Last week was a good one for self-styled disruptors who proved that television is a new game, open to all comers. Amazon’s success at the Golden Globes combined with the announcement that Woody Allen is getting his own TV series — on Amazon Prime — was a tipping point.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker is taking his talents to the streaming service where he will create, write and direct his first TV series.
Symbolically, this marks a full circle for the prolific Allen, who worked in television on “The Sid Caesar Show” and “The Garry Moore Show” in the medium’s early years and went on to win Oscars for “Midnight in Paris,” “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Annie Hall.” Paralleling the industry itself, the 79-year-old who works via manual typewriter is now going digital.
The entertainment world has been in flux for years as digital platforms challenge traditional TV networks in terms of critical praise and awards. Audiences have adapted to finding content wherever, and producer-creators are increasingly content agnostic.
But this week’s events were significant. The revolution, it turns out, will be streamed.
On Sunday, Amazon won its first for the transgender comedy — marking the first time a streaming service has won the best TV series award, and another for lead actor Jeffrey Tambor. To arrive at that point, “Transparent” had to edge out “Girls” on HBO and “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix. Moreover, the cumulative number of statuettes the big four traditional broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — won was zero.
On Tuesday, Amazon announced the .
The tectonic shift was neatly summed up by actor Edie Falco (“The Sopranos,” “Nurse Jackie”), who on Monday told critics in Los Angeles: “The stuff I’ve been watching lately is on Amazon Prime, where I used to go to get my toilet paper.”
Everyone knows the media landscape is shifting, but the rate of change is also accelerating, led by millennials, according to Comscore.
Consider the numbers:
• 87 percent of Americans age 12-24 stream movies or TV shows online, according to Nielsen.
• Fully 45 percent of viewers under 25 watch via the Internet, including 13 percent doing so exclusively, according to Comscore.
• About 4 in 10 households subscribe to a paid digital video subscription service, with Net-flix being the leader (32 percent), followed by Amazon Prime Instant Video (19 percent) and Hulu Plus (9 percent).
“Across all of these services,” Comscore found, “millennials have significantly higher subscription penetration, with nearly half belonging to Netflix.”
There’s no guarantee that Allen’s venture for Amazon will succeed. His most recent film, “Magic in the Moonlight,” garnered unenthusiastic reviews. And he comes with baggage. Long-simmering follows him no matter the medium, from 1992 and the revelation that Allen, then 56, was having an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s 19-year-old adopted daughter with composer Andre Previn. (Allen and Soon-Yi married five years later.)
But the move confirms the path of creative talent to newer outlets. The list includes David Fincher, who went from Oscar nominations for “The Social Network” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to “House of Cards” on Netflix.
Other film directors taking their work beyond traditional movie studios include Oscar-winner Steve Soderbergh (“Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape”) now making “Utopia” for HBO, and David Lynch (“Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive,” “The Elephant Man”) reviving “Twin Peaks” for Showtime.
It also reflects a change in Amazon’s business plan. Until now, the streaming company has made pilots available for the public to vote on, to see which idea is granted a series commitment. Signing with a big name skips that cumbersome (and not always rewarding) process.
The Amazon deal represents a gauntlet thrown to the industry.
Not much is known about the project except that the half-hour series will be available to subscribers to the Amazon TV service in the U.S., UK and Germany in 2016. It remains to be seen if Allen will take an onscreen role.
The overall message is clear: boundaries are blurred, and “TV” currently means many things.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
