The era of Peak TV hit a record-breaking peak in 2018 with the relative newbies of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Apples soon to debut small screen service beating out the broadcasters and cablers for the first time ever.
Though down by a notch from FX boss John Landgrafs prediction earlier this year that there would be 520 scripted original shows in 2018, the 495 that the cabler chiefs research department came up with is still the most television that has ever been on the air. Up eight shows from 2017, the 2018 tally also finds “online services” in the top spot with 160 scripted original series this year.
Thats a 385% increase since 2014 and just before Landgraf started his bombastic warnings about the TV environment overheating, a warning that hasnt proven true yet, it seems. Or put another way, a bit of Narcos: Mexico, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Looming Tower, Facebooks just renewed Sorry For Your Loss, YouTubes Origin and whatever Tim Cooks crew end up putting out from Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu and many more goes a long way on todays media landscape.
As a consequence of the increasingly crowned multi-platform world and the online on-ramp talent and creators are clearly taking, broadcast and basic cable were down from 2017, with the latter taking the biggest dive. Pay cable like HBO, Showtime and Starz saw an uptick of 32% over last year to its all-time high.
Dig a bit deeper in the charts that FX distributed today to see where the growth is and where the long term faultlines look to be. Also, as we await the Star Wars and Marvel series jam packed launch of Disney+ from the House of Mouse, check out the strength of the year-over-year increases across the streamers, streamers to come and more traditional TV, as it is for now – because, trust me TV is breaking the 500 original series barrier in 2019:
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