Amc

Abstract

AMC offers an intriguing case study in the evolution of scripted series on cable television. At its inception, the network boasted one of the most stable and coherent brands on cable, and it now harbors one of the least. In spite of this shift, it has cultivated successful and noteworthy dramatic series. This article explores AMC’s contribution to the twenty-first-century television canon by examining its financial constraints, industrial misfortunes, and leadership changes. This article will construct a history of AMC by drawing from an interview with Vlad Wolynetz, former VP of production, series, and movies at AMC, and from two decades of trade and journalistic articles. AMC has adjusted its programming over time to accommodate the challenges that its minimal resources could not surmount, and its history calls into question the power of the brand and its connection to quality television.

Producing zombie television: AMC,The Walking Dead, and the institutional dynamics of green-lighting hard-edged horror on cable

“…Where Mad Men could be paired with films by Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, Breaking Bad could play alongside anti-hero movies like Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) (see Idov, 2011). The Walking Dead, with obvious potential to augment AMC's horror holdings, blazed a different trail than the channel's other series in that it had decidedly more mass appeal (Jaramillo, 2013) and was characterised as 'superior genre fare' rather than a 'sophisticated drama' (Smith, 2013: 162). The disjunction, as indicated at the beginning of the essay, renders AMC's green-lighting and airing of The Walking Dead somewhat of an enigma.…”

“…1 The odd pairing was not lost on others, whether academic (e.g. Jaramillo, 2013;Smith, 2013) or industryobserver (e.g., Idov, 2011;Itzkoff, 2010;Levine, 2010;VanDerWerff, 2010). As Variety's Stuart Levine (2010: 19) put it, '[o]n paper a zombie drama based on a popular graphic novel series seemed like an odd fit with the high-brow tilt of other AMC original series'.…”

Dissecando fórmulas narrativas: drama profissional e melodrama nas séries médicas

“…Na busca pela fidelização dos públicos, as produções ficcionais seriadas têm apostado em duas estratégias principais: distinção e repetição. A primeira estratégia é mais frequente nos canais a cabo e serviços de streaming, podendo ser notada pelo próprio slogan da Home Box Office: It's not TV it's HBO (Leverette, 2008, p. 13), ou do Showtime: TV at its Best ( Jaramillo, 2012). Para Melanie Bourdaa, a HBO queria "se distinguir das séries televisivas mainstream, especialmente da programação das networks" (2011, p. 33).…”

“…Isto leva a que o foco tenda a recair sempre sobre determinados objetos em detrimento de outros. É o caso, em especial, das séries da HBO (Lavery, 2006;Leverette et al, 2008;McCabe e Akass, 2007;Edgerton e Jones, 2008;O'Sullivan, 2013) e, mais recentemente, da AMC e da Netflix, entre algumas poucas outras ( Jaramillo, 2012;Tryon, 2013;Lotz, 2014;Jenner, 2014 (Holzbach, 2013). No caso das séries televisivas, o que as análises de foco cinematográfico frequentemente deixam de lado é a dimensão da serialidade propriamente dita.…”

O Novo Oeste Americano: As Reconfigurações do Western a Partir do Seriado Televisivo Breaking Bad

“…No caso da AMC, que distribui Breaking Bad, a cultura de produção foi alterada quase radicalmente. Antes um canal que exibia clássicos de Hollywood, a emissora foi arrastada a uma profunda crise devido a uma cadeia de problemas com negociações de direitos de exibição, da qual proveio um conjunto de experimentos com a grade (JARAMILLO, 2013), culminando com a decisão de comissionar Mad Men em 2007 e Breaking Bad no ano seguinte.…”