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Jana Winograde, former president of Showtime, and Susan Rovner, former president of Warner Bros. TV, have their own meet-cute. The pair first met three decades ago, when they worked at ABC.
“We locked eyes, and we’ve been close friends ever since, danced at each other’s weddings, held each other’s babies,” says Winograde, speaking via videoconference from Rovner’s Encino home. Then, at the end of 2024, a friend started talking to them about vertical storytelling just as a burgeoning new form of entertainment for shorter attention spans, known as the microseries, began taking off in Asia.
Winograde and Rovner soon teamed up with Lloyd Braun, former chairman of WME, to found the original microseries studio and platform aTwist, originally known as MicroCo. They plan to launch in the late summer and have already announced unscripted deals and a partnership with BET. Some of their microseries will be shown at movie theaters during previews.
The co-founders also revealed to The Envelope that they have an exclusive deal with Patti Stanger to bring the “Millionaire Matchmaker” franchise to the microseries world, both in unscripted and scripted.
“We’re trying to take the best of the vertical world and the best of what we learned in streaming and traditional linear television and put them together,” says Winograde. “We felt like this was the way that we could take all of our storytelling abilities and apply it to this.”
“In three seconds, we have something that grabs your attention,” says Rovner. “The episode length is two minutes and under; we’ve sometimes gone up to three minutes.”
Winograde and Rovner spoke about their foray into this new type of programming, how they hope to differentiate themselves and more. Read excerpts from the conversation below.
Why do you think microseries are on the rise now? Why not before, for example with Quibi?
Rovner: Quibi definitely had the right idea, but I think it was early. What the Chinese got very right [with microseries] is the idea of taking what works in gaming and applying it to storytelling. [Finding] that thing that grabs you immediately, hooks you in — short episodes with cliffhangers that keep you swiping — that is a newer format, and an imperative format to lean into. And then price point — we really make sure that these are inexpensive. It’s about character and a great script. The combination of the format and the costs really make this something different.
People compare microseries to soap operas, but you both have stressed that you want to explore different genres. What have you learned so far?
Rovner: Soap operas were a natural place for people to lean in at first because they have natural cliffhangers. We’ve had so much fun applying that format to horror, to animation, even to unscripted, and the challenge of that actually ends up being fantastic creatively.
Winograde: Soap operas went on forever; people were invested in the storytelling and the characters. Many of the microseries are just one season and out. Once we engage the audience, we [want to take] that love of ongoing storytelling and apply it to the vertical space.
How is your approach different from others in this evolving space?
Winograde: What they’re doing is not about storytelling as much as it’s about the format, which they’ve done a great job of. But in terms of the things we’ve built our careers doing — emotion, character, plot — those are not as built out in the current microseries ecosystem. When everybody can be a content creator, and the bar to entry gets lower, I think people are looking for things that are curated and good. That’s the distinction between real storytelling skill and just throwing something up.
How are you grappling with Hollywood labor fears?
Winograde: We’re nonunion, but we’ve worked with other companies that are union, and we’re trying to figure out the best way to be able to chart our own path in terms of how we build our business so that it’s sustainable, while at the same time having the best opportunities for good storytelling and great actors.
Rovner: The vertical space is putting a lot of people to work who wouldn’t be working otherwise. We’re making stars again, and that’s so nice at a time when the gatekeepers have made it really hard.
You have described your company as AI-native. What do you mean by that? Are you using AI in your algorithm, or are you also using it for the creative side of production?
Winograde: Across the spectrum of our app, so everything from how you find [it to] the marketing that we’re doing, it’s all algorithmically driven. Once people use our app, we’re going to be able to really lean into AI to collate all this data — what people love, where they come into the story, where they leave — and then really give the people what they want. [As far as production] we both say “Never say never,” but we believe in the human hand and touch.
Rovner: Our actors are actors, our writers are writers.
What do you want to be focused on?
Rovner: We’ve spent our entire career finding the fandom. That’s why we believe in horror. That is a very specific large fandom, and it’s about finding where they are and marketing towards them, letting them know that this content is there, because we know those fans are very dedicated. We want to apply what we know about fandom to other genres and hopefully bring those fans in.
Social media is often where fandoms go to connect, so that makes sense.
Winograde: The reason fandoms have become so important is because of the need for community, and we want to lean into that. We’re going to have commenting, watch lists and the ability to share offline.
Looking back on your experience with vertical video so far, what is it that excites you versus traditional television?
Rovner: We can go from [thinking of an] idea to [publishing] on our app in four months. If you love characters and a story, we can get that next season up quickly. In the traditional world that’s hard, especially recently.
Winograde: And because of the price point, it’s a whole different risk-reward proposition. When you’re making a streaming series and you’re spending $8 to $9 million an episode, it’s very easy to do whatever you know worked before because it’s less risk.
Rovner: The best creative always comes from knowing it’s OK to fail, it’s OK to try something.
