Friday Mailing: FX's John Landgraf At The Intersection of Volume, Quality & Cadence of Supply
There is an opinion piece I wrote for The Information that was just published earlier.
It's about how the data from 2021 reflects how, in trying to compete against Netflix, legacy media companies wind up competing against their own back catalogs.
It builds off the Chuck Klosterman perspective I wrote about in Monday's "Content Isn't King Because Culture Is 'A Very Shallow Ocean'": Streaming services—both audio and video—are ultimately more valuable to subscribers for consuming “retro” content than present-day content.
One logical question through this perspective is, what did $220B in content spend in 2021 accomplish for these streaming services? For consumers?
And what will increased content spend by 2025 accomplish?
FX Chief John Landgraf has been delivering his own answers to these questions in a press tour around FX's new season of shows and the Television Critics Association (TCA). FX is ramping up its
Overall, Landgraf is offering three different lenses on the question of supply:
Volume
Quality
Cadence
Volume & Quality
An interview with The Hollywood Reporter's TV Top 5 Podcast highlighted how Landgraf sees these dynamics are intertwined:
A really difficult aspect is... from my standpoint streaming platforms are these relentless maws that eat programming by the yard, by the mile, by the parsec... You can't have too much programming. And so I do think there is a lot of programming, a lot of stories and a lot of shows that are being made too fast and not with the level of care and consideration and time that it takes to actually allows people to do their best work.
And that would be reason for me, it wouldn't be my personal interest to preside over a team of people that make 100 television shows or 150 television shows or 70 movies or something like that because I'm just really interested in aiming for a higher quality. And when you aim for a higher quality you really don't have a choice but to move as quickly as the creative engine can move. And they can only move as quickly as they can move. they're human beings, they have family issues, they have health issues, they have other business concerns...
So you really either have two choices: you either yield to the needs of human people who are really, really gifted creators or you create a factory and plug in whoever can fill the slot on the factory floor and can make the thing in the pace and the time that you want.
Clearly, Landgraf is implicitly referring to Netflix's approach of producing a large enough volume of content to feed its distribution and marketing engines. Landgraf's open disdain for Netflix's model was captured in this memorable quote from 2017:
“If you look at the difference between what Netflix is doing right now and what we’re doing, we’re spearfishing and they’re drift-net fishing,” he says, pointedly. “They’re scooping every organism off the bottom of the ocean. And they’re keeping them all now, but reason would say, at some point you keep the bluefin tuna and throw the others back.”
It would seem that his perspective remains the same, but now has evolved from a concern for quality to one that resents the scale of production to one that reflects genuine concern for creatives in this model.
Cadence
But, as Landgraf also told the TCA this past week, he is also concerned how the new landscape of increased content spend and production is impacting the viewer:
“If you’re asking me, am I worried about confusion? The answer is a resounding yes. I’m just trying to sort the best thing to do in each case for each individual show as much as I can. But there’s no way to avoid the fact that it’s a little just bewildering, frankly, the different releases and the sheer number of releases are hard to keep track of for you, for me, for everyone," he said.
Landgraf said that his preference was still for weekly releases, but there are a number of factors in play including how a viewer will feel after they’ve watched the first two or three episodes, versus how they would feel after watching an entire season, as well as whether a show already has a built-in audience, for instance, if a project is based on IP.
John Landgraf's perspective is so valuable because he has always positioned himself and FX's content production strategy at the intersection of volume, quality and relationship with the audience. Moreover, he eloquently speaks to his personal experience in navigating the trade-offs and dynamics at that intersection.
In 2019, just after the acquisition of FX by Disney, he highlighted the competitive advantages and disadvantages of this approach:
[Landgraf] added that over the last year, FX made 13 shows, one hundred percent of which ended up on ten-best lists, while HBO made 70, with 29 percent earning such accolades, and Netflix several hundred, with 12 percent yielding ten-best laurels. But those lower batting averages multiplied by higher volume means that the respective premium network and streamer ended up with more shows on such lists.
Back then, Landgraf's FX produced 13 shows - or "only 13 at bats" - which he described back then as "pretty stressful". In 2022, and beyond that number will be greater than 30:
FX has been ramping up its volume of shows over the last few years since being acquired by Disney and Landgraf said that he believes the optimum number per year is around 30, although cautioned that he and his team have to make more, including pilots, to counter for some titles such as Atlanta and Fargo that haven’t aired every year.
He shared how the focus on quality played into the operational dynamics of FX aiming for 30 with TV's Top 5 podcast:
We haven't been able to scale our output up as fast as we wanted. Most of that is COVID but some of that is a lack of compromise around quality and the fact that it takes time to get from, you know, a dozen odd shows to 30 shows if you're not just filling slots which we haven't done.
The Takeaway
Returning to the question of the essay - "what did $220B in content spend in 2021 accomplish for these streaming services? For consumers?" - I think Landgraf's perspectives offer a helpful lens on the interplay of volume, quality and cadence in streaming.
Landgraf's comments convey FX's continued success reflects a continued intimacy with both the end consumer and the creative talent. This intimacy exists at a moment where a figure like $220B implies either or both a divergence of that relationship and a fragmenting of that relationship.
FX within Disney embodies the difficult choice that legacy media streamers are navigating: should they focusing their investment on acquiring subscribers, irrespective of ARPU or CAC (distribution growth at any cost), or should they be focusing on investing in great content (vs. “good enough” content)? [1]
FX and Disney have chosen the latter path at a time when Paramount+ and Peacock have pursued the former, and have struggled. Landgraf is happy that Disney "realizes it needs extraordinary amount of storytelling" but has organized itself around "a king of label and studio structure" that understands how qualitative control falls apart after a certain volume.
In other words, streaming's toughest critic has laid out an argument for the limits of increased content spend, and why FX within Disney (and Disney itself) are poised to succeed with more content spend.
But other legacy media streaming bets? They don't seem to perceive these same constraints and limits, and struggle with both supply and their relationship with the consumer.
Footnote
[1] Hat-tip to Salil Dalvi for this point