A reader named Chris,
from Toronto writes:
“I have just recently stumbled upon your column after listening to
you on Destinies which I tune into
from time to time. Your columns remind greatly of my childhood and
University days of watching endless hours of sci fi-tv shows. I miss this
era somewhat as TV now days is very broken up into so many niches and sci-fi is
not as prominent as it used to be (horror seems to be holding its own
though).
My question to you is what are your thoughts on miniseries? What
made them so popular and what lead to their eventual demise?
Especially in the 70's and early 80's you would periodically look
forward to various Miniseries on the networks especially around ratings
times. Miniseries like Shogun,
Centennial, North and South but also a number of Sci Fi/Horror miniseries as well including V (remember the build-up to this show?), Brave New World, or those Stephen King Horrors like IT or The Stand. Look forward to reading your future columns and
catching up on your older ones.”
Thank you for a great
question Chris, and I’m glad you found the blog. I hope you stick around!
Like you, I grew up with
genre mini-series, and came to love and appreciate them.
I recall not only the hype and build-up to Kenneth Johnson's V in 1984 and V:
The Final Battle, but also Goliath Awaits (1981), another weird
mini-series with a sci-fi setting: the bottom of the sea. I also loved Amerika (1987) -- a miniseries
about the United States becoming a communist nation -- and wish someone would officially release it on DVD. I also remember watching and being utterly freaked out by a miniseries version of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1978)
Oddly, the mini-series
did not last, as a form, very long. In
the early-to-mid 1970s, the big networks began producing spotlight efforts such as Rich
Man, Poor Man (1976) and Roots (1977), both of which achieved blockbuster
status and ratings. In my household, programming
like Shogun (1980), Marco Polo (1982), The Thorn Birds (1983) and The Winds of
War (1983) were all “event programming,” and the whole family watched them
together. We would tape programs that we couldn't stay up for on school-nights, and watch the recorded programs with dinner (in our family room), the next evening.
I suspect that the form
has died out, largely, because of the expense involved in production. Mini-series often featured top-notch actors,
were set in faraway locations, and were many hours in length. A good number of them, as you can see from
the list I enumerated above, were also period pieces.
Since 2000, when we had
the horrible game show glut -- Who Wants to be a Millionaire five nights a week -- and 2001, the era of the reality show glut, the once-great networks have decided, apparently, that they can produce programming far more cheaply and achieve decent ratings. Thus, mini-series, like much good scripted
television, began to fade.
Today, we have excellent
scripted drama on premium channels like HBO and cable channels like AMC, but
even there, the budgets are not high.
Often, only a dozen episodes are produced a year, thus making series
like Dexter or Mad Men or The Walking Dead, essentially, “mini-series.”
But the heyday of the
great, event mini-series has ended, which I find a little sad. A couple weeks ago, a reader asked me here if there
would ever be another Star Trek, and I wrote some about the Balkanization of
series television. Seinfeld and The
X-Files, I believe, are pretty much the last two “water cooler” programs of our "national" culture. Everybody watched them, or had
some familiarity with them. Today, viewership is so splintered that you can share a water cooler with someone who's never seen Dancing with the Stars, or watched the remade BSG.
So the balkanization of
television has also, I fear, contributed to the demise of the mini-series format. Mini-series are too expensive and difficult to schedule. But their greatest problem is that networks are no longer the
platforms they once were for water cooler events like Shogun or Roots.
Don’t forget to e-mail
me your Ask JKM questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com
"Thus, mini-series, like much good scripted television, began to fade." Translation-The world now sucks.
ReplyDeleteAnother factor to consider: many of the landmark TV miniseries we recall so well were based on bestselling books of the day, and networks were willing to take a shot on budgeting them because they were already known brands. Salem's Lot, Roots, Rich Man, Poor Man, Shogun, North and South, and The Thorn Birds all come immediately to mind as miniseries that were books first. And just as "watercooler" television has died out, so too has a shared national culture of literature. We're no longer all reading and discussing the same books, and the big, sprawling "doorstop-sized" potboiler novels that were popular in the '70s have largely disappeared as well. So, in addition to the cost and balkanization issues you mention, the networks can no longer count on a pre-established audience...
ReplyDeleteYep, everyone is their own niche market now.
ReplyDelete