In a world where network television has moved to unscripted reality shows filled with B actors trying to "make it" a good quality, well produced, well scripted show with talented actors is going to be a gold mine. The real issue is that network TV never really recovered from the writer's strike. AMC just came along and started offering the type of quality shows that were previously available on the network channels.
I think its simpler than that. Network TV can't show a boob on a football halftime show without 0.001% of the population howling like morons and the network and government of course caving into them. Its the culture everyone knows they're supposed to want, but don't actually want. They're pigeonholed into a sorta G-PG ish range no more or less.
HBO shows you can produce regular TV drama (Sopranos, etc) at an R rated level and be incredibly profitable, well, at least as long as there's practically no competition.
Hmmm. Whats between G/PG and R that could be popular... PG-13! So that's how you get gory zombie blood splatter and meth cooking on a TV show, and its a profitable sweet spot.
All this discussion about people really liking AMC because they put episodes on netflix is nonsense. They like AMC because "regular TV" isn't obscene enough and HBO is a bit too obscene. Or risque, or "adult" (I hate that characterization). They simply are better targeted to their audience.
Netflix has no shortage of goofy failed major network sitcoms / cop / lawyer / doctor dramas, and no shortage of gore and sex series/movies, so its not merely being on netflix that makes AMC beat the others.
Breaking Bad is laced with way more profanity and graphic violence than you could swing for a PG-13 rating. It's not True Blood, but then, The Matrix and Blade are two R-rated movies with vastly different severity of content.
The language is still oddly MPAA-centric. The writing is so outstanding it's hardly something to notice, yet the characters never say "fuck" apart from once or twice, where it was probably censored on basic cable (pretty sure the most recent instance I saw was even distorted on Netflix).
Contrast that with a motherfuckin' HBO show where you can't go a fuckin' minute without a few fucks thrown in for good fuckin' measure.
Oh, I'm not arguing that it's anywhere near as gratuitous as the content you'll find on HBO. I'm just saying that it's difficult to play it as "PG-13" material; it's more soft-R than HBO's hard-R.
I would agree with you but the success of Hannibal on NBC suggests otherwise. The problem in network television has been either their complete mismanagement of reasonably successful shows or their unwillingness to let ambitious projects come to air.
When they've let showrunners do their thing - Michelle and Robert King with The Good Wife on CBS and Bryan Fuller with Hannibal on NBC - successful high quality franchises have been created as a result. They just don't do it often enough.
