Mad Men

Abstract

Once or twice a decade, a new television program comes along to capture and express the zeitgeist. Mad Men (2007–2015) was that show in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Soon after premiering on the 19 July 2007 on AMC (formerly American Movie Classics from 1984 to 2003), Mad Men evolved from being that little program that nobody watched on an also-ran basic cable channel to the most celebrated scripted drama of its era. Mad Men set the creative standard for dramatic series over the span of its initial run. It was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as the Best Television Drama of 2007, 2008, and 2009; the British Academy of Film and Television as Best International Show of 2009 and 2010; and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as the Outstanding Drama Series of 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, being the first basic cable series ever to win this award. Overall, Mad Men won five Golden Globes, sixteen Emmys, and fifty other major awards, including honors from all of the major Hollywood guilds, as well as receiving a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. In retrospect, AMC executives adopted what they referred to as “the HBO formula” of developing their own edgy, sophisticated, passion project by a proven writer-producer, Matthew Weiner, who just happened to have a pedigree that included The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007). What resulted was the gradual emergence of Mad Men as AMC’s first original hit series, generating unprecedented word-of-mouth, and rebranding the channel as a hipper, more discriminating, alternative cable-and-satellite network. In turn, Mad Men broke the glass ceiling for basic cable in much the same way that The Sopranos had done for pay TV some eight-and-a-half years earlier. Mad Men also benefited greatly from the emergence of multiplatform reception. Even though Mad Men’s impact on AMC was immediate and transformative, the show was at first more a cultural phenomenon than a breakout hit. Nevertheless, its first-season audience average of 900,000 on AMC in 2007 eventually grew to 2.5 million by Season 6. Moreover, Mad Men’s total viewership relied heavily on syndication, DVDs, and streaming to digital devices, translating into an estimated 30 million unduplicated viewers per episode in North America alone. By the time of its finale on 17 May 2015, Mad Men was being syndicated in over fifty countries and was available 24/7 through online streaming globally.