Transforming Hollywood: DeBevoise -- Television Is No Longer a Television

The television industry has evolved in recent years and that evolution is just beginning, according to panelists at Transforming Hollywood 5: The Future of Television.

Television is not just a device in the living room with content that is dictated by companies anymore, said Allen DeBevoise, chairman of Machinima. DeBevoise's remarks came during the first panel of the conference at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Today we live in a world where there are all sorts of ways to watch this content on a number of devices all over,” he said. “And it has created programming that would have never been conceived to ever work in the traditional model.”

Machinima, for example, is specifically geared toward males between the ages of 18 and 34, a demographic that is particularly difficult for traditional networks to reach. DeBevoise added that the ability to have programs on demand, to view content on multiple devices, and to interact with the growing fan culture have all contributed to television’s transformation. With content on demand, viewers can binge watch series, which opens up the types of stories that can be told. “When the platform changes, the product changes as well,” said Joe Lewis, head of original comedy programming at Amazon Studios, explaining that creators can tell longer stories and dive deeper into characters with binge viewing.