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The empire business: how Netflix made television permanent

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The empire business: how Netflix made television permanent

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THE EMPIRE BUSINESS:
HOW NETFLIX MADE TELEVISION PERMANENT
by
Zosha Millman
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM (THE ARTS)
August 2020

Copyright 2020 Zosha Millman

Acknowledgements
I owe two of the best teachers I’ve ever had this thesis. To Tim Page, I can think of no one
more open and thoughtful in all things, whether critiques or conversation; you were kinder than I
dared hoped for in my darkest moments, and sweet enough to make me eager for a 9 a.m. class. To
Peggy, I can’t think of a single person who could’ve kept me as rapt and eager to code; I owe you the
years of my life that I would have otherwise spent attempting to self-teach myself, and probably
more for being just a blessing to talk with on any subject. I look forward to many years of friendship
with both of you.
I also wouldn’t be here without my cohort, my friends, who taught me lessons I couldn’t
have thought to look for by myself. To sit in class with you, discussing our work and our ideas, has
meant the world to me. We were truly thrown into the deep end, and even if I could have swam
without all of you I wouldn’t want to. I’m lucky to have gotten the opportunity to grow alongside
you all, and I can’t wait to see what we all do next.
I couldn’t have made it to or through grad school without everyone who loved and
supported me from afar during this year, in Seattle and beyond. You all wrote letters of
recommendation, sent packages, virtually screened, counseled me when facing great betrayals and
happy days alike. Any gal would be sad to leave the green pastures of the Emerald City with
company like yours, but luckily your warmth and love don’t recognize distance.
To all the industry folks I worked with throughout my time at Annenberg—from the folks at
KUSC to those interviewed for my thesis—I owe a great thanks. You all have taught me to write
better, think harder, and find new ways to access my work every day.
And to Fred, my person: All we’ve ever needed are two notes and a beat. Thanks for rocking
with me this whole time.
ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iv
The Empire Business: How Netflix made television permanent 1
Website link 13
References 14

iii
Abstract
When Breaking Bad launched it was against semi-improbable odds: given the green light shortly
before Mad Men would premiere, hitting the airwaves just one year later, it was always going to
determine the tone of AMC as a network of original programs. But it would be met with an uphill
battle to get anyone to watch the damn thing, despite glowing reviews from critics. This put
Breaking Bad in a similar boat to Mad Men , as a critical darling, and a ratings squeaker.

But ultimately, Breaking Bad would wind up with a key element in its corner: Netflix, and the
advent of the streaming library. Bad had been created well before audiences had ever put much
solace in an online library of programs they could access at any point. But Bad quickly became the
hallmark for what the internet could do for a show. Through a single savvy partnership, AMC would
change the history and trajectory of television with Breaking Bad , and help solidify the streaming
revolution.
iv
The Empire Business: How Netflix made television permanent
A calm, desert pastoral; pants billowing through the air; an RV careening through the peace. Before
this it was tranquil, all vivid tones and brassy earth. After—as the eerie strings and the ghostly
khakis suggest—it never will be. As the trousers land in the dirt, the RV unceremoniously grinds it
into the dust, taking the curve at far too dangerous a speed. Almost immediately we understand:
this is the wild West, and there’s nothing good to be found here.

This is the moment that Breaking Bad begins, but this is also the moment that Breaking Bad , cultural
icon, started sinking its hooks into the imaginations of viewers. The entire sequence demands
answers, demands attention, demands more —an anticipation only coiled further throughout
Breaking Bad ’s pilot.

It’s no surprise that upon viewing it an executive of AMC said “if you added 20 minutes to this you
have the best independent film of the year.” The pilot itself told viewers all they needed to know,
about Walter White, his dire straits, his brutish pride, and the lengths he’ll go to in order to
“protect” his family from even a whiff of harm. And the show would continue to twist the rack
further and further for five more seasons.

Though, it almost nearly didn’t get the chance. Television had long been in a battle for
legitimacy—what little it had carved out as a medium was mostly credited to HBO, a premium
network who eschewed TV with its infamous slogan, “It’s not TV, It’s HBO.” There seemed to be a
gulf between the increasingly morally ambiguous plotlines on HBO and the rest of television fare.

1
Then AMC released Mad Men . The show was developed specifically because the network was tilting
at the prestige of HBO, after AMC CEO Josh Sapan charged into his executives’ office and issued a
directive: “We need a Sopranos .” Fueled by the business interests of AMC’s brass, the show didn’t
have to worry about old network standards like ratings. It was free to be as novel and novelistic as
it pleased. As such, it could be held up as an example of television’s inherent creative good; where
The Sopranos set the precedent, Mad Men cemented it—and, notably, did so without the market
exclusivity that HBO provided for its viewers.

When Breaking Bad launched it was against semi-improbable odds: given the green light shortly
before Mad Men would premiere, hitting the airwaves just one year later, it was always going to
determine the tone of AMC as a network of original programs. But it would be met with an uphill
battle to get anyone to watch the damn thing, despite glowing reviews from critics. This put
Breaking Bad in a similar boat to Mad Men, as a critical darling, and a ratings squeaker.

But ultimately, Breaking Bad would wind up with a key element in its corner: Netflix, and the
advent of the streaming library. Bad had been created well before audiences had ever put much
solace in an online library of programs they could access at any point. But Bad quickly became the
hallmark for what the internet could do for a show. Through a single savvy partnership, AMC would
change the history and trajectory of television with Breaking Bad , and help solidify the streaming
revolution.

*

2
Breaking Bad would come to be known as a show ahead of its time, but when it started out it was
very much rooted in the moment. Walter White (played with terrifying ferocity laced in his bones
by Bryan Cranston) was a chemistry teacher who resorted to selling meth in order to help off-set
the financial burdens his cancer diagnosis would bring to his family. It was a fun house mirror of
some of the bigger problems of the time in the U.S.—racked by tumbling financials, thanks to the
newly minted Great Recession, and an opioid addiction rate at four times what it had been almost a
decade prior .

Its currentness is one of the things that had attracted AMC to it. Before Breaking Bad , AMC was a
network known for period pieces, with shows like Broken Trails , a Western mini-series, and Mad
Men , about 1960s ad men in New York. Both programs built on the legacy that HBO had carved out
with their original programming: the anti-hero.

Defined as “the protagonist you didn’t want to root for,” the anti-hero archetype wasn’t new to
TV—you could trace him (and he was almost always a him) back to Dallas’ conniving J.R. Ewing, if
not earlier. But in the 2000s, the anti-hero flourished. It allowed for darker plotlines, more
morally-ambiguous character choices, all while tapping into and toying with an audience’s
conception of a “hero.” Perhaps most importantly, it made television feel more cinematic; Vince
Gilligan’s oft-repeated pitch for the show was always: “I’m going to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface.”
And so, unsurprisingly, Breaking Bad falls in line with the shows of the era—Don Draper, Tony
Soprano, and Walter White all shared a newfound sensibility for a television leading man, one in
which he could be violent, unlikable, and even evil.

3
But in the same way that Mad Men ’s narrative ambiguity invited viewers back again and again,
Breaking Bad ’s propulsiveness towards Walt’s evil nature is baked right in from the start. Within
the pilot we see the conflict in the bounds a single man: the first time we get to see Walt with a
glimmer in his eyes, he’s teaching. But the first time we see him as truly resilient, even ferocious, is
those opening moments in the desert. He may have just recorded a panicked final statement to his
family, but he stands strong against the coming sirens, as he pulls the gun out from his tighty
whities. Is this his duality? Is it his duplicity? Perhaps both these sides were Walter White—were
always Walter White. Wrapped up within the 58-minute episode is the DNA for everything Breaking
Bad would come to be. If only AMC could get viewers to see it.

The launch would be something of a comedy of errors: Though AMC was enjoying a relatively
empty field of competitors after all the acclaim Mad Men had won them, the premiere was
scheduled on the night of the NFC championship game. There was, theoretically, plenty of time for
the game to end before the start of the show. But New York Giant Lawrence Tynes hooked a
36-yarder left, and forced the climactic game into overtime, and Breaking Bad ’s pilot got its debut
stepped on.

At the time, ratings were pretty much the only metric networks had to translate content into profit.
Although many argued that they didn’t capture the full impact of a show, it was a quantifiable way
for networks to sell the show—meaning it impacted the ad revenue (and by proxy, the budget and
cancellation probability) of a show. Given that it was new to the original programming game, AMC
generally allowed its shows a fairly long leash for what constituted a “bad” rating. Breaking Bad ’s
pilot would ultimately be considered a “solid” premiere ; in the ever dwindling pool of viewers a
network could hope to pull, Bad had managed 1.4 million. The second half hour (post game) would
4
see a boost in viewers, and a re-airing would score improvements in key demos over the 8 p.m. slot.
But it was still beneath other TV movies and broadcasts airing that night (the NFC game would
score some 54 million viewers). All in all, promising, but not a knockout.

This became a blessing and a curse for Breaking Bad : with such a small viewer pool, the show
became one of the riskiest on television, constantly attempting bigger and bigger splashes of
ingenuity. Everything about the show was deliberate, from the stark cinematography of the New
Mexico landscape to the expressive lighting. Time slowed and advanced to serve the story. The
camera was as much our lens into the plot as it was its own perspective, frequently put on top of
tools for shots that would’ve been kitschy if they weren’t so affecting.

Still, the show made only marginal growth in viewers. Peaks at season premieres and finales would
be met with a drop-off in the middle of the season—sometimes by more than a third of the
audience. This wasn’t necessarily unusual (shows often see a bathtub curve between a season’s
opening and closing, just by sake of viewer demand), but it was far from the audience magnet AMC
was hoping for with its sophomore show.

By 2010, it became clear that season three of Breaking Bad was underperforming. Sure, it was
scoring great reviews, and still averaged about 1.5 million viewers per episode. AMC might’ve
settled for the same level of prestige that Mad Men had brought them by its third season. But shy of
that, they were in danger of becoming a one-hit wonder. With three years at bat, Breaking Bad had
arguably taken bigger swings than most shows in its shoes. It took the anti-hero formula and
deliberately complicated it, drawing Walt into a deeper web of violence so his children might never
5
have a life touched by it. In the puzzle of the continuum of television’s quality, Bad was a jagged
piece that couldn’t be smoothed down.

For a brief moment AMC was going to cancel it all, until Sony and Gilligan quickly found FX would
take them on for two more seasons, and the network recanted. But Breaking Bad couldn’t rest easy
until it had something else working to its advantage.

*
Television at the time was finally starting to feel more permanent. It had only been relatively
recently that the market had shifted towards meeting their viewership where they were, on the
audience’s terms as opposed to the network’s.

It hadn’t happened easily—cable channels rose and loosened the vice grip the “big three” networks
had on ratings—but eventually creatives were freed up to expect more of their audience. More
specificity in storytelling, more attention paid to the screen, more narrative complexity in their
plotting. Then in 1976 came VHS. It was a tool that would beat rival Betamax for two primary
reasons: its affordability, and the capacity to record more.

VHS was one of the first tastes that the public got of content on their schedule—owning a recording
of Jane Fonda’s workout tape meant exercise was suddenly on your own timetable. Video stores
where you could rent a movie meant you didn’t have work on the demands of the local megaplex or
stay up until 2:30 in the morning to watch a flick. Slowly, viewers adapted to the new world order:
You no longer needed to be home or awake to catch your favorites. The ability to keep up with their
dearest shows more closely meant creators could do more narratively involved plotlines, and
6
viewers could expect to be able to follow more shows. And just like movies that flopped at the box
office were able to find new life through the home video market, shows that failed to reach the goal
of syndication were suddenly granted new life (or, at the very least, new access) among VHS copies,
even bootleg ones.

“To some extent, the VCR did shift personal time—a few hours, over a few days or months,” Ian
Bogost wrote in an elegy for the VCR in 2016 . “But in so doing, the device also created new, shared
time between people: It increased the circle of viewers for broadcast programs, constructed the
culture of home-video browsing and viewing, and made the long-term collection of bought and
recorded videos possible.”

Coupled with the expanding realm of cable channels, audience choice (or, from the network’s
perspective, fragmentation) was unstoppable. Technology seemed to only barely keep pace with the
demand; after VHS tapes came DVDs, and TV shows made up 10% of all sales in the DVD market by
2005. Shows of the era— 24, Lost, Veronica Mars, House —responded, with intricate plots that all
rewarded repeat viewings. On-demand channels let viewers tune in later. DVR let you record at the
push of a button. And they both let you watch without the commercials that made TV profitable.
Appointment television was now guided by the viewer’s demand.

Into this market, Netflix would be born. What started as a simple question between friends (could a
DVD survive being mailed?) grew to destabilize, and ultimately bring down, the video stores where
neighborhoods went to rent. With a relatively simple format, consumers quickly grew comfortable
with a process largely out of their hands as long as they had more control over what they could
watch.
7

Armed with DVDs, users pioneered the casual TV marathon. It was once a special thing—perhaps
you dipped into the New Year’s Eve 24-hour showing of The Twilight Zone , or filled a free Saturday
by gorging on America’s Next Top Model . Either way, you were often only watching because the SciFi
channel or Lifetime had an odd programming block to fill. But with Netflix’s rapid feed of DVDs, you
could blow through a show at your own pace, without worrying about much more than the monthly
price. If you timed it just right, you never had to go a night without a DVD full of fresh episodes.

And by the end of the 2000s, the service expanded its domain even further. They put a nascent
streaming service in place in the mid-2000s, when data speeds and bandwidths had improved
enough to sufficiently allow for it (and DVD sales were dropping). At the time of their launch, the
Netflix online streaming service had 1,000 films , and an arduous time getting anyone to take it
seriously . But given that Netflix helped keep viewers flush with TV on DVD, they were uniquely
situated to see what many others were not: television’s long-form storytelling was perfect to keep
hooking in customers eager for their next chapter, their next fix.

So, the company started methodically—making deals with whomever they could to license various
back catalogues and build up their streaming library. Netflix struck just such a deal with AMC,
finally nabbing the big fish, and ultimately shaping their own future:

" Mad Men has been and continues to be a representation of TV at its best and Netflix is proud to be
the syndication home for this acclaimed series," Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in a
statement at the time. "This deal secures long-term instant access to an iconic show for Netflix
members for years to come."
8

Indeed, though the deal would ultimately become famous for securing the legacy of Breaking Bad
(not to mention the platform itself), that show was just a footnote in the initial announcement. It
was just one year after AMC had nearly cancelled the show, and Bad was playing second fiddle to
Mad Men ; in some write-ups, Breaking Bad ’s induction to Netflix’s streaming platform was omitted
entirely.

*

Though Netflix may now seem like an inevitability of a TV landscape that had long been shifting
towards more directly catering to the desires and schedules of its viewers, it’s easy to forget that
without the right hook the platform might’ve faded into obscurity.

Breaking Bad was a show built with that hook, for just such a library. The show’s narrative was
propulsive and demanding, rewarding viewers who followed the cinematic eye of the whole thing.
Episodes typically end with a dangling modifier, leaving Walt’s world constantly slightly askew.

Unsurprisingly, the Netflix audience responded. Before too long, Breaking Bad became the face of
the newly-dubbed “bingers,” who would plow through whole seasons of TV in an afternoon. An
intense and addictive show like Breaking Bad , with all its momentum, leant itself naturally to such a
practice; the whole first season takes place over the timeline of what could be a marathon viewing,
just a matter of days.

9
When the first three seasons hit Netflix in September 2011 the show was about to conclude its
fourth season, boasting an audience of just under two million for each episode . Ten months later,
the fifth season premiered to three million—potentially a typical early-season high, as the show
was used to. Only a year after that the back-half of the final season premiered to nearly six million ,
with 10 million tuning in to watch the series finale live.

That helped Breaking Bad become the test case for the newly-coined “ Netflix effect ,” an example of
what could happen with well-negotiated, symbiotic arrangement where cable shows would see a
jump in ratings after heading to the streaming platform. Netflix is notoriously cagey about hard
statistics, but they did announce 50,000 of their subscribers watched all 13 episodes of Breaking
Bad season four in the day before season five aired. Vince Gilligan himself profusely thanked Netflix
during awards season, crediting them with keeping the show going:

“I think Netflix kept us on the air. Not only are we standing up here (with the Emmy), I don’t
think our show would have even lasted beyond season two. … It’s a new era in television,
and we’ve been very fortunate to reap the benefits.”

This sort of acknowledgement gave Netflix not just swagger but power—they saw the writing on
the wall about the future of TV, and they were able to get out ahead of it. By the time their original
content hit the platform, it followed a newly gained legitimacy thanks for Bad .

Everything about Netflix’s strategy seemed intent on building off of what they’d learned from years
of audiences bingeing other network’s shows on their service, flouting the established rules of
television: they dropped shows in traditional off-periods, like Fridays or holiday seasons; their
10
programs went deeper and darker than most shows; they dropped all the episodes at once, leaning
into the binge-method its audiences seem to favor.

Thanks to the “Netflix effect,” audiences were more conditioned to turn to the internet to find their
next television show. Once a strategy for only the diehards, a single streaming service had now
pushed not just a library but its own evolution forward. It’s a step that would be increasingly
echoed by other streaming platforms—Hulu, with East Los High, and Amazon, with Betas. But none
were able to quite confidently hit the market in the same way that Netflix was, because they had no
show like Breaking Bad . By borrowing the legitimacy and urgency of AMC’s programming, Netflix
built up a streaming empire, and with it, a whole new landscape of TV.

Perhaps Netflix’s rise was always going to be a slow-build to the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut
they have now become. But if the modern streaming era has taught us anything, it’s that any given
platform is only one water-cooler show away from legitimacy: The Mandalorian smoothed ruffled
feathers about Disney+’s monopolistic tendencies. Hulu was always a TV hotspot but never quite a
player until The Handmaid’s Tale lent some priority to the site. Amazon scored a major hit once
things like Fleabag or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel started attracting attention.

But the fact that Breaking Bad provided enough cache to float Netflix until their original
programming solidified has proved to be an invaluable head start. Now the Netflix effect becomes
less of a viewer bump and more of a clientele waiting to see when it hit the platform—shows like
You , which become its own phenomenon when the program dropped on Netflix shortly after being
cancelled by Lifetime, even get swallowed up and become Netflix originals .

11
Perhaps there’s no greater indication of the power that Netflix commands than the return of
Breaking Bad, with the October 2019 release of El Camino . The film starts immediately after the
events of the series, picking up with Jesse Pinkman, whose tragic descent as the partner of Walter
White was always played with the absolute care by Aaron Paul.

But El Camino also continues bridging the gap between “traditional” television methods and the
new streaming age. Upon its release it could be found on AMC, and also where many viewers
originally discovered Breaking Bad —at the top of their Netflix page. And the Netflix effect is now
flowing both ways: according to company’s vice president of original content Cindy Holland, since
the news of the movie broke in August, viewership of Breaking Bad on the streaming service is up ,
with both rewatchers and newcomers coming to the series.

For AMC’s part Breaking Bad would secure what they hoped the program would achieve: continued
critical legitimacy, and finally a major ratings pull. Thanks to their licensing deals with Netflix
getting viewers hooked, AMC was able to up what they charge in fees to distributors by 50%
between 2007 and 2013—or, when Mad Men premiered and when Breaking Bad ended. That the
network was able to charge nearly the same amount for a 30-second ad spot during the finale as
advertisers would pay during Monday Night Football didn’t hurt either.

12
Website link
http://zosha.co/thesis/
13

References
“AMC CEO Says SVOD Driving ‘Breaking Bad’ Ratings - L.A. Biz.” n.d. Accessed December 9,
2019.
https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2013/09/12/amc-ceo-says-svod-drivin
g-breaking.html.
“Netflix: ‘Breaking Bad’ Ratings Record Due To Streaming Service Muscle – Variety.” n.d.
Accessed December 9, 2019.
https://variety.com/2013/digital/news/netflix-flexes-new-muscle-with-breaking-bad-ra
tings-boom-1200577029/.
“Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey
Series ‘House Of Cards’ – Deadline.” n.d. Accessed December 9, 2019.
https://deadline.com/2011/03/netflix-to-enter-original-programming-with-mega-deal-f
or-david-fincher-kevin-spacey-drama-series-house-of-cards-114184/.
“Breaking Bad Ratings: Vince Gilligan, AMC and Netflix Share Credit | The Star.” n.d. Accessed
December 9, 2019.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2013/08/13/breaking_bad_ratings
_vince_gilligan_amc_and_netflix_share_credit.html.
“DVD Sales Plunge in U.S., Digital Sales On the Rise | TIME.Com.” n.d. Accessed December 9,
2019.
http://techland.time.com/2011/05/04/dvd-sales-plunge-in-u-s-digital-sales-on-the-rise
/.
“Netflix Offers Streaming Movies to Subscribers | Ars Technica.” n.d. Accessed December 9,
2019. https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/01/8627/.
Knot, Rebeka. 2019. “How VHS Tapes Invented On-Demand Everything.” Groovy History. 2019.
https://groovyhistory.com/vhs-tape-on-demand-1970s.
Johnson, Derek. 2018. From Networks to Netflix . Edited by Derek Johnson. New York:
Routledge.
J. Shattuc, M. Curtain. 2016. The American Television Industry (International Screen Industries) .
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Goleman, Daniel; Boyatzis, Richard; Mckee, Annie. 2019. “Rest in Peace, VCR.” Journal of
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https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
“Opioid Addiction 2016 Facts & Figures.” n.d. Accessed December 9, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm655051e1.
14
Mittell, Jason. 2006. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” The Velvet
Light Trap , no. Number 58: 29–40.
“A Golden Age of Taking TV Seriously - Macleans.Ca.” n.d. Accessed December 8, 2019.
https://www.macleans.ca/uncategorized/a-golden-age-of-taking-tv-seriously/.
McNutt, Myles. 2016. “Binge-Reviews? The Shifting Temporalities of Contemporary TV
Criticism.” Film Criticism . Allegheny College.
https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0040.120.
“Newton Minow’s Vast Wasteland Speech: How It Changed TV | Time.” n.d. Accessed December
1, 2019. https://time.com/4315217/newton-minow-vast-wasteland-1961-speech/.
“Overnight Nielsen Ratings for Mad Men Premiere Up Over 100%! - Ratings |
TVbytheNumbers.” n.d. Accessed December 1, 2019.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120930124236/http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20
08/07/28/overnight-nielsen-ratings-for-mad-men-premiere-up-over-100/4551/.
“Not A Hot Cable Summer for All - Broadcasting & Cable.” n.d. Accessed December 1, 2019.
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/not-hot-cable-summer-all-83511.
Poggi, Jeanine. 2013. “The Cost of ‘Breaking Bad’: AMC Asks $400,000 for Finale.” Ad Age.
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Keegan, Rebecca. 2013. “Breaking Bad Movie: Aaron Paul, Series Creator on Revisiting AMC
Show.” Hollywood Reporter. 2013.
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Star. 2013.
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Wallenstein, Andrew. 2013. “Netflix: ‘Breaking Bad’ Ratings Record Due To Streaming Service
Muscle – Variety.” Variety. 2013.
https://variety.com/2013/digital/news/netflix-flexes-new-muscle-with-breaking-bad-ra
tings-boom-1200577029/.
15
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Motley Fool. 2013.
https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/10/07/3-ways-breaking-bad-shows-the
-future-of-television.aspx.

16

Abstract (if available)

Abstract When Breaking Bad launched it was against semi-improbable odds: given the green light shortly before Mad Men would premiere, hitting the airwaves just one year later, it was always going to determine the tone of AMC as a network of original programs. But it would be met with an uphill battle to get anyone to watch the damn thing, despite glowing reviews from critics. This put Breaking Bad in a similar boat to Mad Men, as a critical darling, and a ratings squeaker. ❧ But ultimately, Breaking Bad would wind up with a key element in its corner: Netflix, and the advent of the streaming library. Bad had been created well before audiences had ever put much solace in an online library of programs they could access at any point. But Bad quickly became the hallmark for what the internet could do for a show. Through a single savvy partnership, AMC would change the history and trajectory of television with Breaking Bad, and help solidify the streaming revolution.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Millman, Zosha (author)

Core Title The empire business: how Netflix made television permanent

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 07/21/2020

Defense Date 07/21/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag AMC,Arts,Breaking Bad,criticism,History,Internet,journalism,Mad Men,Netflix,OAI-PMH Harvest,pop culture,streaming,streaming revolution,television,television history,TV,TV history

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Page, Tim (committee chair), Anawalt, Sasha (committee member), Bustamante, Peggy (committee member)

Creator Email millmanzosha@gmail.com,zoshamillman@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-335472

Unique identifier UC11663949

Identifier etd-MillmanZos-8728.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-335472 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MillmanZos-8728.pdf

Dmrecord 335472

Document Type Thesis

Rights Millman, Zosha

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA