[EricMackay]

Любопытная статья. Американские телеканалы экспериментируют с новым форматом - получасовой драмой. Новый сериал Мишель, Nurse Jackie, как и сарин TWM, как раз и относятся к этой категории.

Half Off

By MAXINE SHEN
July 2, 2009

FOR the first time in a generation, American TV is getting a new format: the half-hour drama.
We're conditioned to expect a sitcom during a 30-minute time slot, but now networks have figured out they can pack all the drama of a traditional hour-long series into just 30 minutes.
The first series to experiment with this new Idea are HBO's "Hung" and Showtime's "Nurse Jackie" -- both drew network record-breaking numbers for series debuts -- and ABC Family's "10 Things I Hate About You", premiering next Tuesday.
While each of these series have large helpings of humor, they're plainly dramatic and rife with emotional moments.
"The notion that half-hours are always comedies is changing," says Mike Lombardo, president of HBO's programming group and West Coast operations.
"We're all re-training ourselves [to think] that the half-hour doesn't just signal comedy -- many dramas with comedic and dark moments are very comfortable in the half-hour format. "
The idea that a new format might work came from the success of "Sex and the City" and "Entourage," where individual characters -- not intricate storylines -- are key.
Now, show writers can "really explore the foibles and small human dramas inherent in everyday living," which would otherwise feel stretched out during an hour-long episode, Lombardo says.
"We've seen writers exploring real human issues and not being constrained by having to have every scene play for laughs," he adds.
The half-hour format also gives writers room to put a new spin on traditional story devices.
"You can take really heavy stories and make fun of them, not take things so seriously," says Kate Juergens, ABC Family's executive vice president of original programming and development.
"Doing it in the half-hour allows you to take a completely different look at things that could be interpreted as serious -- and viewers are comfortable with it being funny because it's a half hour."
That's the reason why "Nurse Jackie" co-executive producer Richie Johnson picked the format for his series.
"Doing it as a half-hour dark comedy balances the complexity and absurdity of Jackie's life-and-death situations," Johnson says.
"We wanted a comic heartbeat to it, so it never felt right to make it an hour-long show -- hour-long medical dramas are a different breed than what we're doing."
While cost constraints aren't a concern when it comes to deciding how long a series should be, Juergens admits that there are some economic incentives for creating half-hour series.
"In the long term, half-hour shows repeat better and tend to do better in syndication sales than hour shows traditionally do," she says.
www.nypost.com/seven/07022009/tv/half_off_17708...