The Golden Age of American Drama

The Golden Age of American Dramas

American TV dramas are prospering from day to day. Enormous manpower flows into TV dramas from Hollywood. American dramas that have good quality make a lot of money through overseas sales. Also audiences’ new ways to watch dramas are helpful for TV dramas to grow. American dramas are revolutionized by these three reasons.

Enormous manpower from Hollywood is the first reason that makes American dramas revolutionized. Many personages like movie producers, writers and actors/actresses of movie industry in Hollywood started to make TV dramas instead of movies. These works were a new attempt to develop TV dramas as a new world. The personages of movie industry were attracted to TV drama series that can be made more complicatedly and changefully than movies. Representative movie producers and writers who move from movies to TV dramas are Jerry Bruckheimer, J.J. Abrams, Paul Haggis and so on. Jerry Bruckheimer, famous for “Con Air,” “Coyote Ugly” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” succeeded “CSI” and then produced “Without a Trace,” “Close to Home,” “Cold Case” and “Justice.” J.J. Abrams, who had wrote a scenario of “Armageddon,” made a drama “Alias” and produced a movie “Mission Impossible 3” later. And Paul Haggis, one of the most famous scenario writers, participated in a series of “The Black Donnellys.” Movie actors and actresses also joined dramas due to a huge amount of invest and good structures of stories. For instance, each Denis Leary and Mary-Louise Parker takes a main role and a producer in “Rescue Me” and “Weeds.” Mary McDonnell performed in “Battlestar Galactica,” Kiefer Sutherland took part in “24” and James Spader was cast in “Shark.”

The second reason that makes American dramas revolutionized is a lot of income through overseas sales. The income of American dramas is really important to continuation of the dramas. Because nowadays American dramas are made like movies and it spends a lot of money. Each 1-hour-episode of American drama is usually estimated to be spent 2.5 million dollars to be made. But studios that make the dramas recover only about 65% of the production cost from a broadcasting station. So the studios easily have a deficit and have to finish the dramas unavoidably. Therefore, overseas sales are absolute resource to the studios. Actually, there are several cases to be sold into an oversea market. “Shark” is being proposed to terms of over one million dollars per one episode by overseas buyers. “Ugly Betty,” which remakes “Yo Soy Betty, la Fea,” a South American drama, was exported not only to Europe but also to countries in Spanish. The first episode in new season of “CSI: Miami” chose Rio de Janeiro as its background in consideration of South American market. According to “Time,” the price owning the copyright of some dramas’ series go up 50~70% higher now than three years before.

Audiences’ new ways to watch American dramas are the last reason that makes American dramas revolutionized. There are several ways to watch American dramas owing to latest technology. At first, audiences can watch the missing dramas using iPod with 1.99 bucks per one episode. And DVR can record the whole episodes of the programmed dramas. Besides, there are on-demand services by cable channels and web sites like ‘YouTube’ in the Internet. DVDs which include every story and various supplements are also popular to audiences. These new ways to watch dramas other than using TV are good for audiences to understand the whole story of the complicated American dramas. The stories and structures of recent American dramas became more complicated and creative. Because the whole seasons or one season of the dramas are regarded as one long story, not one hour story. So, busy modern audiences who can’t always watch TV on scheduled time can fully understand the dramas using other ways. After all, more and more audiences are being created by various ways to watch dramas.

Three reasons that make American dramas revolutionized can be summarized as manpower from Hollywood, income through overseas sales and audiences’ new watching ways. By these foundations, American drams are developed, changed and popular. The present is the golden age of American dramas.

The information of this essay from:

http://www.imdb.com/company/co0026281/

http://www.worldscreen.com/print.php?filename=drama100606.htm