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Jacque Waiden

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Aug 1, 2024, 11:17:20 PM8/1/24

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Viewed one way, it's old-fashioned television, a situation comedy with familiar actors appearing on a screen. But those screens are increasingly found on laptops, cell phones and tablets, as shows like "Arrested Development" migrate to streaming video.

Cult favorite "Arrested Development," which was a critical hit for three seasons on FOX, before being canceled in 2006, is the latest online-only offering for viewers who are increasingly choosing when and where to get their entertainment.

The programs lend themselves to on-demand binge-watching. Netflix's 33 million subscribers can dip in and out whenever they want. Nielsen even has a name for some of these viewers: "zero TV households," up to five million now from two million in 2007.

For more on, that we're joined by Brian Grazer, chairman of Imagine Entertainment, which produces film and television, including "Arrested Development," and television and media critic Eric Deggans of The Tampa Bay Times.

Well, I mean, there were other choices, but it turned out that Ted Sarandos, who's a huge fan of "Arrested Development," and happens to also at the same time run Netflix, asked us if we would like to do our series for Netflix, which would enable us to release it all in one night, and then enable audiences, kids in particular, because that's our big audience is 18 to 25, to binge-view it.

And it's the kind of show that kids would watch four or five or six episodes either alone in their room or at a party, or it just becomes a social situation. And they would watch several of these episodes. And so it was just kind of the perfect situation for us.

They're pioneering a way of delivering television and spending the amount of money that they're putting forward to make this show, to make "House of Cards," to make "Hemlock Grove." These are big-ticket enterprises. They pull out all the stops with the production.

Brian Grazer, when you're trying to produce something like this, does it change knowing that people are going to watch all at once if they want to? Does it change the kind of program you put together? Does it change production?

And what we're finding is that younger people, of course, are less likely to watch television in the more traditional ways. They're more likely to use it online. They're more likely to be cord-cutters, people who don't use cable television, for example, and only get their television habit through online.

So, Eric, if you're the consumer in this formula, and you are thinking, well, maybe I can watch everything on my iPad, why should I bother to pay for cable anymore? Is this a threat to cable companies or to broadcast?

There's a lot of live sporting events, football especially, that you can't necessarily see online. And so that's where cable companies are drawing people in. That's one reason why ESPN, for example, can charge so much per subscriber, a reported more than five dollars per subscriber for their service, because that's something that you can't necessarily get online yet.

But there's a drive amongst consumers, I think, to have more control over their viewing, to watch shows when they want to watch them and how often they want to watch them. And that's breaking down both the cable TV model and the broadcast model.

But I think excitement, curiosity and the explosive nature of how conversations work can still be applied, because you can say, I just saw five episodes of "Arrested Development." You might not be doing it on the water cooler the next day. You're going to be doing it on all your social media.

We have already seen that people, they watch "Mad Men." They DVR it and they watch it when they can. They DVR various shows. And you try to talk to your friends about it, and they haven't watched it yet and they don't want to talk it.

So, that is a little bit of a problem. But what I found with "House of Cards" especially, that was such a well-done series, that people tended to watch it in the big chunks. So you really could talk about it. Within a week or so, you could really talk about it, because a lot of fans of the show had already watched it.

There's so much anticipation for "Arrested Development" that they're not even letting us critics see very many advanced episodes. I just found out today I may get to watch one episode in advance. Normally, we have been able to see three of them before the show debuts. So they're not even trusting us critics to not spoil things for people.

Well, you can test your own "Arrested Development" knowledge by taking our online quiz. And we have also posted one author's take on how technology has cracked open the entertainment industry to just about anyone with a creative idea.