| It's never been easier to get a show made in Hollywood. But it's never been harder to make a hit. The entertainment industry is churning out 1,600 shows a year – and several hundred movies – more programs than any human could watch in a lifetime, let alone a year. But for every "WandaVision" or "Bridgerton," there are 100 shows you didn't know about. Some of these are quality shows that failed because the system failed them. They weren't well-marketed or exist on a platform that almost nobody uses. Some failed because they just aren't very good. And some failed for reasons nobody understands. Over the past month, I spoke with five producers who know a little something about making a hit – Betsy Beers ("Bridgerton," "Grey's Anatomy"), Alan Yang ("Master of None," "Tigertail"), Neal Baer ("ER," "Designated Survivor") Mary Viola ("Tall Girl") and Erick Peyton ("Holey Moley"). Every one of them grew up in an industry still dominated by four broadcast networks and six major studios, and all of them now do most of their work in streaming. So they are the perfect people to talk about working with Netflix, producing TV in a pandemic and Hollywood's on-again, off-again efforts with diversity. These conversations have been condensed and edited for clarity. All of you either work at Netflix now or have worked at Netflix in the past. How is the process of making a show for Netflix, or for streaming in general, different from making it for TV? Beers: You don't do a pilot. Netflix buys the show as a whole, complete ideas and bibles. Our first maiden voyage on this was "Bridgerton." We came from a model where you made a pilot, evaluated the pilot, shifted and changed. Viola: We're not pressured anymore to have ad breaks. You don't need to build these little cliffhangers in four to five times. We can make the stories more serialized. It gives you more time to get invested in characters. Baer: Streaming has taken the role broadcast used to. Broadcast networks are focused on keeping as many eyeballs as possible. Streamers have a different model where you don't have to like everything. You can like what you like, and you'll get what you like. What I told on "Law & Order: SVU" or "ER" -- very hard-hitting stories about vaccination, gun laws, gun control as a public health issue – I'm not sure you could tell those stories in as direct a way on broadcast. Betsy, "Bridgerton" is based on a book. Your show about Anna Delvey (a woman posing as a German heiress) is based on an article in New York Magazine. This is the age of Marvel. Why does everything have to be based on an existing piece of intellectual property? Beers: It's a safety net. You can always go back and say it was based on this book. We spent a lot of money on this book because it's a famous book. Intellectual property blossoms and emerges at points where there's a lot shifting, and a certain amount of insecurity. There are other times where people feel more confident in general and are more open to the original ideas. But intellectual property is incredibly helpful in attracting large talent to write and produce. Yang: It's just so much easier to get stuff made, and definitely on a larger budget, if it's based on existing IP. I get it, totally get it. But if you go back to before a lot of these movies were making so much money, man, you could just have some wild idea and they'd make it. When the original "Star Wars" came out, it was just a crazy idea George Lucas had. Given the focus on IP, is there any hole in the market? Any types of stories not being told? Beers: The holes may come because you can't find a show. That's the biggest problem from what I can tell. What you want to find is out there. But I don't know how you find it. That's part of the challenge during this period of time where there is so much content and so many different, confusing platforms. Netflix is known for releasing all of its episodes at once. Disney+ and HBO Max release them weekly. What do you prefer? Yang: I don't want to say it doesn't matter because it certainly does, but in a very crowded marketplace for entertainment your biggest hope is just that you can make a little bit of noise or attention and that can build. If you can own a weekend or a couple weeks, you're in a great place. So what is working right now? Viola: Poppier content. Escapism. People are gravitating towards lighter content, which is exciting for our company since we do poppier things. We've had a number of movies release at Netflix, and all of them are overperforming, especially at the price range we make them. Peyton: We just came out of a pandemic. People want to be inspired. They want to feel good. They want to laugh. Have you made a show during the pandemic? And what's been the hardest part? Viola: Chemistry reads. We can't do them the way you typically do them. There is no way to put two people in a room to see how people vibe. We did them over Zoom. If you are trying to cast two romantic leads or a father-daughter … a son-mother … you want to see how two actors engage. You are trying to cast a nemesis, and you want to see how they are together in a room. Beers: It's tricky. That's the understatement of the year. It makes things incredibly complicated and slower. We started on Delvey pretty early in the food chain of people coming back and shooting. Trying to figure out the right protocols is tricky. Baer: I've done a lot of pitches over Zoom. The good side is I don't have to drive, but it can be hard to be conversational. Rooms make it more conversational. Zooms are more transactional. You have all those cues visually when you're in the room; it's much harder to connect. There are real positives, too. I know of a show on Peacock where the showrunner is in Bermuda. The other writer is in L.A. Peyton: It was bumpy at first. Everyone will admit that. You're used to being in a room and being able to look people in the eye. We tightened up the pitch and allowed more time for question and answer. If we are pitching something, I make sure in this 45 minutes or an hour they get what we are trying to do. How do you feel about working the pandemic into the script? Yang: When the Vietnam War happened, they made a lot of movies about the war. They didn't run away from it. I understand the desire to work it in what you're doing. At the same time, do people want to see Covid on screen when dealing with it in their lives? There are a lot of people who don't want to see it. Viola: We've been avoiding it. Most people will be tuning into shows for escapism, and the last thing I want to do is watch people in masks or talking about the pandemic. Will the protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor last year change storytelling at all? Baer: We are going to see changes, particularly in legal shows and police dramas. There's an acknowledgement that Black Lives Matter is real and must be addressed. And how we tell cop stories needs to be addressed. Yang: We still have a long way to go just because there are decades of institutional discrimination we have to overcome. My girlfriend is Taiwanese-American. How crazy is it that we are in our 30s and basically never saw Asians as the lead of a movie till maybe a couple years ago? That has to affect how you view the world and create new shows. We have a long way to go just to even the playing field. That being said, I do feel like it's changing. There's more of an imperative to commit to diverse writing. I am hoping it's not a flash in the pan, not just a fad. What have you seen that makes you optimistic? Yang: Committing to diversity or listening to a different point of view feels like a given now. Fifteen years ago it was pretty foreign. Ten years ago it was just starting. When we hired a writing staff on "Master of None," the last season of the show we might have had one writer who was a White dude. It's not purposeful, it just worked out that way. It seems like every day Netflix takes a step toward being more like a broadcaster. Are you worried that will limit your creative freedom, or stunt progress on diversity? Yang: These places are obviously maturing as companies. Is it a concern they'll take fewer risks? I guess that is. But there's also a broadening of where you can pitch your show. There are so many streamers, you have options in a lot of different directions. Beers: The immense and incredible emphasis when you move to Netflix is on the universality of watching, the importance of being able to connect to audiences all over the world, it's something I knew intellectually. But the first time I felt it emotionally, I remember digging into "La Casa De Papel," and this extraordinary feeling of falling in love and becoming addicted to the show. It made me feel closer to people all over the world. Before with network TV, nobody rolled out at the same time. This was one of the gigantic delights and surprises. I was used to the sense that we'd put out a season of TV and different countries and regions would be on different schedules depending on who was airing that show. There was never that incredible moment of this realization that every single person in the world could be watching your show. -- Lucas Shaw The best of Screentime (and other stuff) | 
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