Here's how Starz surpassed Showtime to become the second-biggest channel on cable
Read more: http://www.vulture.com/2015/07/star...d=AACHu-&om_mid=_BVntLJB9DVcjTC#ixzz3fjKP3rOG
For much of its two-decade existence, Starz has been seen as something of an afterthought among premium cable networks: If HBO and Showtime were Hertz and Avis, it was the Enterprise Rent-A-Car of the space. But that dynamic might finally be starting to change.
At the end of last year, Starz (just barely) supplanted Showtime as the second-biggest pay-cable channel in terms of subscribers, pulling ahead of its longtime rival for the first time in eight years. More important, 2014 saw the successful launch of three new dramas, all of which seem headed for long lives.
Stylized soap Power has become a ratings phenomenon for the network, tripling its audience over the course of its first dozen episodes. Outlander, the ambitious adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s epic fantasy-adventure novels, has attracted similarly strong Nielsen numbers, as well as a vocal online fandom and a slewofthink pieces tied to its feminist twists on the action genre. And while it doesn’t generate as much media buzz, pirate epic Black Sails has also built a loyal following and will return for a third season.
After years of struggling to define itself, Starz finally seems to have found its groove — and it’s done so by ditching the usual playbook for pay-cable success.
Typically, premium outlets looking to build their subscriber base have followed some version of the formula established by HBO during the “It’s Not TV” era of The Sopranos and Sex and the City. The grandfather of pay TV distinguished itself from its broadcast and cable competition by producing feature-film-quality fare, shows that seemed aimed as much at Emmy voters as consumers. The thinking was that all the positive buzz and attention would serve as marketing for the network, convincing viewers they had to subscribe to HBO if they wanted to see the coolest shows on TV.
Starz CEO Chris Albrecht is quite familiar with this game plan because he helped invent it: In his life before Starz, he spent two decades overseeing programming at HBO, helping shape series from The Larry Sanders Show to the pilot for Game of Thrones. The strategy HBO used to transform itself from a movie channel into a TV powerhouse “was a good formula,” Albrecht says, as well as a simple one: “Do fewer episodes, back bold ideas, work to support the talent’s vision, and then try and market it well.”
When he arrived at Starz, many industry insiders expected Albrecht would just recycle the strategy that worked for him in the past. But two variables ultimately made him chart a different course. For one, as the first big player in premium cable and as a unit of the massive Time Warner empire, HBO — launched in 1972 — has never really had to worry about how much money it spends on projects, at least not in the same way as most other channels. Starz is no tiny start-up, but Albrecht clearly wasn’t going to have the same budgets as he did at HBO. An even bigger difference, however, is how much the media landscape has changed since HBO began remaking itself in the mid-1990s.
“The game has changed,” he says. “The difference between then and now is that back in those days, there were only four broadcast networks,” while the basic-cable channels that were doing original programming — primarily USA and TNT — weren’t looking to win awards. “Now there’s not only so many more channels,” as Albrecht notes, but they’re all competing, to varying degrees, to find Emmy-caliber programming. Digital newcomers Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu have made the quest for quality even more brutal.
A few years into his tenure at Starz — and following disappointing results from early efforts, such as Kelsey Grammer’s Boss and the period drama Magic City — Albrecht’s philosophy about what pay TV needed to be now began to evolve. He cites a meeting with lower-level Starz staffers as pivotal to his shift in thinking. “I sat down here about two years ago, and I brought in some of the interns and some of the assistants,” he recalls. “I said to them, ‘What are you watching?’ And after I told them to be honest — because I didn’t expect them to tell me they were watching Starz shows — one of the striking things that came out of that discussion for me was that the choices that they make aren’t because they read a review or because they saw something being nominated for an award. It’s because their friends told them to watch it over social media.”
The chat with his younger employees convinced Albrecht that he didn’t have to win a ton of Emmys to get viewers to pay attention to Starz. If anything, in a world where there seems to be a new Best Show on TV every few weeks, series that can get even a small base of viewers super-excited are perhaps even more valuable than those that win awards or end up on top-ten lists, particularly if said viewers “are voracious users of social media,” Albrecht says. “Those groups, when you can lock them in as fans of something and deliver them the quality, deliver them the experience that they’re looking for, they then are a better marketing tool than a paid ad, or a ‘Nominated for 6 Emmys’ headline.”
And so, Albrecht decided to shift Starz’s series development to focus on projects that would speak not only to specific segments of the audience but viewer groups that, despite having plenty of options on broadcast and basic cable, hadn’t always been targeted by premium cable networks. “I looked around and … it seemed as if there were audiences that were being underserved — that were still paying money but that were probably not getting the value that they would hope to get off of a premium subscription,” he says. “And we said, ‘Let’s target those audiences, and let’s back shows that we think can drive a real fervent fan base that then becomes the kind of advocacy group for the shows themselves.’”
Starz/"Power"50 Cent stars in the Starz' ratings giant "Power."
The strategy shift has clearly started to pay off, as evidenced by the growth trajectory of Power — a show created by an African-American woman (Courtney Kemp Agboh), executive-produced by a hip-hop icon (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), and starring a diverse cast. Its June 2014 debut averaged less than 500,000 same-day viewers for its initial linear play. But by the end of its first eight-episode season, the show’s same-day audience more than doubled, to just over 1 million viewers. Last month’s sophomore-season opener continued the growth story, with viewership jumping another 40 percent, to 1.4 million same-day viewers. Once DVR replays and VOD are counted, Power is doing even better: Starz estimates more than 6 million viewers are catching every episode, or roughly 25 percent of its subscriber base. That’s about the same as HBO’s hit Silicon Valley, which has the advantage of following Game of Thrones on Sundays.
Strong social-media support for Power has certainly helped, but just as with Fox’s megahit Empire — which the Starz drama predates — it’s a big spike in one audience segment (African-Americans) that has fueled ratings growth. Even though Starz is available in only about a quarter of all TV homes, Power this summer regularly lands on Nielsen’s list of the top 20 TV shows among black viewers. And according to Starz research, the show has the biggest concentration of black viewers of any premium-cable drama since The Wire. Albrecht notes that African-American audiences subscribe to premium networks at a higher rate than many other demographic groups — and yet despite this, pay-cable networks have historically served up few shows directly targeted toward them. Power took advantage of that untapped potential. “From a business point of view, it makes a lot of sense,” Albrecht says.
Read more: http://www.vulture.com/2015/07/star...d=AACHu-&om_mid=_BVntLJB9DVcjTC#ixzz3fjKP3rOG
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I was a day one Nicca, look how far we've came.
we cant forget that yalll. or even GREG lol somebody knows LOBOS foreal in that room with ANGELA and them guys.
to 