Forty-Seven Dramas Failed Because Networks Bought Safety Over Stories

NBC and ABC are premiering two new shows this summer—President Curtis and Furious—and the announcement lands with the weight of a scheduling note because that is all it is.

A political thriller starring Gary Oldman. An action franchise built on an IP foundation nobody was asking to expand.

This pattern repeats 2010—the year after Mad Men proved that a single original drama could anchor a cable network's reputation. Hollywood panicked and greenlit everything. These were original shows about lawyers, detectives, firefighters, surgeons, and mobsters in altered circumstances. Between 2010 and 2012, the networks attempted forty-seven new dramas, and most lasted one season.

The audience networks believed existed—a mass market for prestige television—turned out to prefer actual prestige television, the kind that took years to build. So the middle budget collapsed, and studios learned the lesson wrong. Instead of writing better, they decided the solution was to purchase safety. This meant acquiring an established brand name, an A-list actor, and a formula already proven somewhere else. The cost was identical to an original idea. The risk was lower and the prestige remained intact because prestige is now just a matter of casting.

In 2010, the networks still believed they had an audience to win back—they competed. Now they compete to acquire viewers who might cancel at any moment, subscribers who stream instead of tune in. The president drama and the action franchise exist not because anyone envisions them as art but because Gary Oldman will bring a demographic and Furious brings a fanbase. What matters is noticing when you stop building something and start assembling it—in your own work, that moment feels like efficiency and knowing what works. It is actually the moment before you become replaceable by the next person who knows the same formula.