What makes some networks more successful than others? The shortest, least controversial answer is probably: popular programming—and a savvy arrangement of this programming. Even for someone new to the business I don’t feel audacious declaring this.
But how do you decide what’s good? What’s popular? What will please your target demo? What could widen your demo? What placement of your programming will wring it for its full value? These are much harder questions; and from what I’m learning, they’re all considerations constantly weighing on the minds of industry professionals—at most every level.
So it seems the real question becomes: how do individuals become better at making these important programming decisions? In my view, our ability to answer this fully rests largely on our ability to determine the nature of programming itself: Is it an art or a science?
If it’s a science, by what standard do you use when making programming decisions? As a science, there has to be some control or metric by which you measure your decisions. Also, if it’s a science, then the specific skills, structures and processes can be learned and and a reliable formula for success can be followed.
If it’s more of an art form, well, the road may not be as clear cut. As an art form these decisions then rely on some more general, ambiguous skills like intuition and creativity which may be innate and, therefore, incapable of truly being taught or significantly improved upon.
Either way, this topic becomes more interesting as a dialogue which is why I decided to poll the combined wisdom and experience of the CableU community (see results below):
It is interesting to see a larger percentage of people apt to think that programming is more of a science than an art. From this we can conjecture that no matter how you define these two categories, more people think that programming consists primarily of left-brained decisions based on logic and data than right-brained decisions based more intuition or “synthesis,” which is good news for the masses; it means most people reading CableU and responding to this poll think that a lot of what goes into programming is fairly technical and from this we can safely say that individuals who equip themselves with more information are more likely to make sound programming decisions.
Granted, this observation is not especially novel but I don’t think this is merely some fruitless philosophical question. As someone learning a great deal about the industry, I am interested in how people are making their decisions. This is why I, to shill for a moment, enjoy reading the CableU executive interviews. Here is one of the few places I have gleaned insight into the varied approaches of some of Cable’s most significant programming decision makers. And the conclusion I’ve made from reading these is that … their approaches vary. If there is a formula for success, some scientific methodology, you’d be hard pressed to explain what it is.
I’m reminded of Bill Carter’s piece in the Times a few month’s ago on Bonnie Hammer’s remarkable success as a programmer at Sci-Fi and USA and how she has largely based her programming decisions on her personal belief in positive, upbeat programs. She says, “We’re entertainment. We’re escapism. We’re not dark. We give you a little levity, a little blue skies.” Surely this is the rhetoric of someone who brings a degree of artistry to her job.
Her words remind me of the late, great artist Bob Ross. He too painted little blue skies and happy green trees and brought levity to his work, but Bob Ross was just as much a scientist as he was an artist, and like all skilled artists he allowed his intuition to inform his tremendous technical mastery of how things work in nature, and on a canvas. His left-brained creativity was only as strong as his right-brained ability to logically implement his “happy places” with “little blue skies.”
And so it is with Hammer as well, and with programming in general, I conclude: One’s artistic ability to know what will work—to be creative, step outside the box, and to trust one’s intuition—is inextricably tied to one’s breadth of knowledge about the industry.
If you think I’m way off or have left something out leave a comment. I’d love to hear your opinion. As I said, I think this works well as a dialogue.
It seems like science outweighs art here based on how many cookie cutter shows exist on television, but it does seem like the ones that really shine and develop a strong following were more a result of an artisic approach to programming. Essentially, the science approach will breed a winner, but the art approach can deliver a “masterpiece”…or a failure. And sadly, that is why the science approach is so prevelant in the industry. Most like to keep our jobs as secure as possible; it’s hard to blame them.
In my perfect world, everybody would appreciate art in the form of television and execs would be willing to supply the demand, but I’ve come to accept that at best, we’ll probably get the scientific approach with a slightly artsy spin.
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