The entertainment industry will air more than 400 original TV shows this year, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on top talent and exotic locations in the hopes of creating the next “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones.”
The gusher of quality programs has prompted TV critics to proclaim a Golden Age of Television. But as any viewer knows, keeping up with all the shows is impossible. You’d have to watch TV 24 hours a day for at least eight months to catch every scripted series that aired last year, according to a Bloomberg calculation.
With too many shows chasing too few viewers, say industry executives, most original programs lose money and half the shows now running probably will disappear by next year.
“The market is flooded with too many people chasing the same prize,” said Jeff Wachtel, president of NBCUniversal’s cable unit, including the USA and Syfy channels. “What used to be the golden age of television has now become a gold rush.”
With production costs soaring and shows being canceled with increasing frequency, executives say many niche channels will vanish as networks with the most popular shows swallow rivals that fail to create enough hits of their own.
Of the 352 scripted series that aired last year, 199 — up sevenfold from 2000 — came from basic cable channels like AMC and from pay channels such as HBO. Another 129 ran on broadcast networks like CBS and NBC. And 24 came from streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime.
Programmers are pumping out ever more shows even as audiences dwindle. The number of coveted 18- to 49-year-old viewers watching cable TV live or on-demand within three days of a show airing has fallen 11 percent this season compared with the year before, according to researcher MoffettNathanson. One reason: viewers ditching pricey cable-TV packages for cheaper online alternatives such as Netflix or Hulu.
It typically costs about $3 million to make one hour of scripted television, according to a cable network executive. Cable networks pay about 70 percent of that, or about $2 million, for the rights to put the show on TV. They recover their costs in two main ways: selling ads and charging fees to the likes of Comcast or DirecTV to carry their channel.
To generate enough ad revenue to recover what the cable network paid the studio, a show must average about 3 million viewers in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic within three days of airing, the executive said. Of the 199 original series on cable TV last year, only six averaged that many viewers after seven days. They include AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and FX’s “Sons of Anarchy.”
Making matters worse, viewers increasingly binge-watch weeks or months after a program originally airs. Advertisers don’t pay for that viewing, leaving networks with fewer ad dollars to invest in more original programming.
Cable networks can turn a profit by raising the fees they charge pay-TV services to carry their channels. But to make those hikes stick they need bona fide hits. The cable networks also can recoup their costs by leveraging shows made in-house — selling reruns, international rights and series to Netflix or Amazon. (Netflix, Amazon, HBO and Showtime are less affected by the content glut because they make most of their money selling subscriptions and largely use original programming to attract and retain viewers.)
With audiences thinning and fragmented as never before, dozens of cable shows limp along in relative obscurity. Though critically acclaimed, FX’s spy drama “The Americans” ranked 46th among scripted series on cable TV last year, drawing about 1.3 million viewers in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. USA’s “Satisfaction,” about a couple trying to rekindle their marriage, ranked 90th with about 900,000 viewers aged 18 to 49.
Cable networks keep such shows on the air, hoping viewers will eventually find them on demand or in a Netflix afterlife; in some cases they renew poorly performing shows because they fear blowback from viewers who’ve invested in the characters.
But the cracks are starting to show. In 2000, 10 percent of original series were canceled. Today, more than half are not picked up for another season, says Liam Boluk, a media strategy consultant at the media newsletter REDEF.
The irony is that after years of complaining that there was nothing worth watching on television, viewers now say they are overwhelmed by choice. “Now people say ‘There’s more good stuff on TV than I have time to watch,'” said David Poltrack, who has conducted research for CBS since the 1980s.
