While I'm not a huge fan of the show (sorry. zombies? meh.), this sort of MBA boneheadedness really pisses me off. Is this what they teach in b-school? Build a popular product, then destroy it? They cut the budget by almost a third, then doubled the episode order. Then, as a final thrust, took-away the tax-credit the production company was using to help offset costs. Amazing.

I was also surprised to learn in the article that HBO operates at a loss. I would never have thought that.

Razzafrazza. Indoor zombies that you only hear? OK, maybe it could work, but the 50% indoor part isn't too true to the comic (until the prison ... and maybe more of the later story, which I still haven't read).

But decreasing the budget and more than doubling the show length? Yaah more Walking Dead, Boo, MBAs who aren't paying attention to the show or the source of the story. Sure, there's a lot of inter-personal drama that doesn't need the level of special effects that a zombie horde requires, but the zombies are the setting.

I read a sort of interesting article about this - essentially the guy behind Sons of Anarchy saying that the studio is appeasing Mad Men, and fucking up the other good/decent programs as a result (the main two being Walking Dead and Breaking Bad).

I'm not a studio head, but it kinda seemed to me he made sense. It might have been on the avclub - I'll try to dig up the article.

And, here it is.

I would imagine contractual agreements with the production of Madmen predate The Walking Dead's association with AMC.

It would appear that there were "re-negotiations" that entered into it.

The only zombie-oriented media entity I have ever gotten into is a webcomic: Dead Winter (that's page one, it's over 400 pages now and there's a published book of the first 150). It starts with a female protagonist who discovers just how strong she is under extreme stress, and adds a variety of fascinating characters, especially the mysterious dude who is unbeknownst to the others a world-class hitman who has unfinished business with a former employer in a hidden fortress. After the initial attack, the zombies only appeared about every 50 pages and most of the conflict involves the reactive breakdown of society and most of the violence is human-on-human. Having never seen "Walking Dead" and after hearing the content-related issues, that show sounds much less interesting. Maybe somebody should make "Dead Winter" into a TV series and show them how it should be done.