Online shows blaze trail away from TV
With Amazon’s Transparent and Netflix’s House of Cards winning big at this past Sunday’s Golden Globes, and Community announcing its release date after having transferred from NBC to Yahoo, the Internet show buzz has reached an all-time high. These significant steps forward have turned plenty of heads; there is a deluge of articles hitting the web this week declaring this a transition period for the genre of television. However, it is difficult to envision a total revolution in the landscape of television. It’s much more likely that this is simply the birth of a different branch of entertainment.
Online game entertainment certainly overlaps with the world of television. Online shows have thus far been grouped with traditional television shows at award shows. This is not that difficult to understand. Online shows, after all, come in episodic format like television shows, and shows like Arrested Development and Community have easily jumped from network television to online formats. It can be argued, however, that in making the switch, shows become something different. The fact that fictional universes have made the jump from film to the small screen (and vice versa) isn’t used as evidence that these are actually the same medium, but rather, two connected ones. Their similarities make them related, but distinct, forms of entertainment. The same could be argued about television and online shows.
For example, that fact that online shows are released in episodes is misleading. This is especially true with shows that are released in binge-friendly piles of episodes. At what point while watching eight episodes of House of Cards does the show really become a 10-hour long film? Some shows are actually better viewed in one sitting. The fourth season of Arrested Development came out to mixed reviews for its meandering plot. The season’s arc contained a series of threads that were best understood when viewed all together. Showrunner Mitchell Hurwitz seems to have been ahead of the game when it came to understanding the potential for art that the online format offers — something that was impossible when the show originally ran on network television in the early 2000s.
The release of all episodes at once offers a wealth of possibilities that have not been fully explored as of yet. Properly executed, one of these shows could boil down to a 10-hour monolith of content that doesn’t require fumbling through the rows of a dark movie theater to go on the fifth bathroom break of the day, or waiting weeks at a time for the next chapter to be released. Plots can be more complex with a canvas like this, and so can jokes. A joke can be set up in episode two and left alone to only pay off in the finale. This can be done with much more confidence when the finale is probably being watched a few hours later, as opposed to a few weeks, after the second episode.
Another major strength of platforms like Netflix or Amazon is the ability to present these large chunks of content without the constant breaks for commercials. While watching on traditional television, periodic commercial breaks are expected. But once the content goes online, the expectations change. Commercials become much more burdensome when the viewer has the ability to hit play or pause. When network television posts its episodes online, they are usually presented with commercials between the acts. This strategy is not going anywhere. Yahoo has announced that this would be the strategy with new episodes of Community. Whenever websites remove commercials and allow for more streamlined viewing, however, things become much more immersive. It gets much easier to lose track of time and watch seven episodes in a row for a more cohesive viewing experience.
The line between television and online shows is far from clear, but one could argue that it’s even less clear than the one between film and television. TV’s line with movies has become increasingly blurred over time, while its boundary between online shows has grown more distinct. One major event that helped to further muddle the line between TV and film has been the fallout of the Sony hacking scandal. After threats of violence were made preceding the release of The Interview, Sony eventually released the film online. It made $31 million, a huge win for a film whose $44 million budget seemed at risk of becoming a sunk cost after major cinemas pulled out of showing it. It is difficult to tell how much of the success was due to the major controversy that before it, but it certainly had something to do with it. There is definitely something to be said of the success The Interview found, however, and no doubt the ever hungry studios will attempt to explore the possibilities of online films. Michael Lynton declared as much when he said Sony would “learn from [the] experience and innovate [their] business together.”
If major studios begin to create scripted films specifically for online release, it will only serve to muddle the waters further. TV movies, online movies, TV-movie crossovers and online-TV crossovers have already all happened and will only happen more and more as these hybrids prove to be profitable. While boundaries are being crossed more than ever before, however, it is also clear that online shows are heading in a direction all their own.
Daniel Grzywacz is a senior majoring in anthropology and neuroscience. He is also lifestyle editor at the Daily Trojan. His column, “The Showbiz Must Go On,” runs Thursdays.