The Future of TV Is Books

One of my favorite college classes was an RTVF elective called Program Planning and Programming, taught by Prof. Lawrence Lichty.

This was back in 1998, when I still had a VCR and a weekly-used VHS tape labeled “Dawson’s Creek.” It took a good 10 minutes to download a :30 clip of video from the Internet. Nobody was even beginning to imagine a day when you could watch a whole episode of a TV show–let alone a whole season–through an online connection.

Instead, Prof. Lichty’s focus in one lecture was on the impact of cable networks to the future of television. And I very clearly remember him saying, “The future of television… is radio.”

Just as radio stations in the last half of the 20th century had started to splinter into more specific genres (a trend that now only holds true on satellite radio), Prof. Lichty foresaw that TV networks would multiply and become increasingly more specialized.

And for the most part, he was right. Even though formerly niche brands like Bravo or A&E have become general-audience, you still have your Food Network, your Science Channel, your Cartoon Network, your Travel Channel, your Game Show Network and even, literally, radio on the Music Choice channels.

But now, with the Netflix model of releasing entire seasons of their new series at once, I propose a revision to that comparison: The future of television… is books.

Here’s how it’ll look:

We’ll let writers build TV seasons as complete stories.

With any serialized TV show, the writers are telling a larger story over a period of time. It’s just drawn out over several weeks and years, in service of the traditional TV ad structure, which often means relying on dramatic cliffhangers or gratuitously juicy plot turns to keep audiences coming back–sometimes even changing direction based on fan reaction or network pressure.

Knowing Netflix planned to release season 4 of Arrested Development all at once, Mitch Hurwitz and the show’s writers approached the storyline accordingly. In other words, the way an author does with a book: plotting out an overall narrative, then breaking it into individual chapters or episodes, all working together toward a final (and ideally satisfying) resolution.

Regardless of what you thought about the new Arrested Development episodes individually, you can’t give an informed review until you’ve seen the season as a whole (as Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos noted in response to critics). When you start a book, sure, you want the first chapter to grab your attention, but you don’t expect it to be a full representation of the entire work.

If the Netflix model sticks, we’ll start giving TV shows the same courtesy. We’ll no longer expect individual episodes to be weekly action-packed masterpieces, worthy of waiting those seven whole days to see how the story progresses. Instead, we’ll have more patience as each one offers nuanced developments toward the larger story of the season.

We’ll watch as many chapters as we want.

Even though Hurwitz said he adapted the writing process to match Netflix’s full-season release, he also discouraged fans from binge-viewing to keep from getting tired. So what? Let me watch until I get tired!

Imagine if, when each new Harry Potter book came out, you had heard J.K. Rowling say, “Guys, look. Just read one chapter at a time, OK? Like, one or two a week? I worked really hard on each one, so it’d be a waste for you to just sit and love the story so much that you want to read it straight through.”

We all know the delight of getting lost in a good book, unable to put it down because we’re so drawn in by the characters and the story. Why should a good TV show be any different?

We’ll rethink the time frame on spoilers.

(I haven’t watched The Wire yet, so please don’t tell me who this is.)

With the overwhelming number of quality shows out there, not even the most die-hard TV fan can be expected to keep current. And that means we need to change our statute of limitations on spoilers.

I still haven’t seen The Wire. I plan someday to watch The Wire. So in the meantime, I would not like for somebody to tell me what happens on The Wire. When I tell people this, I hear arguments that the show has been off the air for five years, and that I shouldn’t expect to be protected from spoilers.

Not true, say I! Instead of just assuming everyone will have watched something within a certain amount of time, it will become more customary to ask, “Have you watched [critically acclaimed show]?” before talking about it, the same way you’d ask someone if they’ve read a certain book.

If someone tells me she hasn’t yet read, say, The DaVinci Code, I wouldn’t feel justified saying, “Well, tough, it came out 10 years ago, so here’s the ending.” Heck, even if someone says he’s never read War and Peace, you’ll respect his right to go in spoiler-free even though he’s had, like, 150 years to pick it up. Let’s acknowledge we’re in the same place now with TV.

We’ll form TV clubs.

We already kind of have, right? When you seek out episode reviews or comment threads online around a certain show, that’s essentially what you’re doing. Everyone’s familiar with the material, and now we all want someone to talk about it with.

And it’s not just current shows. The AV Club already has TV Club Classic, where they re-view (and review) old shows, and everyone at home watches at a pre-determined pace, even if it’s a show you’ve already seen. It’s acknowledging how, at its best, television is not a disposable medium. Just as there are books that stand the test of time, we have TV shows that can be watched again and again–years or even decades past their premieres–with themes and symbolism and insights we can discover and discuss together.

Again, with the sheer quantity of shows on the air at any given time, the days of water cooler TV talk are already obsolete. That’s pretty much left to sports, breaking news and reality TV, all of which are sort of like newspapers and magazines: informative, fun, compelling–and ultimately temporary.

In its most successful form, the new Netflix model has the power to elevate the best TV shows to their deserved status as works of modern fiction. Of course, it also comes with other implications, mostly around money. Everyone talks about Netflix bringing down cable companies, but in the long run, it could just mean your Netflix bill is $200 a month instead of your cable bill. But if they could promise me the same level of quality and convenience I got to enjoy last weekend on an even larger scale, I’d gladly pay it.