy national TV
system, no real distinction or snobbery between the film and TV realms, and an
industry which has long been oriented toward U.S. production values.

Something else may be at work as well, judging from several of Mojto’s own projects:
more sophisticated ways of storytelling from more surprising perspectives. Take, for
example, the ambitious Generation War, which takes a page out of the playbook of
HBO’s Band of Brothers in that it focuses on the disparate fortunes of soldiers in
World War II, in this case German recruits, letting the stories unfold from their
points of view. Or the upcoming TV movieMunich ’72, about the assassination of
Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games.

“Steven Spielberg’s Munich aside, what we’re trying to do in this piece is dramatize
the end of the preterrorist world,” Mojto says, “and to do so we’re relying on the
point of view of a particular fictional character, a policewoman who gets caught up in
the mayhem.”

As for the costs of these projects, Mojto says that budgets now approach or match
those for theatrical movies in any given European market. His company’s four-hour
mini Hindenburg: The Last Flight, for example, came in at about $13 million all told;
a standalone TV movie can run upwards of $3.5 million. License fees from
broadcasters have not, he points out, gone up as fast, but shorter windows are being
negotiated and, as in the States, more outlets are opening up.

“There is a renewed interest in high-quality international drama,” Mojto says, “and
though there is a growing number of competitors in this arena, the most successful
projects do make money.” Even in the difficult British market, where non-English-
language fare has rarely gained a foothold, Mojto says new, smaller outlets are
showing interest in acquiring select Continental content.

HOLLYWOOD NORTH
Another country with an eye long-trained on foreign markets is Canada, where top
producers vie for local subsidies and exploit international treaties to get expensive
fare before the cameras.

One of these is Entertainment One Television (eOne). CEO John Morayniss says
being flexible has been the key to eOne’s success.

“When a producer or an agent comes to us and says, ‘We’re interested in doing a
deal, we have a great project, we’ve talked to the studios, now we’re talking to you,
what can you do that the studios can’t?,’ basically our answer is we can do everything
the studios can’t. We’re into partnerships, we’re into co-ownership, we’re into equity
arrangements with third parties, we’re into preselling and bringing channel partners
in early; we’re into doing Canadian content; we’re into doing not-Canadian content;
we’re into taking big risks; we’re into cobbling it together so that we minimize our
risk. It really depends on the project and the people involved.”

Entertainment One is the studio behind Hell on Wheels, a co-venture with Endemol
for AMC, and The Firm, for NBC, Global and AXN. It is also producingSaving Hope,
about a big-city hospital, for CTV in Canada and NBC in the U.S.

“Our strategy is to grow the scripted area and to continue to develop with the best
writers, the best showrunners,” says Morayniss. “To a certain extent, the success of
one show then results in more producers and writers, agents [coming to eOne]. We
get more calls—networks coming to us not just with projects but coming to us as a
layoff studio. All of that really comes from two sources. One is the evolution of eOne
as a television business and also the willingness of the networks in the U.S. to work
with independents. Until relatively recently, the U.S. cable network business was
primarily a business of the studios, but now you’re seeing that a lot of independents
have come into the fold. As we continue to develop shows and as they get renewals—
which is key—we are attracting higher end talent, interesting properties, and we’re
also able to be aggressive dealmakers with writers and showrunners.” Besides the
best-selling author John Grisham for The Firm, eOne has also worked with Stephen
King on Haven, a series for Syfy.

CLUTTER CUTTER
At another Canadian company, Shaftesbury, CEO Christina Jennings says the biggest
challenge is latching on to that “high-concept idea, one piece of top talent or pre-
established brand” that will propel a project.

“We have to be in search of what cuts through the clutter,” Jennings says, pointing to
a mini like Titanic or The Borgias, starring Jeremy Irons, as the kind of cachet that
can lock down commitments from prospective financiers. Her own
company’s Murdoch Mysteries, now in its sixth season, has been such an
international success, recently inspiring the outfit to open a Los Angeles office.

“I don’t really think things are more challenging on the cost side than they were five
years ago; if anything, technology is helping to bring costs down,” Jennings says.
“The real challenge is the up-front development that drama requires and then facing
the competition for eyeballs. Sometimes you have to twist yourself a little to get it
done—but when it works…”

All That Drama – Elizabeth Guider – WorldScreen – March 26, 2012