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JHRTS FTW!

JHRTS FTW!

Let’s begin today with some awesome news:
My LEGACY script got the runner-up spot in this year’s JHRTS Pilot Script Competition (Drama Category)!

Celebrate good times, come on!

Incidentally, this seems like a great time to talk about how awesome JHRTS is.
No, this is completely unrelated to my pilot script placing.

In case you’re unaware, JHRTS stands for the Junior Hollywood Radio & TV Society. It is the (shocker!) junior branch of famed HRTS (a networking forum for top executives).

I have previously mentioned the importance of “industry” groups, specifically in my TV writer roadmap.
JHRTS is, simply put, a large (assistant-level) industry group that holds regular networking events, charity drives and topical panels. You can get a glimpse at some past events in their archives.

A recent example of an awesome JHRTS panel I attended is “Crafting a Career in Writing for Television“. As the name may or may not state outright, the topic of conversation was about having a career as a TV writer. The panelists were Community‘s Dan Harmon, Empire‘s Wendy Calhoun, Black-ish‘s Kenya Barris, The Comedians‘ Dan Grego & Doug Mand, and Silicon Valley‘s Amy Aniobi.
The best part about these panels is that the moderators usually have some prior relationship with the panelists, meaning that they get right down to the nitty-gritty. In this case, moderator Marcus Wiley honed down on legitimate TV writing career questions, as opposed to usual “TV writing 101” topics such as, say, the difference between a “spec script” and a “spec pilot”.

I joined JHRTS nearly five years ago, almost in time for their 2010 holiday party.
In November 2010, then-assistant Sam Miller made me a sweet deal on #TheGreyBox for me to join JHRTS, even if I wasn’t going to be able to attend the holiday party:

Sam: but i’ll make you a deal – if you buy a ticket + membership, i’ll treat you to a two hour open bar of your own some time after your birthday

Five years later, he still owes me those drinks! (Yes, Sam, I’ve kept all the IRC logs.)

But let’s get back on track.

The reason why I’m bringing up JHRTS is simple: when it comes to television networking, JHRTS is pretty much the go-to place outside of your usual spots (i.e. work and play).
Thanks to their events, I’ve met a lot of great people I wouldn’t otherwise have known; one of whom being CAA’s Matt Thilenius, who also name-dropped JHRTS in his interview.

I’m a big believer in the idea of “putting yourself out there”. In this industry, and this town, you have to be a part of the conversation.
That doesn’t mean constantly waving your scripts around, but it does involve human-to-human interaction.

This applies to you too. (Who? Me?)
Most writers have some form of social anxiety. (Why else would we retread behind pen and keyboard?) We rarely mingle outside our kin.
Putting yourself out there is hard, especially with people who, you feel, may not understand what you’re going through. The thing is, agents, managers and executives are people too.

“Networking” is a dirty word to a lot of folks. They go in expecting either the need to find someone to help them, or the need to sell themselves.
Instead, you should go in with the need to meet cool new people. Whatever happens after that is, well, whatever happens. Kind of like dating.
That’s also why “context” is key. Having a forum, a place where you can meet like-minded individuals who are also here (hopefully) to meet cool new people (you).

Enter: JHRTS. It’s a bunch of cool new people waiting to be met. Also, panels.

Finally, and since I rarely do it, I’m going to take this opportunity to pimp myself out (L’Oréal Paris told me I’m worth it).

Dear agents, managers and executives reading this post: definitely contact me to read my audience-backed industry-loved award-winning(ish) TV pilot LEGACY.
It has a proven track record of people saying it’s not the worst thing they’ve ever read. Plus, it even got second place in this year’s JHRTS Pilot Script Competition.
Contacting me is just a click away. Act now and you’ll get a free bag of Jelly Belly beans.
It’s an offer you can’t afford to refuse!

Is the future of television another article about the future of television?

Is the future of television another article about the future of television?

Around TCA season, we always get inundated with articles related to “the future of television” or “the end of online streaming”.

It’s always funny to read these wannabe prescient articles about the rise and fall of television. Especially since they’re always reverberating the same thought over and over, year after year.

As usual, we had the one about how “live TV will be irrelevant in the future“. There’s also that other one about Netflix producing–wait for it–a bunch of original shows. Whodathunkit.
Let’s also not forget the obligatory “Netflix: Is this the end of online streaming as we know it?” versus “The future of television? HBO.”

And then there’s the palme de la creme de la cherry on the top.
That one article desperately wanting to coin (and crown) a “new art form” within a sub-subset of a television trend.

This year’s winner: “Netflix is accidentally inventing a new art form — not quite TV and not quite film“.

Oh, boy.

Let’s take a glance at the article’s h3 points…

1. Binge watching versus weekly watching: It changes everything

How is this news in 2015?
Nearly six years ago (!) I wrote about that exact same thing.
You know, when House of Cards was but a twinkle in Ted Sarandos’ eye.

My point is not to back-pat myself (that sounded dirty); it is to explain that, hell no, Netflix did not create an “art form” (ugh) that predates it.

Just because you make it “easier” to do something doesn’t mean you “accidentally invent” that something.

Ford did not invent transportation.
Apple did not invent mobile communications.
Netflix did not invent binge-watching (or, as we used to call it in the good old days, TV marathons).

Hold on. Something else is coming back to me…

I remember… I remember watching X-Files episodes back-to-back on VHS in the 90s.

Holy shit. I INVENTED BINGE-WATCHING!

2. Netflix thinks more in terms of seasons than of episodes

Yawn.

Should I really bother talking, yet again, about the concept of “bigger picture” in television?
ABC renewed Lost for three seasons in 2007.
We can all move on now.

3. But the 10-hour story is still a new craft — and an imperfect one

And film is in its infancy compared to literature.

Truth is “10-hour stories” are older than American Idol.

Ever heard of a show called Roots? Or HBO’s Band of Brothers? Or Sci-Fi’s Taken?
I hadn’t, and then I googled “mini-series”.

“Mini-series”, “limited series”, “event series”, “anthology seasons”. Call them what you want. It’s all semantics.
Roots and True Detective are, at the end of the day, close-ended 8-hour narratives.

But then, you tell me, this isn’t about anthology seasons. It’s about shorter seasons!
And, once again, I’ll point you to a distant post from the distant past.

The year was 2008.

“Here are nine ideas to save television“, I bravely claimed. And one was about shorter seasons:

Remember Dirty Sexy Money? Probably not, because it only had 13 episodes last season.
But that’s okay.
Less is definitely more when it comes to shows like Lost. A radically shorter season definitely helped the show to condense its mythology and get on with the answers instead of waiting around for 5 other episodes.
It might not be that good for the Big Five in terms of cash but in a qualitative way, it’s certainly a game-changer.

Now, combine shorter seasons with 55-minute long shows around the year available for free whenever wherever on VOD.
Boom.
Welcome to the new world, Networks.

Holy shit. I ALSO INVENTED NETFLIX!

Look. I understand the temptation to be right about “the future of television” or the desperation to be the first to “call” something. We’re all guilty of this. But if you really want to do that, at least have something new to say.
Why are you shocked HBO is going into sports (“Inside the NFL” anyone?) or that Netflix is doing–gasp!–original programming.

We all know Ted Sarandos’ provocative statement about how Netflix’s goal “is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”
That was three years ago.

And this brings us full-circle to the reason of this entire post–or rant.
Maybe I needed to air my frustration about TV circlejerking.
Maybe I needed to point out how ridiculously narrow these echo chambers have become.
Or, maybe, I needed to quote this actual statement about HBO Now and Netflix:

If, as The Awl’s John Hermann argues, “the next Internet is TV,” then subscription-based streaming services are the next Facebook.

I thought orange was the new black? Wait, what is this again?
Oh. Now I remember.
It’s not TV, it’s articles about TV.

Cord-cutting is not a myth

Cord-cutting is not a myth

I’ve been watching television shows on my computer for most of my life.

No, I’m not 10 years old.

I started in 2001. Before 1080p MKVs and crappy AVIs.
Buffy Season Six was my first.

When I moved to the US, I continued watching TV on my laptop, and then my desktop. And in 2012, I finally bought an actual TV. Not because it was a TV, but because it was a screen. And an awesome one at that.

Earlier this week, a room full of executives gave a conference about the TV industry. Forbes published an article on the subject, entitling “Why cord-cutting is a myth“.

A myth? Isn’t that going a bit too far?

Hearst Ventures’ George Kliavkoff didn’t think so:

Cord-cutting is a great “story”, but I think it’s over-reported.

Amy Banse, managing director of Comcast Ventures concurred:

The volume of press around cord cutting doesn’t quite match reality.

The thing is, numbers don’t lie.

For the first time ever, Comcast now has more high-speed Internet customers than cable TV (22.55 million vs. 22.3 million).
The number of US households has been growing around 1 million a year, yet TV cable has been stagnating for a long time while Internet has skyrocketed (in addition to being a utility).

Comcast_2nd_Quarter_Customer_Growth_2011-2015_High_Speed_Internet_Customers_in_thousands_Video_Customers_in_thousands_chartbuilder

So where is all this denial coming from?

Let’s go back to that Forbes article–

Joe Marchese, president of advanced advertising products for Fox Networks Group, pointed out that Internet access still requires cord—in the form of a cable or a phone line.

Okay. Literally requiring a cord to use the Internet means you can’t be a cord-cutter.
That is, literally, the most literal argument I’ve ever read. Also, completely nonsensical.
People aren’t “cord-cutting” a physical apparatus, they are cutting ties with a specific content delivery method. Simple as that.

Which brings us to the main eyebrow-raising maneuver to reassure shareholders that, don’t worry guys, cord-cutting is totally not a thing.

As Kliavkoff explained:

What’s more likely to gain sizable traction is cord “shaving”. […] A la carte purchasing of channels—and not taking most of them—is a far more interesting area.

With HBO’s a-la-carte inevitable success, such a statement is undoubtedly true–except for the fact that subscribing to HBO Now or Showtime Anytime and cancelling Time Warner have substantially the same outcome.
In other words, the difference between customers changing behaviors and customers never having that behavior to begin with is irrelevant.

Playing word games to argue literal cord-cutting is “over-estimated” is a waste of everyone’s time. Cord-cutting isn’t a “myth” simply because it doesn’t fit a company’s very narrow definition. Worse, you are being disingenuous towards all your current, past, and potential customers by ignoring the motivation behind their actions.

I’ve never had to “cut the cord” because I’ve never wanted to pay $100/month for a cable TV package.
I guess I’m not a cord-cutter. I’m a “cord never(er)” (or “never-cord”).

People are finding newer, better alternatives than the old cord-a-roo.
Whether that means they’re doing it from the get-go or are realizing it years later leads to the same result…

Candle-making can’t stay profitable for long now that people are getting light from a series of tubes.