But the FX CEO told the TCA yesterday that original scripted series were continuing to rise, up from 389 in 2014 to 419 in 2015, likely to touch 450 by the end of this year and rising above 500 in 2017. “Rather, I think we are ballooning into a condition of oversupply which will at some point slowly deflate, perhaps from 500-plus shows to 400 or a little less than that”. And he said he was “stunned” that FX recently beat the streaming service for Emmy nominations. The network president took more than a few opportunities to take a jab at Netflix, arguing that the speed at which the service is creating and releasing shows was unsustainable.
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Audiences overall are having trouble distinguishing the “great from the merely competent”, he said. And “there is so much USA television (that) we’ve lost much of the thread of a coherent, collective conversation about what is good, what is very good, and what is great”. Hard as he tries, Landgraf himself doesn’t know everything that’s out there, he said.
A key driver in this trend are streamers such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, which have ratcheted up their output of original programming in their quest to compete with broadcast networks and cable channels.
Landgraf thanked Ryan for the “good, swift kick in the butt”.
With the cost of making and marketing an hour of TV at $4 million, “There have to be a whole lot of television shows that are losing a ton of money for the networks that produce them”, he said.
He did say Netflix takes a “secretive” approach to its business model.
Landgraf said he immediately set out to correct the problem.
“I think it would be particularly bad if anyone in one company, and I don’t care what company that is, if they were able to seize a 40 or 50 or 60 percent market share in storytelling”, Landgraf said.
Less than a year later, they’re already different.
In recent years, Landgraf, who spoke to the press here Tuesday, has become something of a self-styled Cassandra on the so-called “peak TV” phenomenon, the seemingly unstoppable growth of shows. Does “500 original scripted series” sound like a good answer?
“A huge increase in scripted series is being driven by the streaming services, and much more than any other service by Netflix, which has at this point has premiered and/or announced 71 scripted series”, Landgraf said.”For reference, that’s more than the announced future output of HBO, Showtime, Starz, and FX combined”.
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Landgraf credited Netflix for commissions series such as Masters of None, which he said he admired, but added: “Television shows are not like cars or operating systems, and they are not best made by engineers or coders in the same assembly line manner as consumer products which need to be of uniform size, shape and quality”.
