1 cable network in full-day ratings among women aged 25 to 54, the demo group targeted by ID’s advertisers. So far in 2018, ID - whose overall audience composition is about 60 percent female - ranks as the No. Its average prime-time audience last year was just shy of 1.1 million viewers, triple the tune-in for new true-crime rival Oxygen and more viewers than even established cable heavyweights such as FX, AMC, CNN, A&E, and Bravo. While old-school linear networks have spent the past few years fighting significant ratings erosion, Investigation Discovery has tapped into the culture’s true-crime obsession to become not just the king of the genre, but one of the most successful and fasting-growing networks on cable, period.
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Turns out, that’s also true when it comes to cable TV audiences. There’s an old saying in TV news: If it bleeds, it leads. Vulture spoke with four big players in the true-crime marketplace about working in such a competitive space, how they choose the crimes that make it to series, and what makes for a compelling narrative.
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Two new crime-based anthology shows are also in the works: Bravo kicks off its series with a scripted version of Dirty John starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana later this year, and Hulu will follow suit with The Act, which tells the story of convicted murderer Gypsy Blanchard, who conspired to kill her mother after a lifetime of child abuse.Īlthough the genre’s success goes back decades - as evidenced by the continued success of shows like Dateline or Law & Order’s ripped-from-the-headlines style - the boom in crime-driven storytelling on TV at this particular moment is undeniable. In October, Oxygen will premiere Dirty John, its documentary based on the record-breaking Los Angeles Times podcast about a man who manipulated women and swindled them out of their fortunes. Next week, Investigation Discovery will release Sugar Town, a documentary about the polarizing 2014 case of 22-year-old Victor White III, whose death in police custody while handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car was ruled a suicide. Others that specialize in those stories have continued the search for the next national obsession. Over the last few years, cable networks, like USA ( Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G.) and Paramount ( Waco), have begun experimenting for the first time with real-life dark tales that have macabre twists. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, Netflix’s The Staircase, and many, many others - TV’s true-crime renaissance is obviously here to stay.
Now, after three more years of stories involving murder and mayhem - including FX’s The People v.
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While Serial famously inspired a wave of true-crime storytelling on podcasts, HBO’s The Jinx and Netflix’s Making a Murderer arguably made the boom real on television. All week long, Vulture is exploring the many ways true crime has become one of the most dominant genres in popular culture.
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