It’s never been a more exciting time for TV and the future holds unprecedented opportunities for creativity and innovation. In The Future of Television Pamela Douglas, an award-winning screenwriter and Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, takes us on a tour of the future—buckle up!
TV is no longer a box in the living room that families gather around to watch shows that air once and then disappear. Today, TV programming airs on multiple platforms anytime, anywhere. You can binge watch a season of shows or catch an episode on your lunch break. The Web and Cable have provided writers of TV with access and opportunities to create compelling, sophisticated programming that would never have
made it past the gatekeepers of the networks a couple decades ago.
The future promises more, but few of us can make sense of the rapidly changing landscape of TV. Enter Pamela Douglas. Douglas is the author of THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION: YOUR GUIDE TO CREATING TV IN THE NEW WORLD (Michael Wiese Productions, January, 2015) and a Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where she guides young writers in becoming professionals in this exploding era of TV. In her book she offers a sweeping view of where TV is headed and speaks with some of the key players in this new world. Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer
at Netflix; Michael Lombardo, President of Programming at HBO; and Amy Berg, executive producer of acclaimed Web TV series’ are just a few of the leading lights that Douglas interviews.
· What’s behind the “Golden Age of TV?” Douglas explores how the growth of technology and unprecedented creative freedom for writers has brought us to the new dawn of TV.
· How the major networks have had to change to keep pace with technological and creative innovation.
· How the “Empires of the New World”—Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others—are shaping the viewing habits of fans and offering new possibilities for TV writers.
· Is the end of cable in sight? We may see cable as we know it come to an end, with more cable channels offering themselves as stand-alone options instead of as part of a bundle. While the legion of consumers who “hate their cable company” may cheer this, it will also present challenges to small producers trying to get a foothold in
TV.
· How cable TV and online streaming are changing TV writing.
· Transmedia: The outer edges of the future. With transmedia, one story can stretch into multiple platforms. A TV series can be based on a book, refashioned as a video game, or broken up into shorter episodes to suit a specific platform. Each of these manifestations may find a different audience. Douglas shares key insights about this latest evolution in media.
· Why she says that nothing less than our creative options may be at stake with the upcoming net neutrality ruling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAMELA DOUGLAS is the author of The Future of Television: Your Guide to Creating TV in the New World (2015). Her previous book, Writing the TV Drama Series, now in its third edition, has been translated into several languages, and adopted by network mentoring programs. It is considered the premiere source on the subject.
She is an award-winning screenwriter, and was honored with the Humanitas Prize for Between Mother and Daughter (CBS) that also won a nomination for a Writers Guild Award. Multiple Emmy nominations and awards from American Women in Radio and Television went to other shows she has written, and her credits include developing the series Ghostwriter, and writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation, that was named one of the 101 best-written shows by The Writers Guild of
America.
At the University of Southern California, she is a tenured professor in the School of Cinematic Arts, where she teaches writing for television. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, West.
She consults internationally to professional TV writers and producers, and has lectured in Africa, Europe, and throughout the United States.
Visit her at: www.PamDouglasBooks.com.
