[tptacek]

Just for whatever this is worth to you, and I know you probably already know this, but networks rejected Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, South Park, Mad Men, and, I think most infamously, Stranger Things.

There's nothing wrong with that --- perhaps the networks involved should have rejected those shows! You pick one, you gotta turn down another one. But having more venues specialized in a specific type of show means that, for instance, when BET passes on your thing, it can still find a home somewhere else.

I don't know anything about these particular shows. But look at the first couple episodes of Broad City --- not the extremely successful TV show, but the low budget web series that started it all. I'm inclined not to dismiss things based solely on production quality relative to what's on FX.

The rest of these points are probably well taken!

[gamblor956]

Except for Stranger Things, the shows you listed were only turned down by a few networks before being picked up, which is actually pretty typical in Hollywood (hence the term "shopping around").

And while I agree that it is possible for a low budget web series to become a bigger show on cable/streaming...Broad City succeeded because it was available for free on the biggest video streaming platform in the world (aka Youtube) and had the benefit of the recommendation algorithms and all the visibility that Youtube leads to. A niche website with a monthly fee will not give the world the next Broad City.

For comparison: Quibi also had a monthly fee, higher production values, dozens of Emmy nominations...and those shows still went nowhere until they were picked up and made available for free on Roku this year. Contrast to Dust, a similarly niche (sci-fi) distribution house that has seen multiple projects get picked up for feature-length development, and numerous talent get offered studio gigs, because it made all of its content available for free (even before it started using Youtube to host its videos).