On July 26th, 2019, Starz officially cancelled alien sex comedy Now Apocalypse after one season. Then-network COO Jeffrey Hirsch cited the cabler’s recent “premium female” rebrand, which targets female viewers (particularly Black and Latina women in the 25-54 demographic), as reason for the show’s demise, telling The Hollywood Reporter the Now Apocalypse skew was “very male” and that original programming going forward would have to skew female to stay alive. It was a major reverse course from Starz, as the series had been unofficially renewed that March, with production to begin in June, and series creator Gregg Araki revealed to IndieWire that the purpose of Now Apocalypse was to court a younger audience to the Starz app, making linear ratings essentially meaningless. While it was frustrating to behold as someone who was immediately charmed by the show’s very specific point of view and the frankness with which it dealt with sex, it was neither the first nor the last time a network will pull the rug out from under a show on the brink of its creative prime. As much as I wanted to see the adventures of Ulysses and company continue, this was a new era for Starz that unfortunately didn’t include them.
On May 27th, 2020, Starz parent company Lions Gate filed their annual 10-K report with the SEC, detailing their profits and expenses over the past fiscal year while outlining their film and television slates, articulating their thoughts about the current media landscape, and reiterating their strategy going forward. There were some interesting pieces of information buried in the 150+ page account, which spoiled the transition of YouTube castoff Step Up: High Water to Starz the day before it hit the trades and indicated that there are still four open programming slots in the premium cabler’s upcoming fiscal year, but the most intriguing bit was revealed in the Demographic and Strategy section. In the midst of talking up the Starz app, which has seen a dramatic viewership increase due to coronavirus, Lions Gate indicates that the recent rebrand focused on audiences underserved by premium cable isn’t limited to women, African-American, and Latinx audiences; it includes the LGBTQIA community, an aspect of the rebrand that has yet to be publicly verbalized and/or expounded upon by any Starz executive.
This revelation completely recontextualizes not only the way Starz handled Now Apocalypse but the treatment received by the likes of Vida and American Gods. While the latter is saying goodbye to Mousa Kraish in season three as part of another creative overhaul, thereby (presumably) breaking up the Jinn’s well-received relationship with Salim (Omid Abtahi) and stripping the show of its most prominent queer element, the former was a show that seemingly had everything Starz says they want in a scripted original yet was forced into a rushed, shortened final season. A relatively inexpensive series produced in-house, Vida was arguably the most acclaimed show in Starz history, featured the highest Hispanic audience concentration on premium cable (with Hispanic audiences growing 56% between season one and two), and creatively centered on two Latinx women while elevating stories about queer people of color, likely indicating a female viewing skew. Even with Starz fielding the likes of Hightown, a new drama centered on a queer woman of color played by Monica Raymund (Chicago Fire), as part of their rebrand, the optics of not allowing a show with Vida‘s pedigree to stick the landing on its own terms while you’re hyping up the diversity of your programming aren’t a great look. Stack that fact alongside Starz airing the show’s series finale the day before Pride Month 2020 began, and days before including the show in a Pride promo touting the network’s gains in representation, and you’d be remiss to not wonder about the veracity of the network’s claims of commitment to positive queer representation on television. With Vida‘s ending coming within the same 12-month period as the creative changes at American Gods and the cancellation of queer POC-fronted Now Apocalypse, is Starz’s rebrand all bark and no bite?
https://twitter.com/STARZ/status/1267505038626349058
At least some of this is rooted in executive turnover, as longtime Starz president Chris Albrecht departed the cabler in February 2019 following its acquisition by Lions Gate. Now Apocalypse, Vida, and American Gods were all developed under Albrecht, meaning that the following regime would have less investment in them; generally, new TV presidents want to make their mark on their respective networks and are more liberal about cancelling or concluding shows leftover from their predecessor. In this time of televisual unrest, of innumerable rebrands and a seemingly never-ending game of executive musical chairs, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of shows tripped up by transitional politics at their respective platforms, either cancelled when they otherwise wouldn’t have been or unallowed to finish their run on their own terms. Albrecht was eventually replaced by COO Jeffrey Hirsch, who had led the network since that March before being bestowed with his new title in September. You’ll remember Hirsch as being the architect behind Starz’s “premium female” strategy that was used to dismiss Now Apocalypse, so not only did the president who developed the show exit on the eve of its premiere, his replacement put together a rebrand that (at least publicly) left off LGBTQIA audiences long enough to justify a cancellation. Hirsch’s presidential tenure involving a gutting of the network’s most LGBTQIA-friendly properties, including two shows centered on queer characters of color, and an upcoming development slate that, on the surface, doesn’t feature any queer leads (e.g. four Power spinoffs, 50 Cent-produced drama Black Mafia Family, John Wick spinoff The Continental, a Dangerous Liaisons prequel, etc.), makes it tough to fully buy into the idea that Starz is willing to be on the front lines in the battle for more (and better) queer representation.
It’s one thing for Starz to pay lip service to the idea of targeting audiences not typically at the forefront of premium cable scripted content. It’s something that makes them stand out from the other premium cable outlets and gets them the type of positive headlines that can inspire some curious onlookers to take the plunge and sign up for a free trial. It’s quite another to put action and intent behind those words and cutting down queer-fronted shows while not adequately replacing them is not going to cut it. It’s not enough for Starz to add token pieces of queer representation to otherwise heteronormative programming; it’s not enough for LGBTQIA audiences to be the C or D-story every week or to be the center of a show that makes queerness incidental. You’re not serving queer people by denying them series that center their stories through their perspective. A network abiding by the antiquated notion that there’s only a limited amount of space for queer programming, that to add queer shows you have to kill those you already have, is not one that is advancing the cause of representation and not one that has the interests of LGBTQIA audiences in mind with their programming decisions. A rebrand in name only is not the way to garner the type of support from the queer community that Starz is looking for; in order to gain traction with an affluent audience that is starved for content, that has to look for scraps of screen time in shows otherwise uninterested in their existence, the cabler will have to promote and nurture shows by queer creators, starring queer people, about queer characters.
But what does a queer show that’ll thrive under this new Starz regime even look like? Vida might’ve been soft in linear ratings, but it had the reviews, viewership skew, buzz, representation both on-screen and off, and ability to bring a new audience to Starz and it was cut down before getting to tell its full story. Now Apocalypse was a show greenlit specifically for its nonlinear power and featured a litany of young, promotable stars, a singular point of view, and a premise and visuals ripe for online content. If these two shows, both of whom were owned by Lions Gate, couldn’t find a foothold on a network that claims to target LGBTQIA audiences, what can? If LGBTQIA audiences were always a part of the latest Starz rebrand, why exactly were Vida or Now Apocalypse ended when they were, especially when the network isn’t filled to the brim with queer shows ready to grab the baton and run with it? At a time when queer representation is on the rise and platforms are seeing that there is an audience for this type of content, it’s especially frustrating to see a network whose mission statement includes LGBTQIA audiences cancel financially advantageous, creatively vital queer-fronted shows for seemingly no reason. If Starz truly valued and prioritized LGBTQIA audiences, and truly understood the weight of queer representation beyond promos touting their commitment to it, Vida would’ve gotten to live out its intended creative lifespan before heading off into a big SVOD afterlife, while Now Apocalypse and its unapologetic, sex-positive queerness would’ve gotten another season to build word-of-mouth. Instead, the former’s viewing tail might’ve been cut shorter considering the relative lack of closure it ended on, while the latter was left with some major narrative blue balls, including a game changing cliffhanger that will never be resolved. In lieu of an unexpected (but welcomed) revival of either show, here’s hoping the next queer-fronted shows that come from Starz get the type of support that their predecessors sadly lacked.
