Speaker 1: This is Rob Long with Martini Shop for The Ankler.
Speaker 1: When you record these things, you have a choice. You
Speaker 1: can try to get studio-quality sound, that NPR feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: where everything sounds like it's being recorded in an airless,
Speaker 1: padded room. And that's sort of fitting for a lot
Speaker 1: of what happens over at NPR, don't you think? Airless
Speaker 1: and padded. Or you can just, you know, set it
Speaker 1: up wherever you are. Let the place be the place,
Speaker 1: which is what I'm doing right now. I'm coming to
Speaker 1: you from an extended summer wander. And right now I'm
Speaker 1: in Tbilisi, Georgia, the country, not the state. And I'm
Speaker 1: sitting outside a hip co-working space, which seemed to be
Speaker 1: everywhere now, nestled in a hip hotel called Stamba, surrounded
Speaker 1: by young, cool people who are drinking wine and beer
Speaker 1: in the summer night. And I'm feeling age-inappropriate as usual,
Speaker 1: but then that's sort of my life now. And especially here,
Speaker 1: in a place I was in 26 years ago, during
Speaker 1: another extended wander through Central Asia, heading west to Istanbul
Speaker 1: back then, And 26 years ago, this place was very different.
Speaker 1: I mean, this place wasn't even here. But Tbilisi in general, Georgia,
Speaker 1: in fact, was not quite as prosperous as it is now,
Speaker 1: not quite as hip and happening. I mean, now there
Speaker 1: are crypto ATMs everywhere. But there's also Vladimir Putin, and
Speaker 1: he and the current government of Georgia are a lot
Speaker 1: more aligned than they were 26 years ago, when Putin
Speaker 1: had just taken power in Russia, and the mood in
Speaker 1: Tbilisi was broke, but hopeful. A lot of things can
Speaker 1: happen that you don't predict. That's the lesson here. And
Speaker 1: another lesson is sometimes what looks like progress brings another
Speaker 1: kind of trouble. What feels like freedom can end up
Speaker 1: in a picture, shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. Progress brings
Speaker 1: trouble is one way of understanding show business, too. Streaming
Speaker 1: has brought a huge amount of change and opportunity. It
Speaker 1: all feels a little bleak right now, but not too
Speaker 1: long ago, those services were buying everything. And if you
Speaker 1: threw a rock in the Brentwood Country Mart, you would
Speaker 1: hit a writer with a project at Netflix or Hulu
Speaker 1: or something like that. And that was in the early
Speaker 1: Tbilisi era, all hope and possibility. We're now in the, well,
Speaker 1: we're in the Vladimir Putin era, especially this week, when
Speaker 1: Netflix revealed that viewers just don't stick around to watch
Speaker 1: the second season of many of their shows. Viewers, in
Speaker 1: other words, are drifting away, which makes sense because a
Speaker 1: lot of those shows are, you know, they're boring. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: not boring, but they are, let's say, unduly taxing on
Speaker 1: the audience. And look, streaming was supposed to bring more
Speaker 1: freedom and flexibility to storytelling, but often giving a storyteller
Speaker 1: freedom and flexibility... is the worst possible choice, because it's
Speaker 1: a very rare, maybe non-existent, show business storyteller, and let's
Speaker 1: be blunt, we're talking about writers and showrunners here, who
Speaker 1: take freedom and flexibility and use those to make the
Speaker 1: shows shorter, to make the episodes more sprightly, who gets
Speaker 1: down to business more quickly and briskly and keeps the
Speaker 1: pace up. Mostly, freedom and and flexibility just make things
Speaker 1: longer and slower. So by the time the first season
Speaker 1: is done, which is maybe eight episodes in total, the
Speaker 1: audience is way too bored to wait another year or
Speaker 1: more sometimes for the next batch to arrive. And of course,
Speaker 1: you don't really notice that if you're making the show
Speaker 1: or paying for it, because, you know, you never do.
Speaker 1: People in show business are predisposed to like the thing
Speaker 1: they're spending years of their lives and millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars on. Audiences, unfortunately, are not pre-sold. Audiences need
Speaker 1: to be post-sold. Post the money and the time and
Speaker 1: the anxiety that starts right after you watch that first
Speaker 1: assembly and wonder what on earth anyone was thinking giving
Speaker 1: this thing a green light. That's sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: show business, right? You take some risks, you see what sticks.
Speaker 1: That's what was supposed to happen, actually. The algorithm is
Speaker 1: supposed to make you brave. That's the whole promise of it.
Speaker 1: Collect enough information about what people want and you can
Speaker 1: finally stop guessing and you can swing for the fence
Speaker 1: and But somehow it works the other way. The more
Speaker 1: Netflix knows, the more careful it gets. It's the opposite
Speaker 1: of confidence. So here's my note to the executives, free
Speaker 1: of charge, since they wouldn't pay me anyway. Stop sorting
Speaker 1: the data and just start making shows. Order full seasons,
Speaker 1: 22 episodes, the old-fashioned number, and order the next batch
Speaker 1: before anyone's had time to forget the first one. Make
Speaker 1: more of them episodic, not serialized, because nobody is signing
Speaker 1: up for a relationship with your show. They want to
Speaker 1: walk in on a Thursday... and leave satisfied by Thursday.
Speaker 1: Not audition for a six-year engagement, which you're not going
Speaker 1: to get anyway, no matter what the data tell you.
Speaker 1: And once in a while, do a multicam in front
Speaker 1: of a studio audience. I know, I know, that's self-serving.
Speaker 1: That's what I used to do. But I'm in divinity
Speaker 1: school now. How likely is it that they'll buy a
Speaker 1: pitch from me? But what I mean is, you will
Speaker 1: never wonder if that live audience is bored because you
Speaker 1: can hear them. You can hear the silence. There's no
Speaker 1: algorithm for that. Just 400 people in bleacher seats letting
Speaker 1: you know by their shuffling and their scuffling and their
Speaker 1: chatter in real time exactly how much trouble you are in.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole business, really. Less certainty, more nerve.
Speaker 1: Which I've also discovered is not bad advice for a
Speaker 1: gentleman of a certain age sitting outside a co-working space
Speaker 1: in Tbilisi wondering if he still has anything else to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course I do. We all do, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: The problem I've learned this week is whether you have
Speaker 1: something to say and whether you can say it in
Speaker 1: under 21 seconds. I've been traveling with my godson, Jackson,
Speaker 1: who has appointed himself my social media producer, which mostly
Speaker 1: involves filming me ranting about vaping or those Get Ready
Speaker 1: With Me videos you see all over social media, and
Speaker 1: then putting the footage up on Instagram Reels and showing me,
Speaker 1: with real scientific detachment, exactly when people leave. When exactly
Speaker 1: they are done with my content. With me, in other words.
Speaker 1: There's a little chart you can look at. This many
Speaker 1: gone by 21 seconds, this many gone by 40. An
Speaker 1: alarming number gone by one second, which I choose to
Speaker 1: believe is a technical glitch and not a verdict. Jackson
Speaker 1: is ruthless about this. He cuts and trims and tightens
Speaker 1: his own stuff. With none of the sentimental attachment I
Speaker 1: have to my sentences. And watching him work, I have realized...
Speaker 1: that I've turned into exactly the kind of showrunner I
Speaker 1: was just finishing lecturing Netflix about. The kind who thinks
Speaker 1: he needs eight hours for his story to breathe when
Speaker 1: the actual audience, the one with the thumb, or in
Speaker 1: this case the scrolling finger, has already left the building.
Speaker 1: I've got a good 30 years on Jackson, and he's
Speaker 1: the one teaching me the note I gave the executives
Speaker 1: 20 seconds ago. Less certainty, more nerve. Say it, then
Speaker 1: stop talking. He's merciless about the metrics on his own posts,
Speaker 1: of course. You can find him at JacksonGreatHouseFall, all one word,
Speaker 1: and me at RCBL. Between the two of us, we've
Speaker 1: got maybe, I don't know, 16,000 followers. That's 14 for him,
Speaker 1: 2 for me. And roughly the collective self-restraint of a
Speaker 1: Netflix drama in its third season. Mostly that's his, not mine.
Speaker 1: But we are working on it. Well, I am working
Speaker 1: on it. I mean, look, 20 seconds is way too
Speaker 1: short to tell a good story, but a season of
Speaker 1: eight episodes when nothing happens? Well, that's way too long.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in the middle, I guess, is the right number.
Speaker 1: And the collected wisdom of a century of show business
Speaker 1: has pretty much identified that number at about an hour
Speaker 1: for a drama with a lot of cliffhanger act breaks
Speaker 1: and about half an hour for comedy with laughs in
Speaker 1: there from the audience. Make 22 of them to keep
Speaker 1: the audience hooked. But this was all the way things
Speaker 1: used to be before all that. progress. And that's it
Speaker 1: for this week. Next week, what are you watching? For
Speaker 1: The Ankler, this is Rob Long with Martini Shot.