It looks like the original content glut is going to get even gluttier as the various FASTs (free ad-supported streaming TV services) jump on the bandwagon.

Amazon’s IMDb TV was first out of the gate in October 2020, when it announced that it would be rebooting the 2008 crime drama Leverage (which I never heard of). That was followed by a number of other announcements of series reboots including Judge Judy (heard of her), and the announcement last month that 98-year-old industry legend Norman Lear (you’d better have heard of him) would be producing a half-hour sitcom and an hour-long drama for the service. And Titus Welliver will reprise his role as hard-boiled Det. Harry Bosch in a spinoff of the Prime Video original series Bosch for IMDb TV in the coming months. 

IMDbTV is in an interesting position among these services, which are also sometimes referred to by the acronym AVODs (ad-supported video-on-demand), because Amazon often sticks IMDbTV results into the mix when people think they’re searching Prime Video, adding a “watch it with ads for free” tag that doesn’t exactly cue most viewers into the fact that they’re watching a service that isn’t Prime. Regardless, it’s a great way for Amazon to show off the power of its ad platform--think of all the data they have about what people actually buy.

It would seem that by introducing original programming to IMDbTV, they can showcase it on both the Fire TV and Prime homepages as a way of increasing viewership, having determined that people aren’t all that bothered by the fact that some Prime shows seem to have advertising. (This is not all that surprising given the way Amazon’s Prime catalog is structured, where most movies and shows are free and some cost just a few dollars to rent. It’s confusing enough that viewers are unlikely to be concerned about a few ad supported shows thrown into the mix.)

Roku was the next to announce originals, which was not all that surprising given that in many ways the Roku Channel goes head to head with IMDbTV.

Roku bought up Quibi’s leftover catalog in December, a move that got the company a decent amount of press given the way Quibi’s become such an easy punch line. The good news there is that Roku can group the short-form series together to make something like a long-ish movie or a two or three episode miniseries, and that given the number of talented people Quibi had signed up, there are likely some gems in there along with shows about blow-up dolls. (Not making that one up.)

The bad news is that there is all sorts of tangly legal language around who owns the series (Quibi didn’t) and for how long and what happens if they want to do a second season. 

Still, it was a smart move for Roku at a time when the network-owned FASTs like Pluto and Tubi were starting to differentiate themselves by gaining access to their parent companies’ back catalogs, something Roku could not lay claim to.

(Though they did, it seems, demand that networks setting up shop for their apps on Roku pay them tribute by granting them rights to a couple of library series. Thus Xena: Warrior Princess is now on the Roku Channel, courtesy of NBCU and Peacock.)

Roku has since announced even more originals are on the way, starting with a crime drama called Cypher, from Aroma, an independent Cairo-based studio. The show premiered on South African Netflix this summer but will have its exclusive U.S. release on Roku starting March 19.

This is likely to be the first of many originals on Roku and it will be interesting to see if they continue to go the international route to find what they consider hidden gems or if they’ll take a different tack. Notably, Roku placed a LinkedIn job posting last month seeking a “lead production attorney,” who will work on the company’s “expanding slate of original content.”  

The next FAST out of the originals gate, Tubi, is Fox’s sole investment in the streaming space, and so it’s no surprise that they are looking to produce originals as well. 

Last week, Fox CFO Steve Tomsic said the conglomerate would take a “cost-effective look” at original shows. 

CEO Lachlan Murdoch has promised that Tubi will be a big part of Fox’s plans moving forward, and according to a report in Bloomberg, the service is looking at both TV shows and movies, with the potential to spend as much as $4 million/episode on the former, which seems at odds with Tomsic’s earlier statement.

The likelihood here is that Fox has realized that it needs to have a bigger presence on streaming in order to compete with the other networks and that the shift to streaming is happening faster than they’d originally anticipated, thanks in no small part to the pandemic.

Notably, Tubi’s declared entry into the originals business comes two years after founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi told Next TV that the model “doesn’t make sense” for AVOD platforms.

Series with $4 million/episode budgets can easily compete with anything Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus and the other subscription services have on offer, and so it’s easy enough to see Tubi rolling out a subscription version of the app to house the higher priced programming--if the value was there, there’s no reason to think consumers wouldn’t pay for it. 

On the other hand, they may decide that the ad revenue they can get from such premium programming more than makes up for an absence of subscription revenue and set themselves apart as the “Tiffany FAST.” 

Given that Tubi’s original programming strategy appears to be in the very early stages of development, however, it’s too soon to make a clear prediction on where they’ll end up.

The first FAST to be bought by a network group, ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV, has been dipping its toe into the original content game, showing the previously unaired fourth season of the series Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, which was originally created for NBCU’s Seeso. (To date, there has been no announcement of a fifth, Pluto-only season.) 

Pluto TV is also showing episodes of original series from CBS’ linear prime time lineup like Clarice and The Equalizer, which seems like a much smarter move as it helps create synergy between the various moving pieces of ViacomCBS’s streaming and linear offerings. VCBS could also tease episodes of its new Paramount Plus originals on Pluto, getting viewers hooked as a way to encourage subscriptions.

The final group of FASTs are the services run by the smart TV OEMs: LG, Samsung and Vizio. All three have sizable libraries, in-house data and analytics services and their own ad sales teams. All they seem to be missing is original programming.

What makes sense here is something the other FASTs have not gravitated to: non-fiction, reality and game show TV, genres with low production costs and with styles that blend in well with the library content available on the FASTs. 

Game shows and reality shows also present the opportunity to create live TV, getting viewers in the habit of tuning in at a specific time every evening (or even once a week) which creates an excellent ad environment, with millions of people all watching the same ads at the same time.

All in all, the launch of original content indicates that the FASTs have reached a new stage of growth, one that would seem to confirm that they are not just a fad but a permanent piece of the new TV landscape. It will be fascinating to see how they develop in the years to come.

Famously taciturn in regard to its viewer performance data for individual shows on its platform, Netflix was downright loquacious during its fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday.

Technically, Netflix started giving out this data last month, when it disclosed viewership for “Bird Box." Offering an update, Netflix said the horror movie starring Sandra Bullock has now been seen by 80 million subscribing households worldwide.

Doing some admittedly imprecise math in MCN’s Los Angeles-based laboratory, we multiplied the average size of a U.S. household (2.6 people, according to U.S. Census figures) times 80 million, then we multiplied that figure by what the Motion Picture Association of America says is the average price of a U.S. movie ticket ($8.97).

Our rough calculation is that “Bird Box” would have generated around $1.86 billion if its release was directly translated into a theatrical one.

Now, this admittedly crude exercise doesn’t account for the fact that much of that audience of 80 million households is international. And we concede that it is also very apples to oranges—deciding to select something to watch in the Netflix UI is a much different proposition than driving to a movie theater and buying a ticket. But the this little mathematical exercise does have some value in revealing the audience’s scale.

It's big!

Beyond continuing to update the rather extraordinary performance of “Bird Box,” Netflix also revealed rare insight to other originals produced for its site:

> Spanish-language series “Elite” was seen by 20 million subscribing households globally in the first four weeks after its October 5 debut.

> Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble’s creepy romantic drama series “You” was watched by an estimated 40 million Netflix households in the first four weeks after its September 9 launch.

> Netflix also projects that “Sex Education,” which stars Gillian Anderson and just premiered in the U.K. on Jan. 11, will similarly deliver around 40 million household views in its first four weeks.

Related: Netflix Beats Subscriber Estimates in Q4

“I would look at it like these are less financial metrics as they are cultural metric.” said Netflix CFO Spence Neumann. “So that what does it mean when 80 million households watch ‘Bird Box’? Well, culturally it means exactly the same thing as 80 million plus people buying a movie ticket to seeing it or 80 million households watching a TV show. So culturally, it’s meaningfully out there.”

For the quarter, Netflix said it added 7.6 million users worldwide, and around 1.6 million in the U.S. 

While digital rivals Netflix and Amazon have built powerful entertainment divisions by courting A-list creative talent not only with huge paychecks, but also creative freedom, Apple is said to be getting into the streaming originals game with a much more hands-on approach.

As detailed by The Wall Street Journal, as it develops around two-dozen original shows for a launch payload that will begin to surface in earnest next year, the company’s top management is working to limit the amount of explicit sex and violence that shows up in its content.

The broad-skew creative bent has reportedly caused some Apple executives involved with the company’s originals push to label the company, “Expensive NBC.”

Related: Apple Building Marketing Team for Original Series Launch

According to WSJ, this was highlighted by Apple CEO Tim Cook personally telling the company’s top music executive, Jimmy Iovine, that Vital Signs, a semi-biographical series based on hip hop artist Dr. Dre, had too much edge for Apple.

Top Apple management is said to have intervened with several other shows produced through Iovine’s music division, including Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apes.

And notably, former Sony Pictures Television executives Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht—who were brought into Apple after shepherding such edgy, brand-building shows as AMC’s Breaking Bad—have been reportedly influenced to tone down the level of freedom promised to creatives.

Among other steps listed by WSJ, Apple is also said to have replaced the show runner on the Stephen Spielberg-produced Amazing Stories because his early vision for the show was too dark.

Apple is exerting tight creative control as the number of original shows across broadcast, cable and digital platforms has skyrocketed to 487 from just 187 in 2010.

Apple’s motivation, according to analysts, is rooted in its business model.

Subscription video on demand services like Netflix might lose customers if they find content to be offensive or inappropriate. “With Apple, you can say, ‘I’m going to punish them by not buying their phone or computer,’” said Preston Beckman, a former NBC and Fox programming executive, to WSJ.

The question, of course, is, can Apple stand out among 487 originals with a programming brand that might appear bland to some? The whole originals as brand builders strategy is largely perceived to have began with HBO’s The Sopranos and Sex and the City, continuing through to the premium cable network’s digital transition with the even more ultra-violent Game of Thrones.

FX, meanwhile, carved out a presence with gritty shows like The Shield and Sons of Anarchy, while AMC put itself on the map with crystal-meth-fueled drama Breaking Bad.

In SVOD, Netflix became a presence with political drama House of Cards and women’s prison show Orange Is the New Black, while transgender-themed Transparent build Amazon Prime Video into a force.

Meanwhile, as top producing talent attracts deals valued as high as $300 million, and continually raves about the creative freedom they enjoy at outlets like Netflix, Apple seemingly has a bit of a recruiting issue.

Of course, Apple’s market cap now stands at $1.062 trillion, making it perhaps the one company on earth that Netflix can’t outspend. 

Having spent more than $1 billion for a salvo of new original shows set to launch next year, Apple is in the process of building out its Culver City, Calif-based marketing team.

Over the weekend, Apple posted an job opening on LinkedIn, looking for a “creative director for original content." Silicon Valley’s largest company is seeking someone to “build and lead a team that will develop global multi-platform marketing campaigns for original programming.

“This department,” the posting adds, “will conceptualize and create the promotional campaigns across media and platforms. You will be required to maintain strong relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners, as well as ensuring that work delivers against Apple standards.”

This follows a week-old Apple postings seeking a “series marketing lead,” and a month-old posting looking for a “series marketing specialist.”

Related: Apple to Spend $1B Annually on Original Programming

A year ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was preparing to spend $1 billion to compete in the streaming original series business—an arms race that is now seemingly unavoidable for large digital companies and which is led by Netflix, which could spend as much as $13 billion on content this year, according to a recent extrapolation of Goldman Sachs data.

With development and production of Apple’s slate now well underway, Macworld published a little roundup last week on the reported portion of the company’s slate.

Projects include a Terry Gilliam-led TV version of the filmmaker’s 1981 cult classic Time Bandits, an adaptation of the bestseller Pachinko, which follows the path of a Korean immigrant family, and a comedy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia masterminds Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney, just to name a few.

Now valued at more than $1 trillion, Apple is getting into the originals game, seemingly late, against competitors like Amazon—which is almost as big and just as vertically integrated, with a video business that spans production, distribution and devices. 

The drama building this summer for a potential nuclear weapons summit between the United States and North Korea, the continuing discovery of malfeasance related to the #MeToo social movement, and a U.S.-less FIFA World Cup will have a tough time measuring up to the sizzling, dramatic tales in new series that cable networks and streaming services are set to unveil over the next few months.

Cable networks have traditionally used broadcast television’s summer hiatus to launch new drama series, but this year, there are more such offerings on the docket than in the past.

And most of these new shows are not traditional, garden variety dramas with clear-cut winners and losers, obvious heroes and villains or plot lines that tie up neatly at the end of each episode.

Shows Get Topical

The unique new scripted dramas reflect many of the issues facing society today. For instance, AMC’s Dietland is the story of an overweight journalist learning to love herself and her body amid a string of vigilante murders committed in the name of women’s empowerment. FX’s Pose follows characters set in the 1980s New York glamour scene, with a cast that includes an industry-first five transgender actors in starring roles.

“We are definitely living in a time with a lot of drama,” Jason Smilovic, executive producer for AT&T Audience Network’s new espionage-themed drama series Condor, said. “I think that it’s certainly timely with regards to what’s going on in the world. A lot of these shows are asking the big question of our time: Can we find common ground with each other, or are we going to fall back to the tribalism that will ultimately destroy us?”

In June alone, 10 new scripted drama series are set to premiere just on cable networks, with an additional nine launching on OTT services.

Last year, cable networks debuted 17 drama series from June through August.

Added to June’s new shows is a batch of returning drama series, including final episodes of Freeform’s teen-targeted series The Fosters; Syfy’s fantasy series 12 Monkeys; AMC’s artificial intelligence-based show Humans; Showtime’s Golden Globe-winning limited series The Affair; Netflix’s superhero series Marvel’s Luke Cage and women’s wrestling-themed GLOW; and TNT’s salon-set drama Claws.

TNT and TBS president Kevin Reilly said the summer still presents the best opportunity to generate the most noise for high-profile cable drama series, even as TNT, for one, has employed a strategy of launching shows on a year-round basis.

“It’s not like the broadcast shows are intimidating ratings-wise — because they’re not — but there is a lot of messaging [when shows premiere in the fall], so it becomes a lot harder to get people’s attention,” Reilly said. “We’re starting to push a little more toward the fall, but we continue to heavy up in the summer with our drama launches.”

In an era when a successful drama series can go a long way in defining a network’s brand, National Public Radio TV critic Eric Deggans said cable networks and streaming services this summer are tackling new, dramatic themes they hope will catch fire with viewers. This summer’s lineup also comes at a time when broadcast networks are dialing back on shows that deal with heavy subject matters in favor of more emotional dramas that almost serve as comfort food for viewers.

“There are a lot of shows coming to the fore where cable networks are taking a chance and trying to do something unique and different,” he said. “The summer is a good time for an HBO, AMC, Netflix or Hulu to try some unconventional dramas during a time when there’s less competition from the broadcast networks.”

Network executives said the summer is also a fertile time to generate strong ratings returns, particularly in delayed viewing, as viewers tend to be out of the house more enjoying the warmer temperatures.

Last year’s most-watched scripted cable series on a Nielsen live-plus-7 basis, HBO’s Game of Thrones, and cable’s top new scripted series, The Sinner on USA Network, debuted between June 1 and Aug. 31.

While the summer months can provide opportunities to launch new shows, network executives said the increase in new shows from cable and streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon has made it more difficult to break through the clutter.

“I think we’ve known that the idea that there could be a safe space to launch something doesn’t exist anymore between broadcast, other cable networks and the OTT services — there’s no place where you have free rein anymore,” FX co-president of original programming Nick Grad said. “We’re less competition-focused with regard to when we launch shows. Right now, it’s just make a great show, market it really well, and let the chips fall where they may.”

For many networks, that means delivering content with a unique perspective or storyline that will capture viewers’ attention or super-serve a targeted demo. AMC is hoping to accomplish both tasks with Dietland, based on the novel by Sarai Walker.

The series is set in the world of high fashion and beauty, and stars Joy Nash as Plum Kettle, an overweight ghostwriter for a fashion magazine, struggling with her self-worth, who gets caught up with a bizarre vigilante group that violently targets people who mistreat women.

Dietland executive producer Marti Noxon said the series is timely, given the #MeToo and women’s empowerment movements. The show addresses such topics as misogyny and body-shaming while depicting an unlikely heroine who ultimately seeks personal comfort and acceptance within her own skin.

“It’s like Devil Wears Prada meets the Fight Club,” said Noxon, who has served as executive producer for such hit series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, E!’s UnREAL and Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce. “For these characters, no matter how out of the world they are, you can relate to them, and you see the world through their eyes.”

Other dramas set to debut in June tackle themes of big, out-of-control government, as well as hot-button social issues. Epix’s Deep State is about a family man fighting to escape his past and the dark excesses of government and corporate power; Paramount Network’s Yellowstone stars Kevin Costner as a rancher trying to protect himself, his family and his land from border fights and attempted takeovers from large oil and lumber corporations; and Facebook Watch’s Five Points, in which five Chicago high-school students tell the story of a life-changing event from different perspectives, delves into gun violence and bullying.

Epix president Michael Wright said the network is betting Deep State, which stars Mark Strong (Zero Dark Thirty), will provide viewers relevant and appealing content that will stand out in a crowded summer marketplace. 

"I think you’re hoping that anything you put on today has something relevant about it,” Wright said. “In this era, whatever you put on has to be loud and it has to speak to people. We’re hoping with Deep State there is a contemporary relevance to the subject matter that gives it something that will pop and help people notice it.”

Audience Network will look to capitalize on a reboot of a successful espionage-themed movie with Condor, based on Three Days of the Condor, the 1975 thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

The series follows a low-level CIA employee who seeks to find out who killed his co-workers while uncovering a plan that threatens millions Along with fans of the movie, Condor’s Smilovic said there are numerous similarities between the show’s plot and the events developing around the world that will intrigue younger viewers who are unfamiliar with the film.

“Characters are getting more complicated and gray, whereas they used to be black and white, and good and bad,” he said. “In Condor, our supposedly good characters do bad things, and our supposedly bad characters do good things.

“Television for a long time was unable to tell stories with that type of complexity of character,” Smilovic added. “Now audiences demand it.”

FX’s latest Ryan Murphy project, Pose, is a dance/musical series set in the ball culture of 1980s New York. It features transgender characters in lead roles, a rarity on television.

Grad said Pose provides an inspirational storyline that the network hopes will play well with traditional as well as underserved audiences. “It feels really different and unique and it’s incredibly inspiring,” he said. “It really takes the marginalized, underdog characters … and puts them in the lead.”

More Room for Storytelling

The arrival of new distribution outlets has afforded show producers new opportunities to tell differentiated, unique stories, even if it has also become more difficult for content to break through the clutter.

“It’s both wonderful because there is more opportunity, but it’s also harder to break through,” Noxon said. “People’s attention is so pulled in different directions — they have their phone, video games, television and movies — so the exciting thing about Dietland is that I can’t imagine anyone saying, ‘I’ve seen that story before.’ ”

Added Condor’s Smilovic: “Five years ago, we were still talking about brands, and now we no longer think about brands but about content. People will migrate to any platform for the right content, and so, being given that opportunity, I think there are way more opportunities than there were four or five years ago.”

Science Channel will unveil a new documentary series later this year that will profile figures who have fundamentally altered the way we live, the network announced Monday.

The series, Innovators, will debut in fourth quarter 2018 and will pair historical and contemporary innovators from similar fields to examine truths of how innovation happens and tell the story of how our modern world was created.

The three, hour-long episodes will include pairings of Richard Warren Sears, the businessman who founded Sears, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Alexander Graham-Bell and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg; and John and Horace Dodge -- who challenged the Ford Motor Company’s automobile industry dominance – with Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and Space X.

Innovators, with be produced by Ross Greenburg Productions, said network officials.

“These are inspiring stories of some of the most brilliant minds of the last couple of centuries, people who have shaken things up to the point where there really is no looking back,” said Nancy Daniels, Chief Brand Officer, Discovery and Factual in a statement. “Ross Greenburg is an expert storyteller and we are thrilled to have him partner with us on this innovative series.”

WGN America has renewed crime drama Pure well ahead of the show’s early 2019 premiere, said network officials.

The series, which stars Ryan Robbins and Alex Paxton-Beesley, follows the journey of a newly elected Mennonite pastor whose efforts to rid his community of the scourge of drugs and its ties to ruthless Mexican cocaine cartels thrusts his family into a world of violence, greed and betrayal, the network said. 

Related: WGN America Secures Rights to Three Scripted Series

The first season of Pure will debut in early 2019, and the second season is scheduled to begin production in Nova Scotia later this spring. Pure is produced by Two East Productions and Cineflix, and executive produced by Michael Amo (The Listener), Ken Girotti (Orphan Black, Vikings), Brett Burlock, Peter Emerson and David MacLeod (Call Me Fitz).

“Pure is a stand-out scripted drama series with powerful characters and intense conflict in a very unique world,” said Gavin Harvey, president of WGN America in a statement. “We are fully committed to this riveting series and knew we wanted to extend the story before the first episode even hits our air."

Video streaming service UMC (Urban Movie Channel) will debut its latest original drama series, 5th Ward, on March 2, the company said.

The series depicts the life and struggles of residents from Houston’s 5th Ward community, according to company officials. Grammy-winning artist Mya (Chicago) leads an ensable cast that includes Carl Anthony Payne (The Game), Thomas “Nephew Tommy” Miles (Think Like a Man), Gary Sturgis (Daddy’s Little Girls), Corr Kendricks (Showtime’s The Chi, Fox's Empire), Chris O’ Neal (Greenhouse Academy) and Christopher Jefferson (Boy Bye).

UMC will stream the six-epispode series on a weekly basis beginning March 2, said officials of the African-American targeted streaming service.

The service also announced it will premiere on Friday (Feb. 23) the music documentary I Am The Blues, which takes a nostalgic musical tour of the juke joints, backroads and church halls of the Mississippi Delta.

CNN will debut its new original series Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World on March 17, network executives said.

The six-part series focuses on individuals around the world who are shaping the idea of modern love. CNN international correspondent Amanpour focuses on the shifting landscapes of intimacy, love and pleasure as men and women are pushing the boundaries on sexual satisfaction, consent and connection, said network officials.

Sex & Love Around the World is produced by Zero Point Zero with executive producers Anthony Bourdain, Lydia Tenaglia, Christopher Collins, Joe Caterini, Anna Chai, Amy Entelis and Lizzie Fox.

"I've long been an admirer of Christiane's brilliant work as a journalist, and was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with her on this project,” said Bourdain in a statement. “Between Christiane's deep and broad experience as an incisive, experienced and empathetic reporter, who has worked all over the world, her genuine passion for this project and Zero Point Zero's proven ability to execute just this type of global content, Sex and Love Around the World represents some of the best of what CNN Original Series can do."

FX’s new series Atlanta is hard to define: It’s not quite a drama, but it’s not all comedy; it’s sometimes very edgy and yet often heartwarming. And that’s what makes the show unique and interesting.

The series revolves around Earnest “Earn” Marks, (played by series producer and Community alumnus Donald Glover), a young man looking to find his niche as a manager for his cousin, Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), an up-and-coming hip-hop artist.

Practically homeless (his parents won’t let him in to their house after his father says he can’t afford to have him live there), Earn stays with his child’s mother and on-again/off-again girlfriend Van (Zazie Beetz), whose expectations for Earn are much higher than what he’s currently living up to.

Atlanta is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, but the comedic elements of the series are very funny and often subtle, and can easily be missed or overlooked if you’re not paying attention. Many of the lighthearted moments are derived from interactions between Earn, Paper Boi and his best friend/right-hand man Darius (Keith Stanfield), who comes off as both unassuming and unnerving.

Earn’s first encounter with Darius at Paper Boi’s house — Darius meets him at the door with a butcher knife, but then offers him fresh baked cookies when he realizes Earn is cool — sets the stage and tone for one of the more integral character developments in the show, with free-spirited Darius playing off the more serious, slick Earn and hard-core Paper Boi.

Over the first few episodes, Glover slowly unwinds the show’s storylines around the main characters, through the lens of a focused slice of urban life that’s rarely seen on television. He also weaves in larger societal issues, such as racism, illegal drugs, the overcrowded prison system and poverty, helping shape a very intelligent and entertaining show.

A year ago almost to the day, Showtime Networks chairman Matthew Blank announced he would be passing the CEO reins to network president David Nevins. Blank had hired Nevins — then the president of Imagine Television, responsible for such hits as Fox’s 24 and NBC’s Parenthood — in 2010 to oversee development of original programming for the premium service and to succeed him this past January, when he stepped down from the CEO role after more than 20 years.

Related:Chairman Likes Showtime’s Standing Amid TV’s Chaos: A Q&A With Matt Blank

By then, Nevins had already built a stable of successful, long-running original series, including the Emmy-winning Homeland and The Affair, Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex. As CEO, Nevins would be steering into a new digital age full of opportunities and potential pitfalls as the industry at large sorts out a new landscape that includes new over-the-top competition from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. On the cable homefront, Showtime must also to contend with Emmy darling HBO and rising player Starz for premium TV supremacy.

Nearly six months into Nevins’s term as CEO, Showtime is firing on all cylinders. The Jan. 17 debut of Billions drew its biggest audience ever for a freshman original series. The Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti-starrer, about an ego-driven billionaire and the ambitious U.S. attorney looking to take him down, finished its freshman run as the network’s most-watched series behind Homeland.

Nevins is high on the music-themed Roadies, debuting June 26, which chronicles the lives of stagehands who build and take down concert sets for rock ‘n’ roll bands. Showtime can also look forward to the much-anticipated 2017 return of director David Lynch’s drama series Twin Peaks.

Nevins is also spearheading Showtime’s continued push into digital, overseeing the rollout of the Showtime OTT service, available on Apple TV, Roku, Hulu, Amazon and other digital distribution platforms. Still, Showtime is building its success in a perilous TV marketplace where a lackluster performance from a high-profile series or a big breakout hit from a competitor could hit the network hard.

Nevins has his hands full guiding the fortunes of the premium programmer but took some time to discuss his strategy for Showtime’s future growth with Multichannel News, B&C and Next TV editorial director Mark Robichaux and MCN programming editor R. Thomas Umstead.

MCN:There’s been a lot of movement in the C-suite at Showtime lately. Is this a changing of the guard?

David Nevins: Matt hasn’t gone anywhere and is not going anywhere anytime soon, but sort of more and more of the daily decisions and budgeting and how we sort of organize ourselves is going through me. It’s been an orderly transition that’s been going on with Matt’s full support and kind of design, you know, going back probably three years.

I think it’s really working well and it’s a good moment for us. A lot of the trends in the business are favoring us right now.

MCN:How is your new OTT product doing?

DN: We’re about 10 months in. You can buy us on top of your Hulu subscription or through Apple or Roku and shortly thereafter Android, Google, and Amazon added us in a similar way as Hulu, and it’s been really working.

Our base business is, I think, as high as it’s ever been through our more traditional satellite/telco/cable distributors. So, there’s been no real cannibalization; we’re at an all time high in that business. And the more direct, sort of OTT business has really worked. It’s now becoming a pretty meaningful contributor to our revenue and it’s growing fast.

MCN:As the transition continues to more digital content, do you see that business rising and this linear side falling, or do you see incremental increases without losing linear?

DN: I don’t know what’s going to happen over time. I’m hoping for growth on both sides of the ledger. Thus far, we’ve seen growth on both sides of the ledger and we’re budgeting growth on both sides of the ledger for next year.

MCN:Do you think it’s a zero-sum game? Do you think there’s a limit, a ceiling, on the growth of over-the-top products and skinny bundles?

DN: There’s a de-bundling and then there’s going to be a re-bundling. And probably when there’s re-bundling, it will be good for us. We’ve taken a very agnostic position. Our attitude is we want to be sold in as many places as possible by as many sellers as possible.

MCN:How does that affect your relationship with the guys that brought you to the dance, the cable guys?

DN: I think they understand it. We’re not going to undercut them. We don’t want to undercut them. And there was cable and then satellite showed up and did good things for our business, and was a little competition to the cable guys. And then the telcos got into the business, and I think they understand that’s how the world works. So it’s kind of baked in.

MCN:Are you surprised by all the OTT competition?

DN: I come in as a programmer and as a producer, but with real interest in this sort of marketing and development of the business. It was clear to me five or six years ago, when I was a year into this job, that this is where it was going, because Netflix was already making the shift from DVDs to internet-delivered service.

And, you know, partly because I’m an outsider, it was just like a blinding glimpse of the obvious that delivering over the Internet was where it was eventually going to be, and we had to be ready for it and do it in a way that creates a good user experience. And we began building for it a while ago, so we’re doing all our programming, computer programming and service delivery, we’re doing it all in-house. And we’re going to have to start building all the core capabilities of customer service and customer attention that cable companies have spent a lot of time doing. That’s going to be competence that we’re going to have to develop.

MCN:Netflix is spending a pile of money — do you need to spend as much to compete?

DN: No. Still, we’re in expansion mode. So we probably have 11 sort of A-level scripted shows this year. It will be 12 next year, maybe even 13 next year, depending on how the year goes. So we’re definitely building up.

MCN:As opposed to what? What would be a typical year?

DN: Six years ago, it was maybe four. So we have definitely built up over the course of time. We have strength throughout the year, so that we’re able to roll from Homeland and The Affair into Shameless and Billions, into Penny Dreadful, into Ray Donovan and Roadies. They’re going to come this summer.

You know, probably in the old business, it was more important to have one giant show that forces the cable operators — like you can’t possibly drop [HBO], because how can you not have Game of Thrones? In the new business, where it’s easy to sign up and easy to cancel, it’s probably more important to have consistency across the schedule.

So we’re putting on two to three new shows a year. This year it’s Billions and Roadies. And next year it’ll be I’m Dying Up Here and Twin Peaks and some things that we haven’t announced yet in the back half of the year.

MCN:Is that sustainable? Do you want to keep that number roughly the same in coming years?

DN: I think it’s sustainable and I think it’s expandable. But we are expected to deliver earnings for our shareholders, so I’m not going to suddenly start spending 100% of our revenue. But the trick is to make your shots count when they come. And Billions counted.

And Billions was noticed. I always knew that certain power circles would love the show, but the question was, would it expand beyond that? And it really did. I mean Billions was our biggest freshman show ever. It was bigger than Ray Donovan and bigger than Homeland. And Roadies is going to count.

MCN:How do you know today thatRoadiesis going to be big?

DN: You don’t know what’s going to be a hit. I’ve never been great at predicting hits. But I know [if something has] enough cultural resonance and enough entertainment value that it’s going to get traction. It’s going to get noticed. Whether it’s going to hit or be medium, you never know. But if you’re doing something that feels original that is differentiated enough in the marketplace, that’s got enough sticky elements, whether it’s concept or actors or filmmakers behind the scenes who people want to watch, you know that you’re going to get noticed.

MCN:At what moment did you say, “Wow, this is going to connect?” Was it a song? Was it a line that was read by an actor?

DN: For me, the real moment is the script. So when I read a script and I have a certain feeling about it — I mean there’s always a leap of faith that you take. But the moment when I either emotionally connect or emotionally disconnect is reading the script. And then it becomes about trying to fulfill that vision or that’s great about the script.

MCN:Are you more like a third base coach, given your background with the showrunners?

DN: Yes. I love it. You know, you get to work with the smartest, most creative people, and ultimately, it’s their vision and I’m the third base coach; I’m not playing. But I invest in the people who I believe in and you get to make that decision. So it’s third base coach, it’s general manager, to use your baseball analogy, you get to choose who goes on the field and then try to get them to perform at their highest.

MCN:Showtime was once a network of flawed characters:Dexter,Nurse Jackie. What is it today?

DN: I think we really pride ourselves now on a diversity of shows and we try really hard not to copy ourselves. We want each show to carve out its own territory among the shows on our air and among the competition. So [if] there’s a Mafia show, it better be really differentiated from The Sopranos. Let me just say I try hard to stay away from things that are on our air and other people’s air.

But to answer your question, I think our shows have pretty deep characters, rich characters that have depths and layers to them, have kind of a deeper psychology. We’re definitely programming for adults. Now, I think we’re going to get gradually younger. You’ll see us do some things and the next couple years that are maybe slightly younger than the stuff you see on the walls now, but not dramatically so. [We] want to be forward leaning and not sort of going backwards. A lot of television is trying to do what has already had success somewhere else, and we’re trying really hard to lead the pack.

MCN:When Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate left Showtime in 2009 to form EPIX, there was a question as to whether Showtime would be able to make up for the loss of their films. Does the movie business still play a major part in your overall strategy?

DN: Well, I’d say it’s not top of the list. We know that the most important thing in terms of every buying decision that the customer makes, whether it’s to buy or to keep you, or their general perception of our brand, is based on original series. As you know, movies are seen in so many different places in so many different ways, they become more and more commoditized. That said, we’re building up, you know, we’ve added [studios] Open Road, we’ve added STX, which it looks like they’re going to be a big factor and they’ve been a big factor in the last year and a half. And they’re starting to make more adult dramas, adult comedies, thrillers.

MCN:Are you leaning to make more comedies or more dramas?

DN: More comedies, more dramas, documentaries, sports. We made a pretty big push into both sports and documentaries in the last couple years and it’s starting to pay off.

I mean, we’re very well situated right now in the boxing world with [Deontay Wilder] and Anthony Joshua. So there’s a lot of hope for renewed interest in the heavyweight division and we seem to be well-positioned there … and the documentary area is increasingly important. It’s interesting how it drives audiences more and more. And The Circus has really had impact for us.

MCN:The timing was great forThe Circus.

DN: The ongoing election — yeah, that was kind of a big risk. You have no idea what you’re going to get. You have no idea whether the campaigns are going to give you any access. And you know, you’ve got to plunk down $10 million before and just hope something good comes out of it. And it really worked.

MCN:And what gave you the cajones to put down the $10 million?

DN: I feel like it’s a kind of documentary that we’ve been working on. I’ve wanted to use this sort of All Access model of very rapid filmmaking that we did for All Access or Inside the NFL or the college football show [A Season With] … for something other than sports.

Just the ability to edit things so rapidly to be able to shoot things on a Friday, have them immediately ingested into an editing machine and be able to spit it back out and put it on the air on Sunday — that would not have been so easy five years ago. When Bernie Sanders hosted Saturday Night Live, that’s Saturday night at midnight, Sunday morning. We were on the air … 14 hours later.

MCN:What other shows do you have high hopes for?

DN:I’m Dying Up Here is based on a book of the same name about the early days of standup in L.A., and it’s a comedy and it’s a drama. It’s Jim Carrey producing. It really gets inside the minds of standup comedy, and it’s Melissa Leo and an interesting ensemble. And of course, next year, Twin Peaks. I’m incredibly excited to see what David Lynch has done. I think he’s one of the living geniuses of our business, and I think he’s going to do something magnificent.

MCN:Post-linear, on-demand viewing is growing. What percentage of viewing is done when a show’s not in season?

DN: Over half. Yeah, they’re all over 70%.

MCN:What does that tell you?

DN: It tells you people have complicated lives. [Laughs.] Television’s gotten more convenient.

But more and more, it’s on-demand. And you know, more topical shows or water cooler shows get more [live] viewers, a slightly higher percentage. But the difference is Homeland maybe it’s slightly over 30%, 35%, watching the live show versus who’s going to watch the rest of the week.

MCN:Why hasn’t Showtime dropped more entire seasons to allow binge-watching?

DN: I fundamentally don’t believe in it. … Our shows are built for hooks, and I think there’s benefit in the water cooler. And if we had to do it all in one week, I don’t think it does justice to the creativity of the shows. Our shows are very hand-crafted. Ray Donovan is going to make noise when it comes on.

MCN:What about selling to OTT providers?

DN: Our shows tend to have a lot of value when they come off of our network because they’re high-quality and they’re only seen in a limited universe, so there’s great demand from Netflix and Hulu and Amazon. We tend to do that only very late in the run, because we want people to know, “You want Ray Donovan; you want The Affair? You’ve got to go to Showtime.” So we try very hard not to muddy that by making The Affair available; just wait a season and then we’ll come on Netflix. No, you’re going to have to wait years if you want to wait for Netflix.

MCN:You’ve said in the past that Matt has been very supportive of you. And I’m just curious, what’s your vision of what you want your tenure to be like at Showtime?

DN: My goal is for Showtime to be one of the cutting-edge creative companies making the best content in a very hungry ecosystem looking for great content.

We have the business model already that everybody in the entertainment and media ecosystem wants, which is subscription-based. People see the value of writing a check for our brand on a monthly basis.

And I think also we can be a creative haven. I want, within the Hollywood community, people to feel like, “Go to Showtime, they will take care of you. They will make you the best version of yourself. They will take care of your shows so that you feel when you’re walking in, you’re going to a place where creativity is fostered.”

MCN:Do you think we’re in a content bubble right now?

DN: I think there could be some froth. I don’t think there’s a ton, because it’s a profitable business and there’s a lot of people trying to get their share. There’s already been some failure.

But I don’t see massive contraction because I think there’s enormous demand, and you have a lot of hungry viewers around the world who are getting connected, getting wired and consuming content, enjoying it.

Every month, the analysts at TruthCo choose the most culturally relevant TV show. By “culturally relevant,” we mean the most keenly attuned to and in dialogue with the year’s cultural shifts in terms of content and marketing. From the role of feminism and race in pop culture to the reality of reality TV, these five shows from 2015 touched upon the most relevant social topics in culture today, keeping audiences entertained.

UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT

Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt rewrites the narrative that culture constructs around women who endure sexual abuse. Kimmy’s refusal to settle into the role of the traumatized victim, and her insistence on instead starting her life anew, reflects emergent survivor culture. This shift aligns with the strain of feminism taking hold in pop culture, which emphasizes personal narratives of female empowerment and refusal of defeat at the hands of the patriarchy.

INSIDE AMY SCHUMER

This latest season of Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer bears witness to a new confidence as the show’s subversive ideas about gender — previously packaged in Schumer’s claim-to-fame insecure, self-loathing and promiscuous persona — are now being directed outward, fearlessly implicating society and the way it fails women, instead of how women are failing themselves. Better described as “full-frontal feminism,” it takes on a highly confrontational approach to its commentary. But this is not women-only comedy: Schumer makes great use of her male guest stars and represents an increasingly relevant cultural conversation that simultaneously implicates and includes men, who are both in on and the butt of the joke.

UnREAL

Reality TV viewers are curious about the manipulation and staging of reality TV. Lifetime’s UnREAL, a deconstruction of the competition dating genre, aligns with this cultural interest by pulling back the curtain and revealing just how much of a role production plays in creating what viewers perceive as “reality.” UnREAL also delivers this in spades, not only though the behavior of the contestants but more notably through the behavior of the producers, who have their own catfights, love triangles and emotional breakdowns. This meta-series occupies a space that allows it to simultaneously provide a new approach to a calcified (due to its own slump) and well-established genre as well as satisfy die-hard reality lovers. It’s a wink that appeals to almost everyone.

CHEF’S TABLE

Netflix’s Chef’s Table, which uses food as a vehicle to explore the “microjourney” of each chef, is representative of an emergent cultural shift that finds us more interested in craft and process than in result and finished product. Chef’s Table offers a meditation on creativity, portraying chefs as artistic visionaries and auteurs that have more in common with poets and dreamers than the harsh, hierarchical judges who have populated food TV for over a decade. As culture pays more attention to food as an expression of social values, the role of chef has been elevated to that of sophisticated thought leader, a shift echoed by Chef Table’s symphonic score and gorgeous cinematography.

MASTER OF NONE

On this Netflix series, Aziz Ansari (Dev) represents an emergent comedic and cultural point of view as he increasingly takes on the role of a public intellectual who is wrestling with big social questions, not just everyday minutiae. Equally important is the show’s perspective on race, which values inclusive, realistic representations over tokenism. For Dev, frustrated in his attempts to find satisfying work as an actor, it’s not enough that Indian characters are finally being played by Indian actors. The show takes its own advice: Dev wants to play roles that reflect his real experience, and Aziz creates them. These aren’t characters burdened with encapsulating Indian identity as a whole but instead are distinctive, multidimensional, even idiosyncratic, much like the actors who play them.

Emily Morris is director of cultural insights at TruthCo, a New York-based omnicultural branding and insights company.

Starz shares fell more than 15% in early trading Wednesday after the premium channel reported a 2% rise in revenue, but a 10% decline in profits and weaker than expected subscriber additions in the second quarter.

Starz shares fell as much as 15% ($6.77 each) to $38 per share in early trading July 29. The stock started to gain back some of that ground in later trading, down 11.3% ($5.06 per share) to $39.71 each at 11:02 a..m. It ended the day at $40.40, down just under 10%.

For the period, Starz reported revenue of $417.7 million, a 2% increase, and adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) of $123.4 million, up 5%. But the premium channel, which has devoted an increasing amount of its resources to original programming, saw its net income dip about 10% to $63.4 million, or 59 cents per share, from $70.1 million or 62 cents per share in the prior year.

Starz ended the quarter with 23.5 million subscribers to its Starz service, down from 23.7 million in the first quarter but up about 1.5 million from the same period in 2014. Its Encore unit ended the second quarter with 33.3 million subscribers, down from 33.8 million in the first quarter and 600,000 less than the 33.9 million tallied in the second quarter of 2014.

In a statement, Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said the company was pleased with results, adding that it is on track to meet its original programming goals.

"In addition, we had a very successful quarter in terms of original programming and remain on track this year to achieve our goal of 75-80 episodes of new Starz Original series,” Albrecht said in a statement. “Both the second season of ‘Power' and the first season of ‘Outlander' delivered strong viewership, as well as industry and fan accolades. Looking ahead, the balance of the 2015 originals slate is strong with ‘Blunt Talk,' ‘Survivor's Remorse,' ‘Da Vinci's Demons,' ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead,' and ‘Flesh and Bone.' Our original programming pipeline was also fortified with a great, new addition thanks to our green light of Neil Gaiman's ‘American Gods.' We are confident that robust original programming in combination with our quality movie offerings will further strengthen our distribution and subscriber relationships."

In a note to clients, Morgan Stanley media analyst Ben Swinburne said that although the subscriber numbers were lighter than expected, the year-over-year growth at Starz was encouraging in what he called a difficult premium market. But he said Starz’ relative lack of scale helps fuel the argument for consolidation.

“… we continue to believe [year-over-year] sub growth provides evidence that Starz' original programming strategy has traction with consumers,” Swinburne wrote. “However, since affiliate fee / distribution negotiations are also driven by scale, Starz' small size likely limits the financial gains that it can extract from its original content. Ultimately this underscores how Starz could benefit from industry consolidation.”

Starz is scheduled to hold a conference call with analysts to discuss second quarter results at 1 p.m. today.

Comedy Central will melt down again with Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjani.

The service has ordered an eight-episode sophomore season of The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail.

Hosted by Nanjani and Ray features live stand-up shot in documentary style at Meltdown Comics.

“We are very pleased to be doing a second season of the show, if only to have another classic ‘Kent Alterman quote’ in a press release,” said Ray, Nanjiani and executive producer Emily Gordon. “No Comment,” said Kent Alterman, president, content development and original programming, Comedy Central.

YouTube is on track to launch its version of original series – both scripted and unscripted – by the end of the year, said Alex Carloss, YouTube’s head of originals, at NATPE 2015 in Miami.

While YouTube is planning to add original scripted and unscripted series to its mix, its budget, development and launch process is probably much different than that of traditional TV studios.

“We’re not in the TV production game at a TV level, but we’ll fund beyond what [YouTube creators] would typically be able to realize,” Carloss said.

Shows produced for YouTube also may not mimic the TV model, meaning that episodes could run five minutes each or 90 minutes each.

“I just heard the head of FX [John Landgraf] over the weekend opine that if you could remove restrictions of duration from 22 minutes or 44 minutes, you could right-size your storytelling to what was appropriate,” Carloss said.

Read more at B&Chere.

E! Entertainment has selected the Ides of March to unveil its first scripted drama.

The Royals, depicting the lives of a fictional monarchy in modern times, will bow on Sunday, March 15 at 10 p.m. (ET).

The 10-episode season, produced by Lionsgate, will brim with love, hate, lust and revenge amidst the backdrop of limitless power, but where trust is a hard-to-find possession. Elizabeth Hurley and Vincent Regan star as Queen Helena and King Simon, along with William Moseley as Prince Liam and Alexandra Park as Princess Eleanor.

The ensemble cast comprises Merritt Patterson, Jake Maskall, Ukweli Roach, Tom Austen, Sophie Colquhoun, and Oliver Milburn. Joan Collins will also guest star as the Grand Duchess of Oxford.

The Royals is executive-produced, written and directed by Mark Schwahn (One Tree Hill), and executive-produced by Brian Robbins, Joe Davola (One Tree Hill, Smallville), and Shauna Phelan.

Check out a trailer here.,

Starz is giving its latest original series a preseason of sorts.

The premium network will tip off a multiplatform nationwide sampling of the first two episodes of Survivor’s Remorse, the comedy executive-produced by basketball legend LeBron James, beginning Sept. 27. The exposure comes a full week before the series makes it national, linear debut on Starz on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 9 p.m.

In the latest expansive sampling effort behind its original shows, Starz will make Survivor’s Remorse, the story of baller Cam Calloway (Jessie Usher) and his family who are suddenly thrust into the limelight after he signs a multimillion dollar contract with a professional team in Atlanta, available to multichannel video households through on-demand, online and linear runs on select cable, satellite and telco affiliates in the United States (see list below).

Additionally, the first two installments are accessible online through select websites including Starz.com, and the show’s Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages. They will also be available via Starz on Demand and the free Starz Play app for all users in the United States, and through Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Sony Entertainment Network and Xbox Video.

All told, Starz's sampling assist for Survivor's Remorse will reach some 78 million U.S. households.

Starz has supported the launch of current hit, Outlanderand key original series like Black Sailsand Power, as well as the sophomore run of Da Vinci's Demonsand reality series The Chair with various on-demand, digital and experential marketing initiatives

Mike O’Malley, consulting producer and Emmy-nominated actor for his role on Glee, serves as executive producer and showrunner for Survivor’s Remorse. In addition to James, Tom Werner, chairman of the Boston Red Sox and whose production credits include The Cosby Show, Roseanne and That '70s Show; Maverick Carter, sports marketing executive and James's business partner; Paul Wachter, founder and CEO of Main Street Advisors; and Victor Levin (Mad Men, Mad About You); are also serving as executive producers.

Starz retains all domestic and international multiplatform rights including television, home entertainment, and digital.

The following is a list of some of the providers offering on demand and/or linear sampling:

• Comcast (FOD)
• DirecTV (FOD)
• Dish(FOD + Linear)
• Time Warner Cable  (FOD)
• Cox Communications (FOD)
• Verizon FiOS (FOD)
• Bright House Networks (FOD)
• Mediacom (FOD)
• Other select NCTC members