Having hassle discovering a brand new present to observe? It’s not simply you.
For greater than 20 years, a number of revolutions in televised leisure gave binge watchers yearly will increase within the variety of scripted TV exhibits. The saga is well-known by now, from HBO’s invention of “status TV” within the early 2000s to the “golden age of TV” when status moved to different networks resembling FX and AMC, to Netflix’s huge bang with “Home of Playing cards” that ushered within the “cord-cutting” period and the following “streaming wars,” which simply ended with Netflix standing tall. Alongside the best way, one of many executives who performed a key function on this company odyssey, FX’s John Landgraf, emerged as one thing just like the mayor of tv and famously predicted the business was at “peak TV” in 2016.
It took almost one other decade, however Landgraf is now touting knowledge exhibiting his prediction was spot on. Final 12 months, the variety of scripted sequence fell by 14%. Landgraf, now the chairman of FX Networks, which turned a Disney subsidiary on the top of the streaming wars in 2019, revealed the information on Friday through the Tv Critics Assn. press tour.
Right here’s what the height of peak TV regarded like: the variety of grownup scripted sequence fell to 516 in 2023 from an all-time-high of 600 the 12 months earlier than. It was solely the second time since Landgraf started his rely within the early 2000s that the variety of exhibits had declined year-over-year.
Contributing to the drop is Wall Road’s strain on main studios to rein of their spending and the brand new realities of a maturing streaming business. Landgraf instructed Selection that final 12 months’s strikes by screenwriters and actors performed some half within the delayed launch of some programming, however he thinks it was already trending in that course earlier than the Hollywood work stoppage.
“The drawdown of manufacturing was seemingly underway even earlier than the strike shuttered all manufacturing,” Landgraf mentioned. “The realignment of business priorities from streaming scale at any value to profitability continued after the strikes, resulting in the cancellation of quite a few tasks.”
How TV went from status to peak
The Cambrian explosion of TV sequence started after Netflix fired the “Home of Playing cards” beginning gun and streaming took off within the early 2010s. Whereas in 2009 there have been 210 scripted exhibits, six years later that quantity had doubled to 422.
The period of “peak TV” led to critically acclaimed exhibits resembling “Breaking Dangerous,” “Recreation of Thrones,” and “Mad Males.” However regardless of stellar critiques, Wall Road has now shifted its expectations from development irrespective of the associated fee to profitability because the streaming sector matures.
The rate of interest hikes by the Federal Reserve following the pandemic marked an finish to the “straightforward cash” that helped gas the growth-at-all-costs angle throughout industries. Simply as rising rates of interest have hampered enterprise capital investments in tech, Wall Road started demanding that streamers tighten their belts, and the adjustments have been rippling throughout the sector, as Landgraf mentioned. Different cuts and efforts to show a revenue have left streaming subscribers paying extra for much less, and slowly, cord-cutting TV followers are seeing streaming morph again into outdated TV—adverts and all.
Streaming chief, Netflix, which helped contribute to the rise in scripted exhibits all through the 2010s, launched 130 fewer unique applications in 2023 in comparison with a 12 months earlier than, a decline of 16%.
And final 12 months, in a push to extend subscribers, Netflix additionally cracked down on password sharing. Though controversial, the trouble added almost 9 million subscribers within the quarter instantly following the change. In its most up-to-date quarter it added one other 13 million, and income jumped double digits.
Already different streamers are following Netflix’s footsteps. Final 12 months, Disney+ hiked the worth for its ad-supported tier by $3 and in January Amazon modified the default viewing expertise on Prime Video to be ad-supported and started charging prospects to choose out of commercials.
Though Landgraf has been predicting the tip of TV’s glory days ever since he labeled “peak TV” in 2016, he was repeatedly confirmed incorrect because the variety of exhibits exploded and, barring a decline in 2020 because of the pandemic, then resumed rising. Nonetheless, Landgraf revived his prediction, saying that 2022 can be the “excessive water mark” of TV present output, marking “the height of the height TV period.”
This time, it’s wanting like he was proper.
