Pandora's Box
How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Peter Biskind
About this listen
Bestselling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, cultural critic Peter Biskind turns his eye toward the new golden age of television, sparked by the fall of play-it-safe network TV and the rise of boundary-busting cable, followed by streaming, which overturned both—based on exclusive, candid, and colorful interviews with executives, writers, showrunners, directors, and actors
We are now lucky enough to be living through the era of so-called Peak TV, in which television, in its various guises and formats, has seized the entertainment mantle from movies and dominates our leisure time. How and why this happened is the subject of this book.
Instead of focusing on one service, like HBO, Pandora’s Box asks, “What did HBO do, besides give us The Sopranos?” The answer: It gave us a revolution. Biskind bites off a big chunk of entertainment history, following HBO from its birth into maturity, moving on to the basic cablers like FX and AMC, and ending up with the streamers and their wars, pitting Netflix against Amazon Prime Video, Max, and the killer pluses—Disney, Apple TV, and Paramount.
Since the creative and business sides of TV are thoroughly entwined, Biskind examines both, and the interplay between them. Through frank and shockingly intimate interviews with creators and executives, Pandora’s Box investigates the dynamic interplay of commerce and art through the lens the game-changing shows they aired—not only old warhorses like The Sopranos, but recent shows like The White Lotus, Succession, and Yellow- (both -stone and -jackets)—as windows into the byzantine practices of the players as they use money and guile to destroy their competitors.
In the end, this book crystal-balls the future in light of the success and failures of the streamers that, after apparently clearing the board, now face life-threatening problems, some self-created, some not. With its long view and short takes—riveting snapshots of behind-the-scenes mischief—Pandora’s Box is the only book you’ll need to read to understand what’s on your small screen and how it got there.
©2023 Peter Biskind (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.
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Chicago Housibg
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MOVE: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
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- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
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This searing audio documentary brings listeners deep inside the unforgettable story of MOVE, gaining unprecedented access to surviving MOVE members, elected officials from the era, eyewitnesses, and historians to create an indelible portrait of an American tragedy.
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Balanced Examination of History
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
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Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
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it's Nearly perfect
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Caffeine
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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine’s power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.
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Leaves much to be desired
- By Melody H on 02-02-20
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Mythology: Mega Collection
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- By: Scott Lewis
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Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....
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An interesting set of introductions.
- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
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I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t)
- Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power
- By: Brené Brown
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
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Based on seven years of ground-breaking research and hundreds of interviews, I Thought It Was Just Me shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we're all in this together.
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I'm sure its great if you are a mother ....
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The Strange Death of Europe
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- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Robert Davies
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The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end.
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Fear-mongering
- By Kat Cat on 01-22-19
By: Douglas Murray
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What listeners say about Pandora's Box
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AlexBenBlock
- 02-16-24
The rise and fall of peak TV
This informative, entertaining audio book explains as much as possible the revolution in tv viewing on networks cable and streaming. There is a lack of attribution at times but author Peter Biskind makes up for it with fast paced storytelling that is chock full of personality profiles, facts, trends and an insiders view. A few years ago there was a boom in programming driven by the rise of Netflix and other streamers. This explains how that led to a lot of innovative tv and why now the trend is back toward network style programs for the mainstream with less edge and the return of commercials. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand where tv went and where it is going.
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- Graham Stevenson
- 01-29-24
Business Vs. Creativity
Peter Biskind is an excellent writer about show business. This book is very good, but the parts I found the most interesting were about how individual shows (Mad Men, The Sopranos, etc.) came to be on the networks/streamers. The business elements (meaning the various executives) understandably need to be covered—I just didn’t find them as compelling personally. Definitely worth listening to if the subject interest you.
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- Mary Anne Davis
- 01-06-24
From network to streaming
I appreciated the breadth of knowledge the author brings to bear on the shift from network to streamers with specific examples of many of my favorite shows that I have watched and loved or hated over the years. To realize the entire arc of television as a phenomenon gives me pause and allows me to appreciate a daily activity not so much as an escape, but more as a participation in contemporary culture. Biskind takes the subject seriously and adds gravitas to subject often dismissed as a waste of time or guilty pleasure.
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- Oliver Winston
- 12-04-23
A wealth of knowledge and experience
Fun to listen to. So much great stuff here. Highly recommend. Especially if you are interested in entertainment or just want to know how all of these companies have come to be.
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- James Heggs
- 08-02-24
The details
You probably need to read the Biskind books to get the total picture. Down and Dirty Pics, Raging Bulls and Easy Riders sets up this book as they are all written sequentially in real time. Also if you read Its Not TV it’s HBO that also connects dots. You will see the patterns.
New Tech comes old guard shrugs. New tech takes over. Promising they won’t be like the old tech. And boom HBO is saddling one of their more experienced writers with enough notes that could be half the script they are crying about. It comes down to risks.
The creators take the biggest risks, they offer their lives to the craft. The suits do not. So when pressure hits the suits flip flop on a dime. That’s why when new tech, cable transmission, home video, the internet, smart phones, they never see the need to at least see if the new tech is of any value. There’s no risks in trying. You put one egg in the basket and see what’s up. But you’ll see that’s not how these bozos think. They’d sit in the beach house all day because yesterday it rained.
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- Dee
- 12-20-23
Great read
Great for anyone who needs background of the industry, Peter Biskind is an ace! A+
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-17-23
Great
I really enjoyed this book. I think it was a great overview of what exactly is going on in Hollywood right now. And in the end it's hard to know what will happen. But it's clear to everyone that Hollywood does not care as much for what it puts out. As opposed to how much money it really wants to make.
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