The world of television – how it’s made and how people watch it – has changed rapidly over the last decade. A prime example of this is Sony AXN’s Absentia. In discussing the show making its world premiere at the Monte Carlo TV Fest, Variety rightly dubbed Absentia a “hotly anticipated” Hollywood show. Yet this show wasn’t made in Hollywood – it was shot largely in Europe. Furthermore – at the moment – it doesn’t have a US release. Is this the next wave in America’s new “golden age” of television? There are a lot of pieces needed to solve this puzzle, so bear with me.
What is TV’s New Golden Age & What Does Absentia Have to do With it?
Officially the “New Golden Age” is marked by the HBO drama The Sopranos. I agree, but I’d say – as do others – the precursors to it could be seen in the NBC drama Hill Street Blues. The X-files also played a role in shaping it. Let’s look at the components of TV’s new golden age and how Sony AXN’s Absentia fits in.
The First Factor: Movie Quality Television
One of the hallmarks of American television’s new golden age is highly creative and multi-layered storytelling. However, this trend didn’t start because TV executives thought the world needed to see The Sopranos. HBO needed a way to create “must-see-TV” – in a way that people would pay for. That meant it had to be different from the traditional formulaic shows the networks offered.
While at the time no one would frame it this way, the answer was to make movie-like television. However the movies being emulated are from David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos originally had envisioned the story as a film. A key change that happened when HBO agreed to make the series is that Chase was given creative control of the series. This fundamentally changed the role of the writer/creator of a show and soon it became TV’s new normal.
Movies and Television – Then and Now
It used to be that great television was the purvey of the executive producer – whether they created it or not. Today we talk about the showrunner. That person is usually the writer/creator of a television series – as well as a hands on executive producer. Much like the director of a film it’s the showrunner’s vision that is allowed to shape and drive a show – and whom its success or failure is pinned on.
Another connection between American film directors and showruners is what occurred to define those roles. One of the things that led to what’s referred to as Hollywood’s second Golden Age or New Hollywood, was the introduction of television. Television’s New Golden Age was also pushed by the introducing of new technologies: first by cable TV and then the internet.
The two eras are similar in the sudden burst of creativity sparked by the freedom given to the artistic side of production. A quick anecdote illustrates this perfectly. During his time directing the Boardwalk Empire pilot for HBO, Martin Scorsese told his fellow executive producer Mark Wahlberg,“I feel like I’m back in the ’70s, doing my own thing.” (Variety). Scorsese is one of the greatest auteurs to come out of that New Hollywood period. If he says the two periods feel similar to him there’s definitely something similar.
The Second Factor: Niche TV & The Internet
The other thing that helped create this golden age of television is the ability cable and streaming have to cater to specific interests. This is because cable and streaming shows aren’t dependent on the number of viewers at a given time. Ratings are irrelevant. In fact, streaming won’t give out numbers.
What these services both needed was critical acclaim to create buzz and viewers passionate enough about a show to buy a subscription. It meant cable stations – and later the streaming services – could afford to experiment and break with network TV norms. It’s the structure of cable and streaming that made it safe to offer writer/creators so much creative control.
The Avid Viewer
We will (always) take a show for a small passionate audience over one that is ‘for everybody. These days, nothing is more important than passion to making a show [a] success.
– Joel Stillerman, AMC’s EVP of original programming, production and digital content. (THR)
Many sneer at the term “fandom,” but are quite comfortable with the term “avid viewer” as coined by cultural critic Anna Leszkiewicz. To be fair, not all avid viewers are part of a fandom, but all people involved in a TV fandom are avid viewers. An avid viewer is someone with intense interest with all aspects of a show and the people who make it happen.
Fandom
.@Stana_Katic answering fan questions at a special @festivaltvmc meet & greet and sending love to #stanatics worldwide! â¤ï¸?â¤ï¸ #Absentia pic.twitter.com/bvhF6STajz
– Absentia (@AbsentiaSeries) June 17, 2017
There’s always been groups of people who form social groups based on the love of something. From people who dress up to go to Renaissance fairs or Star Trek conventions, to cinephiles and members of The Dickens Fellowship Old Movie clubs, they all can fall under the idea of fandom.
Fandom: The fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.
What niche TV has done is allow for shows to be directed to a narrower group of people. In time even network television caught on that you no longer had to write a show to appeal to everyone in the 18-49 range. A show that created a passionate response and intense discussion could create interest for a larger audience, as well as sustain a decent baseline viewing. Ideally, you’d want both, but for subscription cable it was more about the prestige of a well-crafted show. For networks whose ratings have been splintering because viewers have so many options, being able to point to a core audience of certain demographics has become crucial.
The Internet & Social Media
The internet created a space for these avid viewers to read about and discuss their favorite shows. The X-Files debuted just as the internet, aka the world-wide-web, was becoming more mainstream due to browsers like Netscape. It’s that show and the internet communities created by it that gives us the idea of television fandoms that we use today.
Social Media
After our initial love of AOL & Netscape died with the onset of Google, the next big shift in the post-internet world came with the onslaught of social media. While Facebook and Twitter weren’t the first, they really were the game-changers. Facebook – founded in 2004 -let you connect online with people you knew and connect with their friends. It also, via its Facebook games, encouraged becoming friends with people you didn’t know – who played the same games as you. These connections had nothing to do with where you lived, but what you liked.
Two years later Twitter took this connecting by interest to a new level. Now people were encouraged to follow others based solely on their interests. Suddenly people from all over the world were talking to each other directly about everything and anything: politics, food, music, movies, and TV shows.
This rise of social media has taken fandom to the level of being able to make or break a television show. Don’t believe me? What tipped Fox into giving Fringe its fifth wrap up season? What pushed ABC’s Castle to scrap its season nine? Why is Supernatural still on the air? (There is no disrespect intended to Supernatural fans in asking that.) The answer to all of these questions are: the fandom. Hollywood has certainly noticed the power of fandom – last year a bunch of “media broadcasters” paid for a study to try and figure out how they work!
Golden Age or Not, It’s Always About The Money
Although everyone loves to talk about the creative freedom in this New Golden Age of Television, don’t think it’s a total free-for-all. TV showrunners – just like movie directors – are ultimately controlled by the bottom line. Nothing changes that.
Whether it’s about production values or getting good talent when you look at a show like HBO’s Game of Thrones, or CBS’s long-running comedy The Big Bang Theory, it’s clear that TV continues to get more expensive to make. Trying to figure out how to continue to make a profit doing television is something all branches of the television industry is grappling with.
One of the many issues of concern is the idea of saturation. Some worry that there is too much content and not enough audience. The way television studios have tackled this problem is one Hollywood movie studios have depended on for some time: turning to the foreign market.
Joe Lewis is the head of comedy, drama and VR (virtual reality) at Amazon Studios. In an interview discussing the differences between Amazon and network, fare Lewis bluntly laid out this idea.
Our job is not to get people to watch the 8.30pm lead into the 9pm news. Our job is to make the greatest TV shows on the planet. (The Financial Times)
Granted, Lewis was talking about why Amazon shows are more innovative than what network traditionally offers. However, they also aren’t tied to selling a show to a particular audience in any part of the world. That’s a big change. Still, Amazon doesn’t stream shows in every country it’s in and even when they do, some offerings are excluded. Likewise what you can see on Netflix worldwide depends on what country you’re in. That’s just the way it is when dealing with foreign market
The Foreign Market Rules
Whether it’s been film or television, there’s always been the foreign market component to made-in-America products. What’s the difference between the idea behind Lewis’s point and the current foreign market rules? The current rules are still based on time-delayed selling to different countries.
How does one usually sell a show overseas? Well, having a well-known actor or actress involved is always a boon for overseas sales. However, even with a star, for traditional US shows the bigger concern was always about a show’s ratings. Countries usually take a “wait and see” approach with US shows before buying broadcasting rights. With a decent US run the show’s owner can then cut syndication deals for at home, abroad, and streaming. This process is why selling a new show simultaneously in several countries is – until recently – practically unheard of.
Streaming & The Piracy Problem
The rise of the internet has given us the gift of streaming shows from just about anywhere. That’s been great, but also has created a new challenge. Those walls dividing up the world into territories one can sell to, they’ve been crumbling. It didn’t take long for people to start uploading copies of albums, movies and TV shows for people to access online for free. It’s an ongoing problem
The pirates have outnumbered the watchdogs. If you don’t believe that, ask the watchdogs. They’ve been toiling in vain to stem the onslaught of viewers flocking to free streaming websites in order to enjoy the latest episodes of “Game of Thrones”, “30 Rock” or “Dexter.” The watchdogs can’t possibly keep up–they’re overrun like hobbled survivors fleeing a horde of zombies on AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”
Karsten Strauss, Forbes journalist, 2013
Strauss noted then that some piracy had to do with shows not yet released in certain markets. Before the internet it was much easier to contain a show’s buzz to the country it was in – at least for the first year or so. With everyone talking to each other on social media that quickly became impossible. People didn’t (and don’t) see the point in having to wait to see a show in their country when it was already out in another one.
Two years after that article HBO launched season five of Game of Thrones as a single event across 170 countries (The Hollywood Reporter). The reasoning for it was to help cut down on spoilers and piracy. This would benefit HBO’s worldwide network stations and broadcasting partners (such as Sky). If people were going to be up at 2am to illegally download a show why not just broadcast at that time and get those ratings or subscriptions? It was a win-win for the fans and for HBO. This was a real game-changer! (Ironically, Britain chose to opt out that year. because their network Sky wanted, ” all UK fans to experience the show together.” A year later though they too joined in the show’s world simulcast.)
Sony AXN’s Absentia Has a New Kind of TV Launch. It’s Global.
The cast of Absentia at The 57th Monte Carlo TV Fest
Photo: AbsentiaTV.com
In light of what Game of Thrones did, watching the roll out for Sony AXN’s Absentia has been intriguing. It’s far more like that of an independent film than a television show. This is fitting because, as Katic revealed in an interview at the Monte Carlo TV Fest, Absentia was shot like a film, not a series. You can do that with one director doing all the episodes, even better when the director is Oden Ruskin who did Israel’s series False Flag
Oded Ruskin + @Stana_Katic = Dream Makers @AbsentiaSeries pic.twitter.com/TVoz9902fV
– Kathryn Busby (@Busby) June 19, 2017
Of course, the other side of being more like a film is the risk factor. When a TV show in one part of the world gets slammed not everyone in the world knows about it. It just quietly disappears. A global film release tanking the way King Arthur did isn’t just expensive but embarrassing.
When Game of Thrones did their world-wide premiere it was in season five with huge well-documented fan-base. It had a guaranteed audience. With Absentia being a new show, it’s fan appeal is untested. In terms of a global television launch AXN’s stations and partners didn’t have the same kind of incentive GoT did to buy in. Well, at least they didn’t when it was first announced last fall.
The Game-changing Factors Lie in the Casting
However, starting with Katic (who is also one of the hands-on executive producers), the casting is brilliant in minimizing risk. As mentioned earlier, most TV shows cast stars with an eye towards a particular market. To sell internationally, Absentia has pulled together an ensemble cast that creates real global appeal. By using a mix of independent film marketing tactics and the power of Katic’s fandom on social media the buzz for the show has steadily grown.
That’s not just my observation, Marie Jacobsen, VP of Production and Programming at Sony Pictures Television (SPT), said as much back in March at the Rio Content Market
Absentia is a new model that we’d never seen before, because it’s still six months before it premieres and it’s already being commercialized through trailers, creative posts from users and a lot of buzz on social media. We didn’t spend the studio’s normal budget on this product, but we are doing it because we really believe in emerging talents with new ideas.”
Everyone Loves Mystery and Romance
Absentia teases a complex & emotional thriller. Backed by STP, the production team, Israel’s Masha TV (The original of Homeland), director Ruskin, Katic, and the entire cast, are all people proven able to deliver just that. These factors make Absentia a series well-suited to social media marketing. Even with just this small tease fans are worried about Katic’s character, FBI Agent Emily Byrne!
After being declared dead in absentia, an FBI agent must reclaim her family, identity and innocence when she finds herself the prime suspect in a string of murders. (IMDB)
The reason for this is because when it comes to television, everyone loves a mystery. Whether it’s a soap-opera question like,“Who shot JR?,” a sci-fi journey of unraveling a conspiracies about aliens, or wondering what the heck is up with Daenerys Targaryen’s throne for GoT’s season seven, people love to speculate on what’s going on. Social media exchanges get people talking and invested in a show. Quality plus mystery equals buzz.
Then, when you’re ready to take the buzz up a notch, add in some heartbreak. This is Katic’s co-star Patrick Heusinger†as Nick Durand, the husband who thought Emily was dead. He’s since remarried Alice (Cara Theobold) who is the only mother Nick and Emily’s son Flynn (Patrick McAuley) knows.
I can’t be around you. Or her. Without feeling like I’m betraying someone. ? @heusinger #Absentia @Stana_Katic @CaraTheobold @SPTV #TV pic.twitter.com/mMKegKWXj7
– Absentia (@AbsentiaSeries) June 7, 2017
While it’s not at a Game of Thrones level, by the time Sony AXN’s Absentia hit its Monte Carlo TV Festival premiere there could be no doubt that a passionate world-wide audience was clamoring to see the show. With an official Twitter account that just started in mid-March this one tweet has over 300 responses. Remember – no one’s seen the show yet!
Got a question for an #Absentia cast member? Tweet it NOW with #AbsentiaCast & we’ll try to ask at @festivaltvmc! @Stana_Katic #MonteCarlo ? pic.twitter.com/YTNNF0u84t
– Absentia (@AbsentiaSeries) June 14, 2017
The Wrap Up: Why Everyone Should be in on Sony AXN’s Absentia
Following the show on Twitter is fun. Not only because of the teases, but because of fan reactions. For instance, every time another country is announced to be getting the show causes flurry of excitement and despair. Thus far, Sony AXN’s Absentia appears to be set to go on every AXN channel worldwide, plus this most recent announcement:
It’s official, #AbsentiaIsComing to Canada! @showcasedotca ?????@Stana_Katic @heusinger #Absentia https://t.co/I1m23Ppdzl
– Absentia (@AbsentiaSeries) June 5, 2017
The number of Americans tweeting replies about trekking to Canada to see this should make picking it up a no-brainer for a US cable channel or online distributor. Sony AXN’s Absentia already has a passionate audience. More importantly, doesn’t everyone want to see how well – or not – this experiment works? If STP’s model of creating content with a goal of worldwide distribution is the next wave of TV’s New Golden Age it means the ride of the last five years is far from over.
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