The king of network tv wants to reinvent streaming

Around 2010, Dick Wolf’s vast television empire was suddenly coming undone.

First, NBC abruptly canceled his 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 “Law &Order” spinoffs were unceremoniously shown the door. All that was left was “Law &Order: SVU,” a relatively slim slate for a company that prized multiple lines of revenue and that had made Wolf a very rich man. After all, Wolf has repeated a mantra for decades: “No show, no business.”

“It was a little tight there for a minute,” said Peter Jankowski, Wolf’s longtime No. 2.

The TV industry was migrating away from a decades-old staple that had made Wolf a dominant figure in prime-time viewing: the close-ended “procedural.” That popular genre of programming presented a conflict and a tidy resolution, all within an hour’s time.

Instead, streaming outlets like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu were beginning to take flight, prestige TV was ascendant, and complex, 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 slashed budgets and bid adieu to the Peak TV era, Wolf’s style of programming is coming back into vogue. The evidence is everywhere: Year after year, repeats of years-old network standbys like “Criminal Minds,” “NCIS” or “Grey’s Anatomy” populate Nielsen’s list of 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 when they began streaming on Netflix. Vulture recently declared, “Network TV Is Officially Back.”

Now, some 15 years after his career low point, Wolf has rebuilt his television business — and then some. At 78, he has a staggering nine scripted shows running on several networks. NBC executives even brought “Law &Order” back to life more than a decade after the network canceled it. It is now in its 24th season.

Soon Wolf will have a 10th show, one that he believes has the potential to be a significant game changer and could position his company well into the future: his first streaming show, a series about a police force in Long Beach, California, titled “On Call,” which debuts on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday.

“I’ll tell you how important it is,” Wolf said in a recent interview. “It is the first project that I can truly say is Wolf Entertainment 2.0. I’m trying to position this company to be a player for the years to come.”

Though Wolf is finally entering streaming, the debut of “On Call” is really a moment that underscores how the streaming world and the television universe have gravitated back to him.

“Most really good writers can create one good show,” said Rick Rosen, Wolf’s agent at WME. “There’s a bunch that have done two. You can probably count on one hand those that have created five, let alone nine or 10. It’s unheard-of. As great as Aaron Spelling was or Steven Bochco was or David E. Kelley is, it’s a different type of thing that Dick does, and he does it better than anyone.”

And Wolf is not content on merely doling out a series or two to Amazon and Peacock (another spinoff, “Law &Order: Organized Crime,” will move from NBC to Peacock this year). He wants to build a new television universe and for his creations to be seen on several streamers.

And he wants the show to shake up the very format of dramas. Each episode of “On Call” is 30 minutes long, a throwback, he said, to a decades-old era when series like “Adam-12,” “The Naked City” and “Dragnet” were all half-hours, unlike the occasionally bloated episodes of streaming dramas that can be 80 minutes or more.

Wolf began mounting his comeback shortly after his fall.

In 2012, a year after “Law &Order: LA” and “Law &Order: Criminal Intent” ended, Wolf debuted a new NBC series about a different type of emergency worker, and one in a new setting: “Chicago Fire.”

On the first day of shooting that show, Wolf told Jankowski that, with success, this would be merely the beginning.

“Chicago Fire” took off, and “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Med” would follow. Within a few years, Wolf would have “FBI” and two spinoffs on the air at CBS.

Even amid the rebuilding project, Wolf’s shows came off as old-fashioned to much of the industry. Those shows, after all, were made for broadcast networks, which were becoming the domain of baby boomers as younger viewers fled to streaming services.

But even as the shows induced eye rolls within some corners of the television industry, the raw ratings data told the Wolf enterprise something else.

“It did feel like people were like, ‘The fuddy-duddy procedural, everyone’s bored with that, nobody wants to watch this formulaic show,’” said Anastasia Puglisi, an executive at Wolf Entertainment. “But the audience never told us that.”

Still, year after year, the viewership totals were declining for anything on network or cable television. The company would need some sort of off-ramp if it wanted to be more than a reliable supplier of reruns.

It was time to enter streaming.

“On Call” is not just another Dick Wolf series. It also marks something of a generational shift, one that highlights the involvement of younger executives — including his 31-year-old son, Elliot — who Dick Wolf believes could eventually take over his company.

Elliot arrived at the company about six years ago. Then in his mid-20s, he kept his early efforts at the company relatively modest.

He encouraged the company to drop its outdated name of Wolf Films and rename it Wolf Entertainment. He helped start a merchandise line, built a social media presence and worked on podcast series.

But the younger Wolf knew the company was a “little late to the streaming game” and wanted to find a way in.

At the time, Jennifer Salke was just a few years into her position as the head of Amazon’s studios. Salke had previously spent nearly a decade at NBC, and knew how addictive Wolf’s programming was.

Negotiations between Elliot Wolf and Amazon executives began about a series with 30-minute episodes.

“There’s a few half-hour serialized streaming dramas, but the procedural doesn’t really exist, and everyone’s attention span is changing with social media and so forth,” Elliot Wolf said. “Let’s give people an easier access point with a half-hour format. They really dug that direction.”

When Elliot Wolf approached his father about a shorter run time, the elder Wolf thought back to all those dramas from the 1950s and ’60s. “I said yes — that’s a very viable idea,” Dick Wolf said.

Salke agreed. Amazon ordered “On Call.”

“On Call” centers on two beat cops. One is a fresh-faced rookie (Brandon Larracuente), the other a seen-it-all-before veteran (Troian Bellisario). “Keep that optimism as long as you can,” the veteran cop snorts at one point.

The series has — like all Wolf shows — close-ended plot lines, with a crime or two that need to be resolved before each episode ends. But there is something of a serialized element, too, something that Amazon “asked for” to keep people invested, Elliot Wolf said.

The show was also much cheaper to make than Wolf Entertainment’s hourlong network dramas, something that delighted Amazon executives, and something the Wolf camp is aware is vital to a new television era.

“On Call” runs for only eight episodes, a departure from what Wolf Entertainment is accustomed to on network television, where seasons can include 20 episodes. But if “On Call” takes off, the shorter episode orders may be temporary.

“It’s not going to be some sort of modest, constipated version of an order of a limited series or something,” Salke of Amazon said. “The ambition is to deliver many hours of the show.”

Dick Wolf has no retirement plans. He is, however, thinking about succession.

Wolf said the company would most likely belong to Jankowski, his longtime right-hand man; Puglisi, the 33-year-old executive; Rebecca McGill, another executive; and Elliot, his son.

“What does the future hold?” Wolf said. “It’s hubris to say it. But I just want the party to continue.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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