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Some of the stars of HBO Max’s newest series, Generation, bristle when their show—a half-hour comedy-drama about a group of high schoolers—is compared to other teen dramas.
“For some reason, when you focus on young people, and you show them authentically, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, these [shows] are exactly the same,’” Justice Smith, who plays Chester on the series, said last month during the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour. She was being asked about the show’s similarity to HBO’s other shows, Euphoria and We Are Who We Are. “These are all very different stories, but we’re in a new zeitgeist now where we’re accurately depicting what adolescent life is like.”
Winning Gen Z and millennials is key
While those distinctions may be important for the show’s cast, it’s undeniable that Generation fits nicely into a growing slate of shows on HBO Max designed to appeal to young adults. For the service, which is less than a year old, winning over young millennial and Gen Z viewers is especially key to standing out in a cluttered streaming landscape.
“One of the primary goals for HBO Max was to broaden HBO’s audience, and young adult content is an important part of the overall mix that we’re aiming to offer,” Casey Bloys, HBO and HBO Max’s chief content officer, told Adweek. “We pride ourselves on a diverse slate of premium programming that offers something for everyone.”
Young adult shows have long had a home on television—evidenced by the explosive success of shows like The O.C. and Gossip Girl, plus the popularity of young adult networks like The CW and Freeform. Shows that super-serve those audiences are now helping fuel viewership on streaming, too. Netflix has found success with shows like 13 Reasons Why, along with film franchises like To All The Boys, which has landed on the service’s top 10 lists, while Hulu has broken through with the comedy Pen15, one of Adweek’s best TV shows of 2020.
Fickle, but attractive consumers
Those adolescent viewers are a winning business proposition for streamers: About 90% of Gen Z households have at least one streaming service in their household, according to Deloitte, and they’re heavy content consumers, making them an attractive target.
But they can also be fickle. Gen Z and millennials have higher churn rates than other generations (over 50%)—making them harder to keep interested, said Kevin Westcott, Deloitte’s vice chairman and U.S. technology, media and telecom leader.
“Having new exclusive content being released regularly and a compelling user experience is critical to retaining these subscribers,” Westcott said.
For HBO Max, “there is no one-size-fits-all approach” to telling young adult stories, Bloys said, but there were efforts from Generation’s creators to inject the series (stylized as “genera+ion”) with an unvarnished and occasionally R-rated look— particularly when examining characters’ sexualities and identities.
“We drew a lot of inspiration from authenticity and real-world influence when we were writing and creating the show,” said Generation creator, writer and executive producer Zelda Barnz, who is 19. “If you’re basing a show off something real and authentic .. [it includes] intersectionality,” she said, including finding characters with diverse gender, racial, and sexual identites.
As Generation debuts, young audiences are already showing up to HBO Max a big way: 43% of HBO Max’s users are under the age of 35, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said at an investor presentation Friday. That statistic helps underscore exactly why the service is devoting space to making new young adult originals. It’s also brushing the dust off shows beloved among previous teenage generations by offering a revival of Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars. Bloys said the shows are “all very different approaches to telling Gen Z stories, each of which resonates for different reasons and with a different audience.”
Driving cultural conversation
There’s a marketing benefit to winning over younger consumers, too. With platforms like TikTok, young consumers can create a fervent fandom around new shows that can drive a larger cultural conversation, attracting even more friends and followers to that show. “The YA audience is highly engaged on social media, so we hope that shows like Generation and the new Gossip Girl will be great conversation drivers,” Bloys said.
And as HBO Max readies an ad-supported tier to debut this June, courting young audiences might also pay off for marketers.
“The younger generations are much more influenced by ads delivered on streaming services,” Westcott said. “Recognizing the influence that ads have on this generation, as well as their tolerance for ads, is important as streamers consider hybrid pay and ad business models.”
