Around 2010, Dick Wolf's vast television empire suddenly came undone.
First, NBC abruptly canceled its network mainstay, “Law & Order,” which had been on the air for two decades, a move that stunned Wolf's small production company. A year later, two spin-offs of 'Law & Order' were unceremoniously dismissed. All that remained was “Law & Order: SVU,” a relatively thin slate for a company that valued multiple revenue lines and that had made Mr. Wolf a very wealthy man. After all, Mr. Wolf has been repeating a mantra for decades: “No show, no business.”
“It was a little tight there for a minute,” said Peter Jankowski, Mr.'s longtime No. 2. Wolf.
The TV industry was moving away from a decades-old staple that had made Wolf a dominant figure in primetime viewing: the “procedural” ending. That popular programming genre provided a conflict and a neat resolution – usually in a courtroom, hospital or police station – all within an hour (including commercials).
Instead, streaming channels like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu began to take off, prestige TV (“It's not TV, it's HBO”) was on the rise, and complex, quirky, serialized programming was all the rage. Farewell, “CSI” and “Law & Order”; hello, “The Crown” and “Big Little Lies.”
Well, that was then.
In recent years, as Hollywood studios have made cuts and said goodbye to the Peak TV era, Mr. Wolf back in fashion. The evidence is everywhere: Year after year, reruns of years-old network standbys like “Criminal Minds,” “NCIS” or “Grey's Anatomy” populate Nielsen's most-watched streaming shows, even as the studios spend tens of millions on grittier, more cinematic fare. Older series like 'Suits', 'Prison Break' or 'Young Sheldon' became unexpected hits last year when they started streaming on Netflix. Vulture recently declared that “Network TV is officially back.”
