Roger Wolfson on how Streaming services have changed everything for TV writers
Listen to this articleRoger Wolfson is a TV and Screenwriter who has sold eleven pilots to almost every Network in town, including to Broadcast, Cable, Premium Cable, and Streaming.
Streaming has changed everything for writers. And a writer and a consumer of TV, I think it makes sense to understand what these changes are.
When I first started writing for television almost twenty years ago, the general rule was that there was no reason to try to start selling a TV show until you had staffed on several existing shows and moved your way up the ranks.
Furthermore, if you want to sell a show, your top target was one of the big broadcast networks. That was how to grab the largest share of eyeballs. That was how to grab the largest amount of money. That was how to get the largest staff of writers underneath you, that was how to have the largest budget, that was how to do the most episodes of television in a given year. Cable was perhaps more creatively varied and premium cable had a cache of course – but Broadcast was king.
To write for Broadcast, that meant tailoring your product. You had to pick a subject that appeals to a large audience, you have to somewhat dumb it down so such a large audience could appreciate it. It also meant that you couldn’t guarantee that your audience would watch every episode, so that meant crafting, or at the very least leaning toward, a procedural.
(Let me define that term, “procedural.” Because sometimes there is some confusion. When I use the word procedural, it probably makes you think of a TV show like Law and Order: SVU which I used to write for. The most typical procedural is, in fact, the crime procedural. But legal procedurals and medical procedurals are almost equally common. Basically a strict procedural means that the episode focuses on a case. That needs to be solved. Criminal, legal, medical. All three have built-in stakes. Life or death stakes. Mystery. Obstacles. And drama. To be fair, however, almost every TV show has procedural elements. Even in a comedy or a prime time soap, the lead characters have a mission that they are on a problem to solve that is the procedural element of the episode).
OK, so, as recently as twenty years ago, few writers sold shows unless they had staffed a great deal on other shows; most preferred to sell to Broadcast networks, and most wrote for that market even if it meant writing – a bit -in the direction of a procedural.
Now, today, streamers will buy material from writers regardless of whether they’ve ever staffed at all. Streamers could care less about procedural elements. They expect their audiences to binge-watch the entire series, typically within days of the first episode is downloaded, so essentially they want writers to present to them a movie that is ten hours long and can be broken up into ten individual hours.
Broadcast still pays well and has the most episodes – but the process is no longer as attractive for writers. With broadcast, you have to spend months developing a pitch, then you have to go out and pitch it to producers and then the studios and then the networks. If you sell it, you’ve only sold a pilot script, which you then have to write. If your network doesn’t like the script, then they don’t order the pilot. If they do order the pilot when you go up against other pilots that have been shot knowing that only a couple are going to make it to series order. And it could be a short order. With broadcast the payoff is large. But the risks are equally massive.
While with streamers, you have two avenues: pitch them, or write the script, package it with a director and star, and then present it to them. Either way, the streamers will never order just a pilot. If you sell a pitch to them, they’ll ask for a script and a series bible (at a step-by-step outline of the first season), and if they like that – then they order eight to ten episodes, simple as that.
Plus, streamers aren’t necessarily looking for large audiences for every one of their shows. They are looking to be “the” streamer with the most cutting edge, provocative material. It’s OK if your show appeals to only one niche. If your show can capture that niche altogether – that’s fantastic. If your show busts out of the clutter by being so flashy or original or bleeding edge – that works, too.
So that’s how writers think now when developing projects. What’s a great season look like, instead of an episode? How can I slow down, instead of speed up, my story? How can my show stand out? And – why wait? If streamers are buying, who cares if I don’t have all the experience in the world – why not take my shot, now?
Ultimately, this is creatively exciting and fulfilling in many ways. You can make the argument that the cap is off the toothpaste. Lots is going to come out. You can say it’s good for writers and for the audience.
But what you can’t say, is that things haven’t changed. It’s a whole new world.
