TV Surveillance

Watching HBO’s World War II miniseries, “The Pacific,” over the past few weeks has me thinking: Will the broadcast networks ever embrace the miniseries again?
Consider the following:

A broadcast miniseries hasn’t been nominated for the Best Miniseries Emmy since CBS’ “Elvis” in 2005.

In the last 10 years, only eight of the 39 nominees for Best Miniseries have been from a major network, and five of those eight came in 2000 and 2001.
Finally, only ABC’s “Anne Frank: The Whole Story” in 2001 actually won the Best Miniseries award in that time period.

Staggering.

One might say that just as for all the other Emmys, the cable companies are the ones getting nominated and the broadcast networks are simply getting screwed, even though they still obviously care about the miniseries.

But one might be wrong. In recent years, most broadcast networks have decided the best story to tell in the miniseries format is the worldwide disaster. NBC produced “10.5” in 2004, “10.5: Apocalypse” in 2006 and “The Storm” in 2009. CBS did “Category 6: Day of Destruction” in 2004 and “Category 7: The End of the World” in 2005. ABC aired “Impact” in 2008. You get it.

One of the major problems with broadcast nets and the mini is that they don’t produce them themselves. Most of those disaster projects were produced by third parties, most likely in Canada.

We know why the broadcast powers don’t produce miniseries: the cost. “The Pacific” reportedly cost $250 million, though that’s on a very extreme end of the pole. But the penny-pinching broadcast powers aren’t going to shell out even $50 million for something that would air over only a couple days, especially if they don’t think the ratings will be there. NBC’s summer airing of “The Storm” managed a beautiful .9 in the 18-49 demo and less than 5 million viewers.

HBO can manage something like “The Pacific” because they have Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in tow, they have the pedigree, and they have subscribers providing revenue in case of a ratings failure.

But HBO has put itself in that situation by taking chances with the miniseries, and now they have people like Hanks and Spielberg coming to them. They can spend millions of dollars marketing the mini for a year because they know people will watch.

But shouldn’t a broadcast network — say NBC — try a similar strategy? It would be on a much tighter budget (especially at first), but the Peacock needs something to be known for, and why couldn’t it be great miniseries? “Minute to Win It” and “The Marriage Ref” aren’t going to make us fall back in love with NBC but a cool miniseries could.

And NBC makes the most sense because its parent company is one of the most efficient producers of miniseries. Both USA and SyFy have aired successful minis over the past few years: “Taken,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “The 4400,” “The Lost Room,” “Tin Man,” “Alice” and “The Starter Wife.”

A few were fantastic; most of the rest were solid, and only a few were outright dreadful. Thus, while NBC-Universal is strong with the miniseries, NBC is not. It even had its own one lined up with “Day One,” but it constantly saw the show’s order cut, and by the beginning of this year it was basically shelved.

Where does that leave us with the miniseries? Probably exactly where we are right now, with most major networks ignoring them unless the title is used as a way to hedge bets with a product that might not be that successful — like what ABC’s doing with the “V” reboot — while HBO and other cable nets dominate the field.