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John Landgraf was in trouble.
Critics were even more enamored of FX, rankingAtlanta, The Americansand,The People vs. O.J.
Simpsonas the top comedy, drama and limited series of the year, per aMetacritic tallyof year-end lists.
NewcomersBetter ThingsandBasketshad also just debuted to strong notices.
I was staring at an abyss, he says.
In theory, this moment might have marked the end of Landgrafs journey as FX guru.
Landgraf leaves no doubt about how he judges the effect of the merger on FX in the long run.
Not that the last five years have been easy.
Tell me about your 2022 and how you think FX did.
From an FX perspective, it was really a good year.
We just got the last piece of our critical library back for Hulu, which wasThe Americans.
And the combination of that really was pretty powerful.
So that was a great year.
Were coming up on the third full year of FX on Hulu, which we now just call FX.
I was hearing reports early on about tension and difficulties surrounding the two companies coming together.
I dont hear those rumors anymore.
What was the integration really like?
I think there was some friction in the early going.
But there were folks in the system who just said, Why be a brand?
Why not just make stuff for Hulu?
Theres value in having boutiques in department stores or brands inside supermarkets.
Hulu Originals is a good team and does a really able job of making Hulu originals.
It was feeling like we had a distinctive identity one that we had spent years nurturing.
How is your role different now than it was during the cable era of FX?
In many ways, this job is the same, and in other ways, its fundamentally different.
The stewardship of that business is with Chuck Saftler, who reports to Debra OConnell at Disney.
It has just been different.
We had to learn everything over again about the nature of streaming and what works and what doesnt work.
Then we had to figure out how to work successfully with a group of colleagues at Hulu.
It worked out in getting eyeballs on FX shows, right?
It was a revolutionary benefit for all of our returning shows.
It was very hard to stand out as a brand when there were so many.
It just takes time.
When you mush two companies together and all these different new initiatives and projects, it takes time.
But it felt pretty smooth.
The number of FX originals is a lot more than it used to be.
It started going up even before the online grid joined Hulu.
Its more than weve ever made in our history.
But once it gets beyond that, I cant pay attention to it anymore.
There becomes an amount of content that outstrips your ability to pay close attention.
What is the FX brand now in this new streaming era?
We redesigned it to be more theatrical and horizontal in its aspect ratio.
Its in a block, so it holds that position better.
Then there will be an FX Presents in a trailer.
So what we are now is the presenter, the brand that brings it to you.
And not everything that FX makes is going to be your cup of tea.
FX is not trying to make programs for everybody in America.
Thats the job of Hulu.
Thats the job of the Walt Disney Company.
Thats the job of Netflix.
Thats the job of Amazon.
And how do we get there?
But a lot of it has to do with the fact that we interrogate those shows.
What is your intent?
Why did you want to make this show?
What is it about?
Its a very deep, deeply personal relationship.
Lets talk about the big picture.
Where are we right now in the transition from linear TV to the new streaming era?
We still have a fair amount of distance to go.
Whats your take on what has happened so far and what comes next?
Is it as simple as lots more consolidation and fewer TV shows?
Well, lets go backward.
They were all quite profitable, and the studios that made content for them were profitable.
The cable era, basically.
That was the cable system.
All participants were essentially part of that system and making a profit.
Then piracy started nipping around the heels of that when the internet arrived.
Its bingeable and grows so fast that it puts pressure on the entire ecosystem to follow.
Thats where were at now: a lot of companies that followed into that ecosystem.
We will arrive at that place again, in my opinion.
How long will that take?
When these kinds of changes happen, they take generations.
There are people in the cable-TV ecosystem who will be in it for the rest of their lives.
Youre talking about the kind of change that takes not just years or even decades but generations to unfold.
And its messy like what you write about every day, every week.
These are really messy transitions.
This is a much bigger change, but these things really do take years to sort themselves out.
Yes, I mean its really more like vaudeville to movies or movies to TV.
Its just foundational, because its the entire business model of distribution and the technology on which it sits.
The fundamentals of people wanting to watch high-quality entertainment dont change.
The Globe Theatre existed, and thats why Shakespeare wrote his plays.
What do you think happens to linear TV?
Some in the industryhave been blunt, suggesting broadcast and cable are going away.
But one model of analysis I really like is from a business professor at Harvard named Clayton Christensen.
Your question was about linear TV, and I didnt forget that.
Then it had so-called channels, which were linear streams ofSimpsonsepisodes.
Eighty percent of the consumption was from the linear playlists, and 20 percent was on demand.
Their internal data might be a little bit different than that.
But theres still an equilibrium point there.
Thats not what people want from television.
Because FAST channels are channels, theyre sort of linear playlists or whatever.
Youre in the middle of the transformational change, and every year feels very consequential because a lot happens.
I get thinking that the linear-TV experience will evolve into FAST channels on streaming.
Internet systems are getting better.
Amazon can put on Thursday-night NFL games.
The internets not capable of that yet even in America.
And exactly how we get there I dont really know.
But I think well get there.
Everybodys hand has challenges to it.
But of all the hands that anybodys holding, I personally like the Walt Disney Companys best.
Its still growing really fast.
It has best-in-class programming across virtually every genre.
It holds the cards in every key job that youd want television to do for you.
Is there an ideal number for FX to be churning out every year?
Scripted series are made for various reasons.
Theres scripted for children, theres sitcoms theres a lot more than what FX and HBO do.
But I would say that it depends on the size of the other brands that do what we do.
When we were a basic-cable online grid, we made about a dozen shows.
So the range Im thinking of at the moment is 20 to 25.
It does also depend on profitability.
Whats your answer going to be to whats going on right now?
Heres what I would say.
Lets go back to the beginnings the very beginnings of film in theaters as a medium.
I dont think the internet is going to be as constrained as, say, the broadcast era.
But you always have to have a reckoning.
Its just normal, in times of transition, for distribution systems to overshoot the mark, right?
Thats kind of what peak TV is.
I think its then equally normal for them to come back down to some kind of equilibrium.
And I dont know what that equilibrium looks like.
I wish I had a crystal ball.
Id be Warren Buffett.
But I know its happening now and it will proceed apace until a new structure is reached.
Its good for the artist.
Its good for the distributor, and its good for the studio.
And along with that have come some real bolts of inspiration from unlikely sources, some great television.
It has not been a bad thing in the aggregate.
Do you feel more confident predicting that now?
A few more things I want to ask about before we wrap up.
You talked about record numbers for shows like The Bear, for example.
For the longest time, that is something you tended to rail against when Netflix did it.
What changed, and are you seeing more streaming data than you used to?
Much more data, and the Nielsen data is getting better and better too.
The streaming ratings now encompass multiple platforms for many, many years.
But they still dont really measure consumption on phones, tablets, and computer screens.
I have access to internal data too.
And may the chips fall where they may.
I dont especially like playing a game where everybody gets to make their own rules.
That doesnt feel like a good way to organize an ecosystem to me.
I cant wave a wand and change that, unfortunately.
You obviously have a lot of respect for Bob Iger based on what youve said already.
But how did you hear the news about his return to Disney, and what was your immediate reaction?
Were you at the Elton John concert like half of the company?
And I was really surprised.
But I love Bob Iger.
In a stormy sea, its good to have a really, really seasoned captain.
You just saw more and more and more and more and more businesses getting into it.
And now youre going to see a winnowing process.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
