The coronavirus crisis has basically blown up television. Countless series have had their seasons delayed or shelved altogether, and networks have had to get creative to keep viewers tuning in.

ABC saw The Bachelor Summer Games as counterprogramming to NBC’s 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The Olympics were pushed back a year. The Bachelor Summer Games was scrapped entirely.

AMC’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond was to begin April 12, but that’s been pushed back. Season four of FX hit Fargo was to start April 19, but that will not happen. A start date will be shared “once production resumes,” FX said.

I Know This Much Is True, with Mark Ruffalo playing identical twin brothers, was set to debut on HBO April 27. It will begin May 10.

Showtime’s Black Monday will pause after April 12, the final four episodes airing “later this year,” the network said. Billions will air seven episodes, beginning May 3, and the remainder later in the year.

Season three of Killing Eve, meanwhile, saw its start date on BBC America and AMC moved up two weeks, to April 12, as executives sensed that starting the season while many are stuck at home might help the program. “We know how adored this series is and we know how keen people are for great content right now,” Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks Entertainment Group and AMC Studios, said.

Filming on Eve was completed before coronavirus struck. The new start date caused some serious post-production hustle. “I’ve never encountered people working so hard and with such dedication to get something out,” said executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle.

ABC smash Grey’s Anatomy concludes season 16 on April 9 with 21 episodes, after initial plans called for 25 episodes.

To be sure, viewers are doing plenty of viewing. Nielsen said “staying put in our homes can lead to almost a 60% increase in the amount of content we watch.”

Overnight ratings have looked a bit like those from the pre-streaming era. On March 24, Ellen’s Game of Games ticked up 8% on NBC to 1.4 in viewers 18-49 and the This Is Us finale shot up 21% to 1.7. On CBS that night, NCIS went up 30% for a 1.3, FBI grew 38% to 1.1, and FBI: Most Wanted shot up 25% to 1.0.

“Self-isolation has returned TV to its heyday of having captive audiences hungry for content,” Civic Entertainment Group chief culture officer Linda Ong said. “It’s an excellent time for sampling and building loyalty — those offering free trial periods and sneak previews should do well.”

TV news is getting plenty of viewing, too. NBC News is airing live primetime specials about the coronavirus pandemic Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Those began March 31 and are scheduled for April 7 and April 14. On ABC, anchor David Muir has anchored a series of pandemic-focused 20/20 specials, the most recent one on March 30.

News analyst Andrew Tyndall mentioned “old-school reporting” on the broadcast networks amidst the pandemic — longer-form stories running 2 ½ to 3 minutes. “You might as well be watching Peter Jennings or Dan Rather,” he said.

With so many staffers working from home, the newscasts don’t have their usual polish. Tyndall said that lends the broadcasts a certain authenticity. “It’s really an opportunity to get people to sample,” he said of corona coverage, “and showcase what they can do.”

Cable news is enjoying increased viewership, too. CNN has seen a 151% increase in total day viewing March 9-29, compared to the prior four weeks. Fox News Channel called the first quarter the largest audience in network history in both total day and primetime. MSNBC set a primetime record for March, averating 2.7 million total viewers, up from 2.3 million in March 2019.

Christmas in March?

Networks are coming up with a wide variety of stunts in an effort to capture viewers with time on their hands. Starting March 26, PBS announced “American History Night with Ken Burns” on Thursday nights. With no baseball on TV, it also made Burns’s Baseball documentary available for streaming.

Syfy ran a Sharknado marathon April 5, and Hallmark Channel hosted its “Countdown to Christmas” marathon in late March. A Very Merry Mix-Up was one of the movies.

Michelle Vicary, executive VP, programming and network publicity, said viewers were looking for positive things amidst the crisis. “A lot of people are looking for feel-good programming on television — content that the whole family can enjoy together and that offers an escape of sorts,” she said.

The viewer response was “overwhelmingly positive,” Vicary said, making Hallmark the highest-rated and most-watched entertainment network on cable in prime among households, total viewers and women 18-plus across the two weekends.

Ong said creativity can come in handy. “Networks and platforms that rely heavily on original programming,” she said, “will have to get creative with stunts, acquisitions and library content in order to keep viewers’ attention.”

With another evolutionary year for the television programming industry nearly over, it’s time to focus on trends the landscape might reveal in the new year. With the number of original scripted series expected to surpass the 500 mark and new distribution entrants like Apple launching new streaming services with original programming, here are five trends the industry should look at in 2019:

1. Time spent viewing content on the web will keep going up. This seems to be a no-brainer, given the trends in viewer behavior over the past few years, but 2019 will mark the closest that actual time viewing on the internet has come to matching the time spent viewing on traditional TV. Consumers are expected to watch 265.8 minutes a day of streaming content next year, per data from Zenith Media, up from 239.9 in 2018. In comparison, viewers will spend 271.5 hours watching TV in 2019, down from 276.8 minutes this year, according to Zenith. The media buyer projects that time spent watching streaming video will surpass that of traditional TV in 2020.

2. There will be more diversity behind the camera. Actors and actresses of color in lead roles in shows on cable, broadcast and streaming services increased in 2018, thanks to new series such as Showtime’s The Chi, BBC America’s Killing Eve and Starz’s Vida. In 2019, more people of color will take the reins as producers, directors and writers. Major production and development deals with the likes of Shonda Rhimes (Netflix), Tanya Saracho (Starz) and Lena Waithe (Showtime) should ensure more diversity behind the camera in 2019.

3. Networks will continue to experiment with live programming. Broadcast and cable networks will look to offer live specials and sports programming to keep viewers tethered to the traditional bundle while luring cable-cutters and cable-nevers away from the streaming services. From the Fox network’s buying rights to the WWE’s weekly SmackDown! pro wrestling series last May to the December launch of Discovery’s Border Live to the continued success of A&E’s Live PD, the industry will look to exploit live content to maintain and draw in new viewers.

4. New streaming sports services will compete for high-profile live sports content. Startup streaming sports service DAZN’s three-year, $300 million deal with Major League Baseball to create a daily, primetime show with live look-ins to games in progress was the latest in a series of eye-opening sports rights acquisitions by streaming services in 2018. ESPN and the new ESPN+ streaming service’s multiyear TV deal with UFC, wrestled away from Fox, and DAZN’s securing of TV rights for pay-per-view boxing stalwart Canelo Alvarez’s next 11 fights put streaming sports services on the playing field for live marquee events. Despite some highprofile technical hiccups such as Bleacher Report Live’s streaming issues with the Nov. 16 Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson pay-per-view golf match, look for sports streaming services to pick off small and midsized sports packages before becoming competitive bidders for the more high-profile packages from the major sports leagues in 2020 and beyond.

5. Traditional television networks launch more original content on the web to reach millennials and cord-cutters. Cable networks will continue take their branded content to social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat in an effort to reach nonsubscribers and millennials. MTV in 2018 used SnapChat to reboot some classic shows such as Cribs and Girl Code, and it’s planning to launch other shows from sister services BET and Comedy Central in 2019. Meanwhile, networks will look to push original premieres to the web first in an effort to entice viewers to come back to the linear channel for other content. Discovery’s MotorTrend Network (rebranded from Velocity) said it will premiere new episodes of all original shows on the Motor- Trend streaming site before they air on the linear channel. And CBS All Access will continue to roll out original programming — including a Twilight Zone reboot — to complement episode libraries of the broadcast network’s original shows.

The return of first-run broadcast network series continues to generate the lion’s share of headlines during the first few weeks of the fall television season.

But as the autumn leaves begin to fall, and Halloween pumpkins and Thanksgiving turkeys become more prevalent in viewers’ homes, so will the premieres of new and returning scripted series from cable networks and streaming services.

Once upon a time, competitors to the broadcast networks refrained from launching their best and strongest shows during the fall for fear of getting lost in the sheer noise of popular over-the-air shows premiering after a long summer hiatus. But in a world of 450-plus scripted series, cable and streaming services don’t have the luxury of ignoring any days on the calendar.

So viewers should expect to see a cavalcade of new as well as popular returning shows such as USA Network’s Emmy Award-winning series Mr. Robot on Oct. 11 and cable’s most-watched series, AMC’s The Walking Dead, on Oct. 22. New debuts such as Showtime’s drama White Famous, Audience Network’s Loudermilk and TBS’s The Last O.G. will undoubtedly draw their fair share of water-cooler buzz.

Streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu aren’t shying away from competing during the fall season. Netflix will look to scare up audiences with the October launch of Emmy-nominated series Stranger Things while offering a Thanksgiving Day serving of Spike Lee’s much-talked-about reboot of his 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It. Hulu will beam viewers forward in time Nov. 14 with the Seth Rogen-produced sci-fi comedy Future Man(pictured) while delivering its slice of the Marvel Comics franchise with the Nov. 21 debut of Marvel’s Runaways.

The fall is no longer the purview of the broadcast networks, and that only benefits viewers.

It wasn’t that long ago when cable programmers looked at Labor Day weekend as a sort of respite after a long, busy summer in which many high-profile scripted shows debuted prior to the start of the broadcast networks’ fall TV season.

But with more than 400 scripted shows on cable, broadcast and online streaming services available to viewers this year, no time period can be considered off -limits for original series launches anymore. As a result, several cable networks are aggressively going after viewers during the typically slow holiday weekend with original movies, miniseries and series.

Discovery Channel has chosen Labor Day (Sept. 5) to launch its six-hour miniseries Harley and the Davidsons (pictured), the network’s first scripted miniseries since 2014’s Klondike.

Discovery’s historical motorcycle-themed series will look to capture viewers searching for original content amid the massive amount of reruns, movies and show marathons typically scheduled over holidays. History in 2014 proved that viewers will watch original content over the holiday weekend, drawing 3.7 million viewers for the Labor Day premiere of the miniseries Houdini.

Also on Labor Day, MTV will unleash two scripted comedy series in Loosely Exactly Nicole, starring comedian and Girl Code star Nicole Byer, and Mary + Jane, about the exploits of unlikely weed dealers.

The day prior, TV One will look to tap viewers suffering from Olympics withdrawal with its original boxing-themed film Ringside.

Cable’s scripted train continues the day after Labor Day with two more high-profile series premieres. FX will debut Atlanta, a half-hour comedy series from Community star Donald Glover, while OWN will roll out its Oprah Winfrey/Ava DuVernay-produced drama series Queen Sugar.

Related Video:One Question for ... OWN President Erik Logan

Online streaming service Crackle will also look to get in on the action with the debut of StartUp, starring Adam Brody.

With broadcast network series premieres premiering less than a week after Labor Day and running through May, and with a crowded cable lineup of scripted show premieres dominating the summer months, there are there are precious few pockets on the calendar where networks can get the word out on big scripted projects.

As viewers officially say goodbye to the summer and look forward to a new season of scripted broadcast fare, Labor Day weekend now seems to be as good a time as any for cable nets to raise the flag on original programming.

HBO’s fantasy drama Game of Thrones is the most watched entertainment-based series on cable so far this summer (through Aug. 7) on a Nielsen live-plus-7-day basis counting average total viewers, per the ratings company.

The sixth season of the fantasy series bested a trio of TNT scripted shows — Major Crimes, Rizzoli & Isles and The Last Ship, according to Nielsen.

For networks, the 2016 presidential campaign was a huge summertime draw for the cable news channels. Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC all ranked among the top 10 most watched networks in live-plus-7-day primetime ratings for the summer among total viewers through Aug. 7, according to Nielsen.

Fox News is poised to finish as the most watched network on cable this summer and the only network to average more than 2 million viewers for the period.

The news networks were the only cable channels among the top 10 that garnered a year-to-year viewership gain. Of the seven remaining channels, five posted double-digit declines, Nielsen reported.

Download a PDF of Cable's Summer Ratings Charts.

Summer’s Top 10 Cable Entertainment Series *

SHOW                                                  NETWORK                              TOTAL VIEWERS

Game of Thrones                                     HBO                                         11.5 million

Major Crimes                                           TNT                                             6.5 million

Rizzoli & Isles                                           TNT                                             6.4 million

The Last Ship                                           TNT                                           3.9 million

Alaskan Bush People                       Discovery Channel                      3.9 million

The Haves and the Have Nots              OWN                                              3.6 million

WWE Monday Night Raw                    USA Network                                3.5 million

Love & Hip Hop Atlanta                         Vh1                                             3.5 million

Suits                                                USA Network                                    3.4 million

Street Outlaws                             Discovery Channel                              3.3 million

Summer’s 10 Most Watched Cable Networks *

NETWORK                                        SUMMER 2016                       SUMMER 2015         % CHANGE

Fox News Channel                          2.4 million                                       1.9 million                     +28%

TNT                                                   1.6 million                                        2.0 million                      -17%

USA                                                  1.6 million                                         1.9 million                     -14%

HGTV                                               1.6 million                                         1.6 million                       -2%

Discovery Channel                        1.4 million                                        1.7 million                        -18%

Disney Channel                           1.3 million                                          1.8 million                          -26%

History                                           1.3 million                                        1.5 million                           -10%

TBS                                                 1.3 million                                      1.4 million                             -5%

CNN                                                1.3 million                                        596,000                            +122%

MSN BC                                          1.2 million                                     627,000                                +91%

Digital Media Rights has more than 8,000 TV shows and movies under license, and it’s moving ahead with an ambitious plan to put them all to good use amid the rise of over-the-top video consumption.

DMR, which already distributes some of its fare through digital deals with Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix, has plans to launch six subscription-based over-the-top services before year-end.

Following the earlier debuts of two of those services — Midnight Pulp (horror and thriller titles, relaunched in February) and Asian Crush (pan-Asian content, relaunched in April) — DMR has hit go on Yuyu, a general-entertainment service offering content in more than a dozen categories and genres, including “Binge Worthy” television, “Stranger Than Fiction” documentaries and “Tour de Force Performance.”

DMR hasn’t announced the other three SVOD services that are in the works, but its current offerings each cost $4.99 per month. Its latest, Yuyu, is launching with more than 350 titles, including Johnny Suede with Brad Pitt, 95 Miles to Go with Ray Romano, crime documentary Where Is Robert Fisher? and Misfits, a story about LGBT teens in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Yuyu was available at launch via Roku players and Roku TVs, mobile devices and Web browsers, with development underway for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Sony smart TVs and Google Chromecast.

As suggested in its tagline, “TV That Isn’t Basic,” Yuyu wants to offer content that fills the niche between traditional cable-network protgramming and the premium content available on YouTube.

“It’s a very exciting time for independent publishers,” DMR CEO Michael Hong said. “We kind of want to bridge the gap.”

Offering curated independent content puts Yuyu on a level playing field on platforms like Roku while also “competing quite nicely and, in some cases, beating some of the cable channels that are out there,” he added. “That’s what we love about this new kind of paradigm.”

Because Yuyu is digital, it can put forth a multitude of formats, including feature-length films, sitcoms, dramas and documentaries. “We’re not about [filling] programming gaps that are obscure or marginal,” he said. “We’re talking about huge, impactful genres that the traditional networks are totally missing the boat on.”

Hong called digital and TV content producer Vice Media an “inspiration” for Yuyu, because it has been successful at identifying key genres that have tremendous value for consumers. “We’re trying to tap into that.”

Though DMR distributes content on Amazon and Hulu, which are like video “department stores,” the plan is to create “unique boutique” OTT services, Hong said, noting the company will also augment its SVOD offerings with exclusive titles and early windows.

DMR has international rights for most of its content, Hong said. While the initial focus is on the U.S. and Canada, the company intends to later expand to other English-speaking territories.

Hong is also aware that the OTT SVOD market is getting crowded. Rather than just focusing on videos, he said DMR’s services will also look to capture the “culture” behind them.

“Over time, the goal is about engagement and building the community,” he said, noting forays into social media, for example. At last check, Asian Crush had 76,298 “likes” on Facebook, while Midnight Pulp has about 26,206.

“That’s really fulfilling the potential of digital,” Hong said of those community-building aspects. “We don’t want to just be a total lean-back experience that you find with cable.”

For now DMR, a private company established in 2010, will market its SVOD services on its own rather than strike deals with streaming aggregation services such as Amazon’s new Streaming Partners Program or VRV, a service launching later this year from Ellation.

DMR is already making good money by distributing content on Amazon Prime, Hong said.

“Those [SVOD aggregation] services, I think, work best for companies that have been around for a while. You can kind of get lost in the shuffle, if you’re a new company,” Hong said, allowing that “eventually it might make sense to be on those platforms.”

A&E and GSN have each tapped major horror film producers to scare up viewers this month within the competition/ game show arena.

Eli Roth (Hostel) will team with A&E on a special to help contestants face their fears by burying them alive on live television, while Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity) will look to thrill contestants with grizzly and gruesome tasks as part of GSN’s new game show series Hellevator.

With the two shows, A&E and GSN will join other networks celebrating Halloween with programming stunts seeking to deliver frightfully good ratings.

A&E’s Oct. 26 special Fear: Buried Alive will feature three contestants who will be placed in underground coffins as part of a psychological experiment to test the limits of their fears and their strength to conquer them. The live special, produced by Roth, will take a more psychological approach to fear rather than delivering full-fledged scares to viewers.

“We wanted to get to the psychology of what’s going on around fear,” said Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive vice president of programming for A&E. “There’s no cash prize — they’re really volunteering to see if they can push themselves in a psychological social experiment conquering fear.”

Bryant said, though, that viewers will undoubtedly tune in to see how people react under scary and stressful situations.

“Some people maybe drawn to this because it’s thrilling to watch people be scared on live TV, not knowing the nature of what might happen, while others might be drawn to the psychology of it,” she said. “Certainly the live nature of it — and being in the week of Halloween — may attract either adrenaline junkies or those viewers that like the horror genre.”

She said the network is already exploring another show within the format that tackles a different common fear. “I don’t know yet if we roll it out as a series or keep it as an event,” she said. “I certainly hope there are more.”

GSN’s Hellevator is more in line with a traditional game show/competition series. A team of friends ride a haunted elevator into various level of an abandoned slaughterhouse where they encounter frightening challenges.

The series, which debuts Oct. 21, is the brainchild of Blum, who told Multichannel News that he was looking for a vehicle beyond movies and television series to tell a horror story.

“The scary genre is not the first thing you think of when you’re thinking about competitive game shows,” said Blum, who professed to be a huge game show fan.

“We have a lot of other outlets to do horror, but doing it through the game show format, we thought, was very unique.”

The series joins GSN’s lineup of original, non-traditional game shows/competitions that include the body-painting series Skin Wars and fashion design show Steampunk’d.

Buried Alive and Hellevator also join a list of specials and stunts cable networks are developing leading into Halloween. A partial list follows.

• FX will air a special six-hour marathon of Fox’s thriller/drama series Scream Queens Oct. 31.

• Nickelodeon is running several Halloween themed original movies and premieres from such shows as Blaze and the Monster Machines, Wallykazam, Dora and Friends and Bella and the Bulldogs.

• ABC Family today (Oct. 19) will launch its “13 Nights of Halloween” stunt featuring special episodes of its procedural drama Stitchers.

• Syfy will launch a new original movie, The Hallow (Oct. 24), as well as Halloween-themed episodes of Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Witness on Oct. 28 as part of its Halloween “spook-a-thon.”

• Destination America’s Oct. 30 special Exorcism: Live will air a televised exorcism from the house that inspired the film The Exorcist.

RELATED:Miniseries, Anthologies Fail to Grow Stale

One of the big Emmy Awards storylines was the Television Academy’s move to rename and reposition the 46-year-old Outstanding Miniseries or Movie category to better reflect innovation within the genre.

Considered by many to be a stepchild to the more-prestigious scripted drama series, the miniseries has recently come of age with several star-studded, four-to-six-episode projects that show little resemblance to the stuffy U.K.-produced shows and extravagant historical pieces of years past.

HBO’s drama series Olive Kitteridge, SundanceTV’s espionage thriller The Honorable Woman, FX’s graphic and spooky American Horror Story: Freak Show and ABC’s terrorism-driven American Crime — all of which were nominated for Emmys in the new Outstanding Limited Series category — have helped broaden the miniseries genre and are rivaling traditional TV series for viewers and critical acclaim.

SHORT-FORM GOES BIGGER

Network executives said a new generation of quality, shortform miniseries and limited series — six- to 10-episode series with a definitive ending, but that can return for future seasons with a new storyline and characters — are also attracting increased interest from both top producers and actors, such as Ryan Murphy and Susan Sarandon, who are looking to develop such projects for the small screen.

“The [miniseries] phenomenon is not new, but what you’re seeing is a renaissance in the way people are embracing the model,” HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo said.

Miniseries have been around for decades as major “television events” that have drawn big numbers for both broadcast and cable networks. Roots — ABC’s landmark 1977 historical miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book — reached more than 140 million viewers over eight episodes. On the cable side, History’s Hatfields & McCoys in 2012 reached a cable-record 13 million viewers over its three episodes.

By the turn of the decade, though, an influx of quality scripted drama series on broadcast, cable and over-the-top services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Instant Video had ushered in what many observers call the second “Golden Age of Television” — mostly overshadowing the minseries genre.

And changing viewing patters — specifically binge viewing — as well as networks’ use of the scripted drama series as a brand-building vehicle, helped to foster that genre’s rise to prominence.

Yet, it’s been the glut of scripted-series content that’s helped spur renewed interest in minseries from both viewers and producers, several network executives said.

SNACKABLE TV

As viewers sometimes struggle to catch up with every episode of Game of Thrones or Orange Is The New Black, a two- to four-episode miniseries provides a quick way to watch quality content with a storyline that has a beginning, middle and end, according to Dirk Hoogstra, executive vice president and general manager for History.

“There has been a proliferation of serial dramas and nobody can keep up with them all,” Hoogstra said. (UPDATE: After deadline for this article, A+E Networks promoted Jana Bennett to president and general manager of History, and said Hoogstra was returning to his roots in independent production.)

History has been very busy in the miniseries space, developing projects over the last two years such as the Mark Burnett-directed The Bible and the Adrien Brody-starrer Houdini.

“There’s something appealing about knowing that they will get the entire story in a few hours, and then it’s over,” added Hoogstra.

Spike this July used the genre to reintroduce original scripted fare to its lineup with Tut. The three-part series averaged more than 2.2 million viewers across consecutive nights from July 19-21 — more than double the network’s primetime average, according to Spike officials.

And Tut’s big-event nature brought in new viewers — more than one-third of its audience consisted of first-time Spike watchers, executive vice president of original series Sharon Levy said. Further, Tut generated repeat viewership in its core 18-49 audience, showing a 150% increase in live-plus-seven-day viewing compared to live viewing within the demo, Levy said.

“It’s as close to binge-viewing as we can get for our viewers,” said Levy, adding Spike will continue to look for miniseries opportunities as it rolls out several traditional scripted dramas in 2016.

Another draw for Tut was the casting of film star Sir Ben Kingsley in a major role. Miniseries and limited series provide opportunities to attract big-name actors and directors who are interested in television, but don’t want to commit to a longterm project, executives said.

Lifetime was able to secure the services of Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon for its two-night miniseries, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, because the project required a short-term commitment, senior vice president of original movies Tanya Lopez said.

“A six-hour or four-hour project better fits into their schedule than trying to get someone to commit to 10 hours or a show over several years,” she said. “It enables you to get talent you wouldn’t ordinarily expect to get.”

HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo said he’s taking calls from a number of film-industry players looking to develop limited series. For instance, True Detective writer Nic Pizzolatto had a vision for a show that made sense for a limited amount of episodes, rather than multiple seasons, he said.

“What you’re seeing is that there is a place for talent to do a kind of show that should be told in longform, but not over multiple years,” Lombardo said. “You can find an audience for that.”

Indeed, True Detective found an audience and critical acclaim right out of the box.

The limited series was nominated for 12 Emmys in 2014 for its freshman campaign, which featured Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as detectives pursuing a serial killer.

A second season of True Detective featured a new ensemble cast, led by Colin Farrell, and a completely different storyline from the first season.

FX has taken full advantage of the format with its Ryan Murphy-penned American Horror Story franchise — Hotel, its fifth installment, is set to launch next month — as well as Fargo, last year’s Emmy miniseries winner.

“What we we’re finding was that people were coming in with really great stories, but they could not be sustained over a long period of time,” FX Networks and Productions president of original programming Eric Schrier said. “You get writers and directors that wouldn’t normally play in the television sandbox that are finding it to be a very vibrant place to tell stories that you don’t have to stretch over seven years.”

And unlike a traditional TV series, where multiple writers pen various episodes, the limited-series format gives one writer a chance to thoroughly explore a singular creative vision, Lombardo said.

“The thing that you can do in eight hours that you can’t do in eight years is hand-craft [a series],” he said. “When you’re doing eight hours, that person is writing all eight episodes and sometimes directing them. It lends itself much easier to a passion-driven piece of programming, and that’s what the audiences are responding to.”

The recent development and success of limited series, which also includes Starz’s The Missing, has forced changes in the way the industry views drama series — and in how it rewards them for success.

The Television Academy earlier this year redefined its definition of the miniseries category. The move was prompted by HBO’s 2014 submission of True Detective as a drama series — after FX had campaigned to get American Horror Story a place in that category for years — even though the show technically had a limited number of episodes and a closed-ended storyline.

The new Emmy category, Outstanding Limited Series, defines a limited series as a non-recurring story of two or more episodes totaling 150 minutes of run time, with no recurring characters.

While the limited series has worked for HBO, Lombardo says the network is still committed to traditional series like Game of Thrones.

“There’s nothing more exciting than when a series connects and you can bring back those characters the following year an grow and audience and dig into stories and characters over multiple years,” he said. “But not every story has to be that to be great television.”

MORE ON THE WAY

Several networks will test that notion with a number of miniseries and limited-series projects in development. BET, coming off of its February miniseries Book of Negroes, is developing a musical-themed miniseries based on the 1980s R&B group New Edition.

FX will spin off American Horror Story into the crime genre next year with American Crime Story: The People v. O.J Simpson, according to Schrier.

HBO is working on several shows in the genre, including The Young Pope, a Jude Law-Diane Keaton vehicle, and Crime, an eightpart miniseries starring John Turturro. Lombardo also said the network is also exploring a potential limited-series comedy.

In 2016, Lifetime will tackle Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel War and Peace as well as a miniseries based on Agatha Christie’s murder mystery And Then There Were None. It’s imperative for women- targeted Lifetime to offer a diverse lineup of both traditional scripted series and short-form miniseries to compete in an ultra- crowded television environment, Lopez said.

History’s Hoogstra said the network would also remain aggressive in the genre, having already green-lighted a remake of Roots.

The network recently said it has signed Academy Award winners Forrest Whitaker and Anna Paquin to star in the reboot produced by LeVar Burton, star of the 1970s original.

The miniseries genre will continue to blossom as both consumers and networks demand quality programming fare in all forms and lengths, History’s Hoogstra said.

“The are so many amazing stories out there to be told but they couldn’t work as an ongoing series,” he said. “They need to be told, and we have the ability to tell them.”

The Weather Channel is moving back to its live weather roots as it makes several major changes to its lineup, according to CNN.

The 24-hour channel will cut back on its non-weather, non-fiction fare and will concentrate more on delivering live weather content and local weather reports, according to an internal memo obtained by Multichannel News.

As part of the changeover, Dave Shull, the president of the Weather Company's TV division said in the memo that the network will move production of its morning weekday block to Atlanta, eliminating its long-running Wake Up With Al, which will air its last episode Oct. 2. The network also is moving former Good Morning America weathercaster Sam Champion out of its morning programming block at the end of October.

Champion will appear in primetime shows "that highlight the intersection of new technologies and weather," according to the memo. Chamipion will also create editorial content and host on-screen segments as part of TWC's launch of its new “Local Now” product for OTT providers.

TWC also said it was laying off about 50 of the channel’s 1,400 employees, according to CNN.

The Weather Channel cable network has fallen on some hard times recently: It was dropped by Verizon Communications’ FiOS TV service earlier this year and has been an easy target for distributors looking to pare down affiliate-fee costs. According to reports The Weather Channel has also hired investment banker J.P. Morgan to look for a buyer, possibly selling its digital assets and keeping the full distributed network.

In the memo, Shull said that the network is facing “unprecedented challenges” in the subscription television business” and the channels that will survive long term are those with “unique and irreplaceable value.”

A recently released TWC statement on the network revamp reads as follows:

Television is changing, and as a digital company we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on these changes. 

To this end, we've restructured our TV division to better align our content production and distribution with a focus on innovative models of storm coverage and strategic new products, such as our soon-to-be-launched OTT service. This shift in focus has resulted in the elimination of some of our programming and positions.   As one of the biggest names in weather and television, Sam Champion’s ongoing contributions to the company are invaluable and go beyond the incredible job he and his team have done to develop and run AMHQ.   Sam will continue to play a pivotal role in the future success of The Weather Channel as we head into this new era and remain a key leader for us, aiding our efforts to expand weather coverage into our primetime programming and build out our Over The Top (OTT) products.

Viewers turn to The Weather Channel and our experts for the most locally relevant and precise forecast, and for the best live coverage of severe weather events available anywhere on television. In a fragmented world where it’s no longer about scale but about a passionate core following, we recognize the need to be hyper-focused on providing our viewers exactly what they come to us for - weather.

As the most trusted brand in weather, The Weather Channel, with more than 200 meteorologists, will continue to provide our deep expertise to keep consumers safe and informed, anytime and on every screen.