David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. HBO: "The end is near"?
As luck would have it, I watched HBO’s new series, “John from Cincinnati” from auteur David Milch, on the same day the analyses of the cable network’s new power structure was being dissected. Bill Nelson was named Chief Executive Officer; he formerly served as the network’s Chief Operating Officer, meaning he basically kept his eyes on the pursestrings.
And I think it’s fairly safe to say that “John from Cincinnati,” with its evocative portrait of the surfing subculture and its quixotic examination of Zen precepts, is not a show aimed at bean-counters.
Every story observed that HBO bumped up a bunch of guys, hiring loyal soldiers from within; a couple noted that those promoted had more business than creative experience. “You need someone with a creative vision who can rally the troops," a media analyst told the L.A. Times in the story linked above. “I think they just didn't have anybody for now. You'll have another story on this by the end of the year.”
Well, let’s hope so, because Richard Plepler, the guy who will now oversee original programming, previously led HBO’s corporate communications division (and will continue to do so).
“He’s a strategy guy,” the New York Post was told. So basically, the marketing guy will also program the network. Does that send off warning signals for anyone else? Will the programs easiest to market be the shows HBO opts to produce?
Nelson issued his exuberant, corporate-babble press statement, promising to “continu(e) to develop a fertile, creative environment that generates the highest quality and most original entertainment, with a style and sensibility that is uniquely HBO's. At the same time, digital technologies present endless opportunities for us to deliver HBO programming to new audiences around the world.”
Perhaps it’s just paranoia, but when talk of reaching for new audiences is a mere sentence behind lip-service to “quality,” one wonders if the definition of “quality” might be subtly shifting.
Say what you will about former CEO Chris Albrecht, whose way with the ladies was to put it mildly dismaying, but he wasn’t afraid of swinging for the fences when it came to bringing unique and exciting material to the once-lowly medium of Television. Albrecht not only proved that something approaching “art” could be created in a corporate structure, but that it could also be wildly profitable.
We have wrung our hands in this space over a perceived change in direction at HBO in the past, particularly when Albrecht fed “Deadwood” to the pigs, which suggested that the network was falling in line behind other networks in terms of putting the bottom line over the passions of its loyal viewers.
The change comes, of course, as “The Sopranos” – HBO’s most successful series – prepares to bid its fans farewell. No HBO show since then has achieved such dizzying heights, and a number have been noble failures if not flat-out flatliners. For all its ambition, it would be surprising if “John from Cincinnati” got anything near “Sopranos” numbers.
OK, then; phew. But is it mere coincidence that the first line on “John from Cincinnati” is “The end is near”?