In 2013, the television writer and reviewer Alan Sepinwall was announcing “the rise of this era’s other big new scripted format: the anthology miniseries” (Sepinwall 2013: 437), stres-sing the appeal for many creators to opt for a thirteen-episode series for cable or streaming ins-tead of going for twenty-two episodes in commercial television (ivi: 438). The success of antho-logy miniseries in U.S. television was boosted by Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, which in 2011 brought to television a hybrid form, both rooting in early television programming and embracing the season-long narrative arc which was typical of longer narrative forms. This idea of a collection of stand-alone seasons with different stories caught the attention of the television in-dustry, in a moment when television was transitioning towards the coexistence of linear and non-linear media apparatuses, with Netflix introducing a streaming service for the first time in 2010.
American Horror Story appeared in the three-year time frame between Netflix’ initial race into streaming and the first Netflix original appeared - House of Cards (Netflix, 2013-2018). These two events are not directly related, since anthology miniseries were produced by cable channels before Netflix’ straight-to-series business model became a trend in U.S. television industry.
Ho-wever, they are both symptoms of a moment of redefinition in the mediascape, where traditional linear television was thriving to reinvent itself to keep up with new creative and economic possi-bilities, while over-the-top platforms were initiating their ascent in the media landscape, with new plans of vertical integration, alternative strategies for television production, and innovative sub-scription-based models for non-linear distribution (Lotz 2017a).
Discussing anthology miniseries in such a media environment calls for closer observa-tions of media and economic dynamics, other than narratological or cultural. If the seasonal an-thology form emerged in televisual cultures as the mixing of a variety of narrative forms and genres - an interbreeding between anthology form, miniseries, and, in certain cases, police proce-durals -, it also stands out as the result of a media, technological and economic context that favo-red its return. The intuition of anthology miniseries lies precisely in the fact that they were able to anticipate the mutations of digital culture and economy. With their shorter, compressed form, despite their high up-front costs, straight-to-season anthology miniseries reduce the financial risks of producing less controllable long-running shows, while still offering more programming time for an effective evolution of the narrative arc throughout the season. With a multiple episode commitment, the overall initial costs are likely to be higher than the costs of a single pilot, no matter how high they are. For instance, it is reported that some of the most expensive TV pilot in U.S. television range between $10 million and $30 million , and yet up-front costs of major an17 -thology miniseries still fluctuate between $4 million and $6 million per episode, making it a total of over $40 million per season of about ten episodes - such as in the case of True Detective, with
Kurland, Daniel. “The 30 Most Expensive TV Shows Ever Made (And How Much They Cost).” ScreenRant. Last
17
modified March 24, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2019. https://screenrant.com/tv-shows-most-expensive-cost.
a budget of $4 to $4.5 million per episode , and Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, which 18 gets closer to $6 million per episode.
In the straight-to-series model the season tend to replace the pilot as a test for assessing the potential value in revenues of the series, as Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, suggests in an article on Vox . This implies new creative processes, new consumption models, 19 and a completely different risk/reward management, which relies on a variety of storytelling forms - old and new - that are asked to renovate their roles and functions in the television indus-try. In fact, the resilience of the seasonal form is such that it allows to define its status of antholo-gy based on the success of the first season, without necessarily claiming the antholoantholo-gy form from the very beginning of the show. In other words, anthology miniseries in internet-distributed tele-vision do not need to be declared as such a priori, making the distinction between ex ante and ex post anthologies almost interchangeable. Some seasonal anthologies, for example, were originally designed with a narrative arc covering two seasons and then switch to a separate story: it is the case of Scream (MTV, 2015-2016; VH1, 2019- ), which after two seasons opted for a third season with a different plot and cast, announcing it as a reboot going by the title Scream: Resurrection.
Similarly, anthology series, whether seasonal or episodic, can be canceled any time at the end of the season, without having to drop an unresolved narrative, which would then remain on online platforms as an unfinished content.
See: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls056710448.
18
VanDerWerff, Emily Todd. “Netflix Is Accidentally Inventing a New Art Form — Not Quite TV and Not Quite
19
Film.” Vox. Last modified July 29, 2015. Retrieved August 19, 2019. https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9061833/net-flix-binge-new-artform.
In conclusion, anthological content enables streams of “finished” content, with a narrative closure - I will return on this point in the following paragraphs -, thus helping the process of ag-gregation and archiving of the great abundance of content available on online platforms . Even 20 outside of the anthology form, much shorter seasons are being produced for television, if compa-red to older series made of 20-episode seasons. In a platform economy (Kenney and Zysman 2016), more often referred to as part of a broader sharing economy (Codagnone et al. 2018), where there’s too much content to handle for both producers and consumers due to potentially unlimited opportunities for content aggregation and a vertically bundled experience , shorter 21 forms of programming proved to be able to catch the attention of producers and online distribu-tors . Anthology miniseries fit the idea of creating a collection of bite-size stories, easy to ma22 -nage, a comeback in contemporary television that involved also the episodic anthology form. One can even presume that, as a result of a digital value and supply chain that makes available large amount of content leveraging on the anytime-anywhere logic, viewers simply tend to prefer shor-ter forms in the vast shelves of digital libraries. Before discussing a platform economy and ecolo-gy further, it is useful to pinpoint some of the main concept mobilized by the notion of antholoecolo-gy.
Aggregation theory (Thompson 2015) notably explains the abundance generated by a multi-sided platform econo
20
-my by pointing at three main causes: i) the absence of transaction costs, which facilitates the acquisition of users/
subscribers; ii) the absence of distribution costs, directly linked to a proliferation of content; iii) the absence of mar-ginal costs, which ensures scalability. “These three fundamentals explain how content changed from scarcity, only available through traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, books and TV, to abundance available on every person’s blog, social feed and YouTube channel.” Lifely, David. “Aggregation Theory: The Most Powerful Econo-mics Theory You Didn’t Learn at University.” Medium. Last modified January 8, 2018. Retrieved August 20, 2019.
https://medium.com/@dlifely/aggregation-theory-the-most-powerful-economics-theory-you-didnt-learn-at-universi-ty-4dc854b8d0b.
Cicero, Simone. “Market Networks, Innovation & Digital Value Chains.” Medium. Last modified September 29,
21
2018. Retrieved August 20, 2019. https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/market-networks-innovation-digital-va-lue-chains-60e676ca7d2.
Patel, Sahil. “Why Netflix and Amazon Are Experimenting with Short-Form Programming.” Digiday. Last modi
22
-fied April 27, 2018. Retrieved August 20, 2019. https://digiday.com/media/the-streaming-giants-are-experimenting-with-short-form-but-dont-call-it-a-gold-rush.