This week, ads began on Prime Video in the United States. As previously reported, for the same subscription price, users of the Amazon catalog can find advertising breaks in the series and movies on the platform. If they want to skip the ads, they must pay an additional $2.99 ??each month because, as the platforms demonstrate, monetizing streaming is not easy. But what do Hollywood creators think about this business decision?
The Hollywood Reporter portal has consulted the most prominent scriptwriters in the television industry and, while there are those who are not exasperated by this change in the paradigm like the creators of Wednesday, there are reactions that are not exactly positive. “I’m very angry,” Lulu Wang, the filmmaker of The Farewell who has just released the series Expats with Nicole Kidman, told them on Prime Video.
When he found out about Prime Video’s maneuver, which planned to include advertising in the service, he had already filmed the entire miniseries. This implies that, after releasing the first two episodes on January 26 without ads, the rest of the season will be seen with cuts to sell products. “If I had known, I would have created it differently because it is not a series that has cliffhangers or commercial breaks to make sure people come back,” he argued.
For Alan Poul, director and executive producer of HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice, the disappearance of advertising was “one of the big steps to bring the worlds of television and film closer together.” David E. Kelley, all-powerful in the 90s after creating The Lawyer and Ally McBeal, is horrified to think that the public will see Nine Perfect Strangers with commercial breaks for which it was never intended.
Creator Francesca Sloane, who premieres Mr and Mrs Smith with Donald Glover this Friday, prays that the pauses “don’t create too much disruption” in the viewer’s viewing, the same thing she hoped when writing series like Atlanta or Fargo, which were intended to be broadcast on linear television with advertisements.
The viewer thinks about how inopportune and intrusive advertising can be (or the price of being able to do without it), both because of the quality of the advertising and because of the time it takes up and the way in which it hinders the rhythm of the story. . However, for creatives it is essential: writing and producing a series with advertising is not the same as one without it.
You just have to see, for example, the key to series like Grey’s Anatomy or Navy: Criminal Investigation. The plots of the episode are structured thinking about the number of advertising breaks and the exact moment of the footage in which they will be introduced. Taking this information into account, they place tension points or generate anticipation to ensure they retain the viewer’s attention and make them wait a few minutes.
Now, with the decision to include advertising in the content, the creators who conceived series for Prime Video will see how the rhythm of their narration will be hindered by the cuts. Wang’s statements are clear: if he had known that he was filming a series with advertising, he would have created something else.
This is also the reason why HBO, when it started producing fiction in the late nineties, had a different spirit: it was a premium channel without advertising and the writers did not feel the need to place so many hooks or so much rhythm in it. episodes, aware that there would be no interruptions that could cause the loss of viewers in the middle of the episode.
First it was Netflix that placed ads globally. Now Prime Video is in the middle of implementing advertising and soon it will be Spain’s turn. Disney is also considering introducing this monetization tool and it seems a matter of time before the rest of the international platforms opt for this business model.
And, depending on the number of subscribers who choose this option, it may be interesting to see to what extent it affects the creation and how the series are produced from now on.
