The Golden Age of TV Series: Is It Over?

Despite the fact that the "traditional” TV model (i.e. live TV, broadcast and cable) has been under severe pressure from streaming services and changing media consumption habits in recent years, many people would argue that the past decade has in fact been the golden age of TV. That is, the golden age of scripted TV series, which have enjoyed a level of attention, critical acclaim and appreciation as never before.

Not more than a decade ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find an established, successful actor in Hollywood willing to play a major role in a TV series. TV actor was used as a derogatory term for those who had failed to make an impression on the big screen. These days, elaborate productions such as HBO’s smash hit “Game of Thrones” or Netflix's "Stranger Things" arguably grab more attention than most Hollywood blockbusters, and not only has TV acting lost its stigma, it is now a prestigious gig that many Hollywood stars are striving for.

The risen esteem of TV drama, a seemingly insatiable consumer appetite for new content to devour and of course the entrance of deep-pocketed streaming-only players such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple have led to a steep increase in the production of original scripted TV content over the past decade. According to estimates by FX Networks Research, the number of original scripted TV series (excl. re-runs) aired in the United States climbed from 216 in 2010 to 600 by 2022 - a moment now widely seen as "peak TV". Last year, due in part to the Hollywood writers' strike and in part by focus shifting from growth at all costs to profitability, the number of shows on TV declined 14 percent to 516.

FX chairman John Landgraf, a major voice within the TV industry, predicted this trend in 2022, saying that the year would mark "the peak of the peak TV era", even before the writers's strike disrupted production for large parts of 2023. "I don’t see new major purveyors of programming entering the scene as they have been continuously over the past decade or more," Landgraf explained in August 2022. "And in fact, there are some prior purveyors of television programming that are kind of exiting the scenes. So, in other words, you’re at the point now where you’re not really adding new suppliers, but you are, to some extent, subtracting suppliers."