Heated Rivalry, the sensation produced by Canada’s Bell Media for its Crave streaming service and eventually scooped up by HBO Max, doesn’t dilly-dally.
Within the first seven minutes of the premiere episode of the gay hockey romance, Bell VP of Content Development and Programming Justin Stockman noted, there is a sex scene. “A lot of shows wouldn’t have done that,” he said. But Bell execs and the show’s creative team, he added, figured “this is a spicy show. People are gonna talk about it because there’s sex.”
Stockman and three other senior scripted programming executives examined the Heated Rivalry phenomenon, the dynamics of subscription streaming and many other aspects of the viewing landscape at a panel Thursday at NATPE.
Through the Heated Rivalry production process, Stockman said, the team was “focused on not watering down the creative.” There was never a thought along the lines of, “‘Let’s introduce a lot of straight characters and we’ll round this out.’ No, like, just let it be what it’s gonna be. And if you really let it be the best version of that thing as supposed to be, then people will find their entry point because it’ll be more relatable because it feels more real.”
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Suzanna Makkos, head of comedy for ABC Entertainment and Hulu Originals, said the “pace of the storytelling” was the key to the show’s effectiveness. “I really appreciated that it was like very fast. It’s like, ‘We’re at the Olympics. Now we’re in the trophy thing.’” She said The Pitt has a similarly propulsive quality. “I do think that faster-paced, the audience wants that. You don’t need long scenes of them ramping up.”
The fact that Heated Rivalry is based on Rachel Reid’s successful series of “Game Changers” books helped it make its mark, Stockman said. The series, he noted, is “super-sanitized” compared with the “really filthy” series of books on which it is based. (Showing how zeitgeist-y the show is, as the panel was happening, HarperCollins parent News Corp. was reporting a 6% uptick in sales at the book division, citing Heated Rivalry as a driver.)
Laughed Stockman, “I wanted to go back and listen to all the books. I’m on the first book still, and I have to turn down the volume when I’m at a red light. It’s just graphic depictions of sex, and then a little bit of plot.” And yet, he added, “there’s a huge audience for it, and it’s been dismissed as smut. But people like smut. And there’s a way to elevate it and make it into a show that will have more appeal.”
The panel’s two other participants, Darren Melameth, SVP, Programming Strategy at Hallmark Media, and Robert Schildhouse, president of BritBox, said Heated Rivalry was indicative of broader efforts to increase viewer engagement.
“I think there’s a lot of theme here, whether it’s smut, or murder, or Christmas movies,” Schildhouse said, all programmers are on a mission to find what will keep audiences satisfied and subscribed. At Britbox, he noted, “We see almost no correlation between budget and audience consumption and engagement. And we see incredible engagement on shows that cost very little.”
Being able to take risks on shows like Heated Rivalry also requires a strong corporate foundation. Stockman said “decision paralysis” can result from an environment fixated on consolidation. Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount are in a merger showdown involving three major producers of television, and other companies (A+E Global, Starz, Lionsgate, et. al) are looking at options. “There are all these mergers and a lot of companies are sort of frozen and not able to make all the decisions they want to make, because they’re not sure what the direction is.”