Television is really fertile ground, and it's because of platforms like Netflix and Hulu and, of course, the cable channels like HBO and Showtime.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Television is better than it's ever been in history. A lot of stories are being pushed - because of how complicated they are to make - toward Netflix and other channels on cable.
TV is starting to become such a collective experience again. People are watching it on their own time, rather than being on a schedule. Netflix offers the easy opportunity to watch as much as you can.
When we started looking at the bigger television ecosystem, you see that there's not that many serialized TV shows being made for TV. The economics are lousy: They don't sell into syndication well; they're expensive to produce.
Television is fantastic because you get to follow a group of characters over time, and their stories can enrich and surprise you. And you get to work with a group of people over time as well, which can be very satisfying with the right group.
I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.
I think where it's going is toward what the music industry is like, where channels will be considered more like labels that carry the type of TV show that you like, and then you'll consume them however you can. For example, I don't really watch Showtime, but I bought 'Homeland,' and I've been watching every episode on my iPad.
With the rise of cable, network is clearly floundering because the characters on cable are far more fascinating than they are on network. Network television is trying to figure it out. Network television really relies on story rather than character, and cable relies on character.
I think that in order for anything to work on television, you have to have conflict. Nothing can be too happy or it's boring. People don't want to watch that - they want to watch things that are exciting and dangerous and sexy and have tension.
New platforms are emerging: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Xbox. And film actors are gravitating towards television, because there are basically better roles there. Television is making the kind of epics and genres that the movie studios used to make, and often doing it better with more complex narratives and corresponding budgets.
There's no reason not to be in television now. You get to live at home and you're not on the road all the time, they pay you decent money, and the writing's good. You're not compromising for it, you know.
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