Peak TV is officially canceled

The Future. Peak TV is over the hill as the volume of American shows contracts to make streaming a viable long-term business. But with greenlights for international series growing overall, the TV industry may soon be more of a cross-cultural ecosystem, where language barely matters when marketing to audiences.

Are you still watching?
Soon, you may actually be able to keep up with all the shows you want to watch.

• Ampere Analysis found that the number of scripted American series has dropped by about a third since 2019 — 481 last year, compared to to 633 in 2021 and 2022, for example.
• Streamers were the most to blame, with every single one but Prime Video slashing renewals (Netflix cut their releases by almost half).
• Luminate, which looked at both scripted and unscripted American series, found that the number of shows dropped from 21% this year (roughly 2,280 to 1,784), which is even less than the first year of the pandemic (2020 had just over 2,000 shows).
• Scripted comedy and drama took the biggest hits (30% drop), while animation had the most staying power (only a 7% drop).

Why the downturn? The strikes, of course, played a role, but the culprit is more the Great Netflix Correction, which saw Wall Street suddenly value profits over user growth… which every streamer went into major debt to accrue.

Call it the consequence of sound business principles.