TCA: Showtime's Greenblatt in his element

For once, however, Showtime execs sounded less than totally disingenuous in asserting that they view HBO as they do other strong competitors with edgy originals, a la FX. And for once, come the fall, Showtime will be able to take the temperature of its audience to see if there is any such thing as "the Showtime demo."

By dint of the calendar and an abundance of returning shows, Showtime will have four original series airing at the same time by October when its Sunday drama block of "Dexter" and "Brotherhood" returns to the sked in the fall. New David Duchovny half-hour "Californication" teams with the third season of "Weeds" on Mondays starting next month.
Because Showtime has traditionally parceled out its original series one at a time, it's never had the chance to see if it can build anything like audience flow, from night to night. Showtime's program picks have always been eclectic rather than aimed at a particularly narrowly drawn target aud. And Greenblatt makes no bones about the fact that he serves an older crowd, mostly 35-plus, sophisticated and affluent enough to afford the $15 a month or so on the cable bill. In some respects, Showtime's charter is to be broadcast-like in its something-for-almost-everyone program menu, albeit with a distinctive edge. The bow of "Weeds" two years ago made all the difference in the types of projects that walked into Showtime's doors and the caliber of creatives who wanted to take a meeting.

"I joke that I'd love to run Spike TV or something like that, where you know you're programming to a very specific audience," Greenblatt says. "It's easier. We're so eclectic. But we're not spending a lot of time trying to get younger."

To the unaswerable question of "gee, what'er you doing right these days, Bob?", Greenblatt is thoughtful and contrasts the Showtime development process to others. Just about every show goes directly through him and one other creative executive at the channel - that's it. Forget the approvals-in-triplicate that most writers have to deal with, particularly in the broadcast realm. When an outside studio is involved in production, which is rarely the case for Showtime, the process gets even more daunting, more lugubrious for writers who just want to spent their time perfecting the dialogue in act three and the set design in act four, and the like.

"It's really just me, one programming executive who sees the show through all the way and a physical production person. There are not a lot of hoops for writers to jump through here," Greenblatt notes.

It was all those notes, and approvals and such that drove him back to the exec ranks when he joined Showtime in July 2003 after a prosperous seven year run as a producer. Even with success under your belt, the development process was a gauntlet that Greenblatt grew tired of navigating. Now he sees his main job as helping to shape ideas and concepts and characters early on and then staying out of the way of his writers. It's an important lesson he learned during his run at Fox during the development of "The X-Files" in the early 1990s.

"I was never a sci-fi guy, I didn't watch it, I didn't really care for it. I tried to talk Chris Carter out of developing that show," Greenblatt recalls. "But when you see that he's so passionate about it, you don't let your own issues of taste get in the way; you get out of his way."

Or as Scott Winant, director and an exec producer of "Californication" put it about the Showtime M.O.: "They give you as much rope as you need...and you can hang yourself with it. But without that risk great things don't happen."

(Pictured above, Showtime's Matt Blank and Bob Greenblatt flank "Weeds" stars Mary-Louise Parker and Justin Kirk at TCA on Saturday.)