Back in 2020, my Variety colleague Kate Aurthur and I wrote a cover story on the death of cable — complete with striking art of a coaxial cord shaped like a skull. The headline read, “R.I.P. Cable TV: Why Hollywood Is Slowly Killing Its Biggest Moneymaker,” and I think it remains one of the most damning indictments of how this business made some potentially fatal choices in upending its entire financial model.
Since then, we’ve been proven right over and over. But it didn’t take a genius to see the storm on the horizon, as several basic cable channels had already gone zombie (or should I say, full “Ridiculousness”) back then. Cut to four years later, and there’s nothing “slow” about how the congloms have killed their cable assets.
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Ironically, when we wrote that in 2020, there was still a little bit of life left in cable. Not anymore. A series of events this August drove the final stake through cable’s weakened heart, including TNT losing the NBA, networks like Nat Geo cutting a large chunk of its staff and websites for networks including MTV, Comedy Central and Cartoon Network going dark.
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And of course, the real shocker came recently when Warner Bros. Discovery took a $9.1 billion write down for the valuation of its channels, followed by Paramount Global dumping $6 billion in valuation for its networks. Just last week, Kathleen Finch announced she was retiring as chairman and CEO, US Networks, at Warner Bros. Discovery, with Warner Bros. TV Group chairman/CEO Channing Dungey taking on oversight of the channels. Back in the day, Dungey likely would have moved from the studio to the networks job — and that would have been seen as a promotion. But these days, that would have been considered a demotion, so suddenly Finch’s duties are now just a secondary part of Dungey’s already crowded plate.
There aren’t many positive basic cable stories out there anymore. And no, you can’t count FX’s dominant 93 Emmy nominations (its most ever) — because John Landgraf’s “FX” is no longer a cable entity. (He has no oversight over the linear cable network that shares the same name but only airs some of his shows.)
This year’s Emmy nominations reflect these tumultuous times for basic cable. Surprisingly, MTV — which has pretty much given up on its linear outlet — managed to land its largest nomination tally ever, at 10. But that comes with an asterisk: All of those noms are for “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and its sister series, a franchise that only recently moved from VH1 to MTV.
Bravo, BBC America (for “Planet Earth III”) and Comedy Central (“The Daily Show”) also managed to pull off three or more nominations, but most major basic cable nets were completely blanked this year.
That’s why it’s all the more impressive that Investigation Discovery made it on the board this year, with three nominations via two programs: “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” (including documentary/nonfiction series) and “Lost Women of Highway 20” (for Octavia Spencer, as narrator).
Those are the first-ever Emmy noms for ID — quite a feat for this era. “I think in these very convoluted times, you really have to take the wins where they come, and take a moment to celebrate them,” says Jason Sarlanis, the president of TNT, TBS, TruTV, ID and HLN “But also taking them as a sign that, maybe against the popular opinion, these brands do very much matter and can very much evolve. And I think that this recognition is one indicator of that.”
Sarlanis says the Emmy noms — and perhaps, Emmy wins — have sent a message to filmmakers “that we are a place that will protect them, support them and maybe even make their project better.”
The noms have put ID in a position it has never been in before: Flexing its FYC muscles via outdoor ads and other campaigns. “We’re cautiously optimistic, because, when you look at the entire field, it’s incredible filmmakers, incredible stories being told.”
ID isn’t the only newcomer to the Emmy field this year. Also joining the race for the first time is Shudder, the AMC Networks streamer that focuses on horror and thriller content. The boutique programmer scored two nominations for its original series “The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula,” in hairstyling and in makeup, both for a variety, nonfiction or reality program.
At least that (and the BBC America noms) was a bit of cheer for AMC, which saw its flagship network without a single nom for the first time in more than a decade. It’s hard out there for a cable net.
