Viewer Tastes Evolve Storytelling in Unexpected Ways

Podcast Interview Excerpt (access full episode here)

Vicki Lins:  Three years ago, Kevin Riley announced you were going to double down on your amount of original content, have you done that?

Sarah Aubrey:   We have, TNT has been an incredibly successful network for a long time. Its programmed shows with wonderful characters like “The Closer,” “Rizzoli and Isles” and “The Last Ship.” TNT original programs took characters and put them into more relatable procedural settings.

Our desire was to keep up the audience’s affinity for the characters they love but take them in another direction. A direction, that frankly, audiences want to go in now which are serialized shows with complicated, rich character stories and twisty plots. Audiences today want and demand it all from their shows, especially their dramas. We’ve been refilling the pipeline with new shows like “Animal Kingdom,” “Claws,” “Alienist” and coming soon “I Am the Night.”

Vicki Lins:   You mentioned the kinds of shows audiences want now are different than even just a couple of years ago. We see the landscape changing so rapidly. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as the new wave in programming currently? What are audiences looking for and what is really resonating?

Sarah Aubrey:   I think audiences have become very sophisticated about what they want in their stories. In the past, people came to television and wanted to watch 22 episodes on a broadcast show. The characters were like their friends, and they more or less knew what was going to happen in an episode -- this was a very comforting form of entertainment.

Over time, as the appetite and financial viability of adult drama grew, a lot of talent started to gravitate towards television. We also had the proliferation of Netflix and Amazon, bringing more buyers to sophisticated storytelling.

The 10-episodes versus a 22-episode order is night and day in terms of what you can achieve creatively. It's just very difficult when you have the pressure of 22-episodes to make each one a bespoken little jewel. The 10-episode order has enabled us to blast into a new level of creativity.

Vicki Lins:   Audiences are more sophisticated. They're also consuming content differently by binge viewing content.

Sarah Aubrey:   Yes.

Vicki Lins:   What does that do to storytelling and to the narrative that you're trying to create? And you referenced 10 episodes, are we really looking at almost elongated movie formats?

Sarah Aubrey:   No. It's interesting I feel very strongly TV is its own beast and it exists in this 50 - 55-minute form. I don't know about you, but I don't want usually more than one hour. There's something really satisfying in a tightly structured 50-minute show. I think what has started to happen, audiences understand all the moves of basic storytelling and are open to being surprised.

Vicki Lins:   You mentioned earlier complicated character studies. It's another theme that seems to be rampant in the industry. A lot of the new shows have more complex, deeper characters and seem to be drawing out story-lines. We're not getting to know characters in the first episode anymore. Why is that? What's going on with viewers that they're looking for a deeper relationship with characters?

Sarah Aubrey:  Look back at Tony Soprano. At the time he was a cutting-edge character because he would've been the villain of any other television show. In that show, he was the hero or the anti-hero. What started to change was a willingness to see flaws in the main characters. It opened the door to go places with characters that we’d never been before. Someone didn't always have to be the strong one, the right one or the good one; they could be the confused one, the sad one and the one that screws up.

Vicki Lins:   Going to go back to "The Alienist" just for a minute, I know it reached a cumulative $13 million-plus total viewer in the in the first telecast its initial week which is impressive, congratulations. Nearly half of those were new to the network, correct?

Sarah Aubrey:   Yes. That's a success.

Vicki Lins:   How do you keep them? They've seen "The Alienist," are they now TNT viewers that will be interested in what else you have to offer? Or, was that a one-hit wonder because the program caught their eye?

Sarah Aubrey:   No. In fact, we've spent a lot of time being strategic about this... Now that we have them, what do we do with them? We planned for the success.

We're launching a whole collection of shows called “The Suspense Collection.” The next show “I Am the Night” will move into “The Alienist” time slot in January. It's really juicy, in the same way, "The Alienist" was. Then following that, next summer we have another mystery “Tell Me Your Secrets.” It has so many twists and again, two very complicated characters. "The Alienist" audience will come back for mysteries that have similar twists with layered characters and are also limited-series.