If you missed it the other day, New York magazine’s Joe Adalian had an excellent analysis of what’s behind the recent business and p.r. problems at AMC. It’s worth reading in full, but one major point in brief: all those times you wondered how in the world they could afford to produce HBO-type shows on a basic-cable budget? Turns out they can’t, not exactly.

One prescription Adalian offered was that AMC would need to (1) get several profitable years out of megahit The Walking Dead (which it owns) and (2) complement its dramas with some cheaper programming, such as reality shows. Behold: today AMC announced that The Walking Dead would get a supersized 90-minute launch and that it’s picked up two reality shows, one from filmmaker Kevin Smith.