We're a week and a bit into the new season, and the narrative seems to be this:
- Viewership is up
- People are sampling lots of new shows
- Once they sample, they're tuning away as the hour progresses
Everybody already wants big bangs off the top. Front load the action. I've been in meetings where the network person wants the Act One out moved up to the teaser. We've all been there.
But a little data is a dangerous thing. How can we amp up more? What bang for the storytelling buck are we going to be asked for next? As the narrative room shrinks to nearly 40 minutes for an hour, five acts, and a desire to grab people by the throat off the top, how are we going to be able to tell coherent, compelling, satisfying stories?
Any thoughts?
7 comments:
What I think you're implying is that maybe the answer is, don't amp up. Play with the audience more. Don't let them know where it's going. Frontload hooks, not reveals.
I found the first hour of Six Degrees so watchable because I didn't know where it was going. I don't even know what the show is about yet. Which I kinda like.
zzzt.
Nope. That's not what I'm implying at all. Actually I'm not implying anything. Just trying to crystal ball gaze and figure out what people will be saying on the other side of the table soon.
Six Degrees is part of that narrative, by the way. I think they're one of the shows that sampled strongly, but had a big drop off in the second half.
I read an article this morning stating that "Smith" lost 10% (I think) of its audience at the bottom of the hour earlier this week. Yikes!
Hey Denis, do you have an old post somewhere explaining to us lay people what the five acts do? i.e. exposition ... resolution ... whatever?
Jacques,
Sorry -- I really don't. I actually have not had call to write for five acts yet -- Canadian networks haven't gotten on that trend bus yet.
But that sounds to me like perfect question fodder/search fodder for the wonder that is Jane Espenson!
I'd like to hear how this year compares to previous years in terms of ratings going down in the second half hour, but that info hasn't been in any of the articles I've read. It seems obvious to me that each September, people will tune in to see a new show, decide it's not their cup of tea, and move on.
I wonder if it's the media doing a trend story before a trend is detectable. Maybe there's no breakout hit right out of the gate, but most of the shows they're talking about aren't actually tanking.
We complain about networks not giving shows time to grow and cancelling them before a season's up - I cringe at the thought that you'd have to design a show that doesn't have even an hour to grow.
I think a lot of this dropoff is dueto the decompression phenomenon that is occurring in our television. Instead of the former compact-resolved-at-fadeout stories, we have more serial entertainment. Less happens per episode and people are "expected" to hitch their wagon to the long-term story based on the characters.
LOST is the best example of this that I can think of at the moment.
An analogy we could make is the difference between american comics and japanese manga. Comics pack more story into fewer images and manga 'decompresses' the action to examine more of the nuance of characters.
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