Quote

Cable series have more time to focus on characters, and a structure that allows for a development in character as you go along. Network shows have a pressure of time and space that is completely different.

The territory has changed, and a lot of really good actors want to do cable series, but they don't necessarily want to do network TV and make the commitment of 22 episodes or whatever. They find that the liberties and the creative freedoms that you get in cable is more interesting to them than the censorship of a network show.

The shows you can do in cable are just more buzzworthy and are about subject matter that's more unusual or dark. And broadcast shows tend to be more mainstream or middle-of-the-road.

The great thing about working in cable is that, since the season is truncated - we only do 12 shows - the writers are more at ease in terms of mapping out the trajectory of the story and the characters.

It used to be that you had to do a certain number of episodes to hit syndication in order to try to keep a show on, because it's important to the network because it sells good commercial time. That's really not how HBO does things.

There are certain economics involved in making a network TV show that you want to amortize the costs of that, so the more episodes you make, the cheaper they all are individually.

A lot of shows fly under the radar for the first couple seasons and then become successful. It doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the success of the show or how much the network is behind it.

There's probably a little more creative freedom in cable versus network, a little less of a committee looking over everyone's shoulder, but it depends on the network; it depends on the show; it depends on who the head writer or show runner is and what track record they have.

I think the networks, in general, have to evaluate what's happening around them. I'm sure they're scared about a lot of things: Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and all these places that allow people to watch shows in chunks.

When you're doing a network show in the States, you're just a slave to the ratings. There's so much money invested that there's this pervasive atmosphere of fear and anxiety. Every morning after an episode of your show airs, everyone is fixated on the numbers to try and determine how the show did.