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Is There Too Much New Programming On TV?
HughPickens.com writes: John Koblin writes in the NY Times that there's a crisis in television programming felt among executives, viewers and critics, and it's the result of one thing: There is simply too much on television. John Landgraf, chief executive of FX Networks, reported at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour that the total number of original scripted series on TV in 2014 was 371. The total will surpass 400 in 2015. The glut, according to Landgraf, has presented "a huge challenge in finding compelling original stories and the level of talent needed to sustain those stories."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, says it is harder than ever to build an audience for a show when viewers are confronted with so many choices and might click away at any moment. "I hear it all the time," says Lombardo. "People going, 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.' I hear that, and I'm aware of it, and I get it." Another complication is that shows not only compete against one another, but also against old series that live on in the archives of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. So a new season of "Scandal," for example, is also competing against old series like "The Wire." "The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Others point out that the explosion in programming has created more opportunity for shows with diverse casts and topics, such as "Jane the Virgin," "Transparent" and "Orange Is the New Black." Marti Noxon, the showrunner for Lifetime's "UnREAL" and Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," says there has been a "sea change" in the last five years. "I couldn't have gotten those two shows on TV five years ago," says Noxon. "There was not enough opportunity for voices that speak to a smaller audience. Now many of these places are looking to reach some people — not all the people. That's opened up a tremendous opportunity for women and other people that have been left out of the conversation."
"The amount of competition is just literally insane," says Landgraf.
Then you should commit yourself to a sanitorium, mr. Landgraf.
"Literally" does not mean "very much like".
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... and then it's dropped after 1st or 2nd season. Yet piece of shit shows like 'lost' go on for a decade. Fuck this shit. Fuck you executives.
Remember Lost? The show where they would start with some interesting subplot, only to never revisit it in subsequent episodes? They just went on to some newer subplot.
That's what I feel about new TV shows. If I give in to the show and start watching regularly, I must know that they're going to treat me well. But doing that kind of crap is boring as fuck for writers (evidently) because they hate it and only want to start with a blank slate every episode. I've been burned too many times. Now, they have THE NERVE to complain that viewers won't engage? God damn, it's your own fucking fault, people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Because capitalism.
Company X does what you suggest, company Y carries on. Pretty soon company Y has more viewers, just because they are putting out more stuff.
Reminds me about the last stages at the fall of communism. Or the shoe event horizon on Frogstar B.
already discussed this on the red site
Hilarious
Network producers think there's "too much on television" and people think "there's nothing to watch on television". Who is right? Well, how about we look at the rising trend of people cancelling their cable subscriptions.
Bullshit, there's another, more serious issue
There's not enough reason to commit to shows on american television because they're highly prone to cancellation. Why should I commit to a show if the network won't? I've seen too many shows run on for a long time (gotta milk that cash cow until it dies, apparently) and then get cancelled before concluding.
This damages the viewers' trust in future shows. Nobody wants to commit to anything because it's almost guaranteed to die instead of finish. What percentage of american television shows reach their conclusion? 1%? 3%? There's no reason to take the risk.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...
Interpretation
Here's the interpretation you should take away from this: ...and it's HARD!"
"We have lost all negotiating power since all these show creators can take their show so many other places. We can't resurrect old crap anymore for guaranteed income, but we're not risky enough to bet on new material. We even tried to lock as much content behind paywalls, but people just stop watching our stuff instead of paying us again to watch it any other way than when it airs. We actually have to do the job we've been claiming to do since cable was conceived.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot more books published each year than TV shows, and yet it seems this does not pose a problem for writers.
No, you are not alone, there are plenty of people like you, constantly mentioning to others that you don't watch TV. It is especially evident when the topic is watching TV, you'd think this is the one time when you'd decline to comment as you have no idea what's been going on, but no there are already several comments just like yours, already moderated up to +5 Insightful.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Firefly: loved. Dropped at ep. 13 or so. Zero closure (from the network. Kudos on cast and others for the attempt with the movie, but... 2 hours of movie cannot replace many hours of series.) Poster child for network insanity, lack of foresight driven by must-profit-this-quarter-or-shareholders-will-riot.
Homeland: the season "finale"? Nothing. Not a damn thing worth airing. And the drivel-infested baby-angst... omg, switch it off. Bad enough its basically cop-porn, federal-style, unlimited excuses for "What constitution? Constitution? Isn't that something to do with whether I catch cold or not?" but I have to have baby angst inflicted on me? It's no wonder these series die on the vine when the shows grievously lose focus like that.
Speaking of baby angst, Sons of Anarchy: An entire inane SEASON of baby-angst. Hollywood: When I want "soul searching humanity" in my drug-dealing, weapons-smuggling, murdering, underhanded, principle-free smorgasbord of evil gangland bottom-feeders, I'll let you know, mkay? Don't hold your breath on that one, either. They would have lost me over that baby-kidnap nonsense if it wasn't for Crazy-Pants McGillicuddy, AKA Tig Trager. He was constantly saving episodes. Best-written character on the series by leaps and bounds.
Mostly-consistent entertainment: Deadwood, Game of Thrones, Vikings, Ray Donovan, House of Cards, and (surprisingly) Daredevil.
There may be a lot of new shows, but there sure aren't a lot of good new shows. I'm not having any trouble at all trying to choose what to watch. I'm having trouble finding anything worth watching, and if I do find such a thing, they'll probably cancel it anyway.
Then there's the abject cop porn. Talk about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Total bottom-feeder trash. But at least there's a huge audience for it. We can't all manage to keep the drool off our faces. That's exactly what keeps Fox News on the air and Trump in the running — the huge number of utter idiots in the general population. I can't think of a single cop show where a major theme wasn't the show trying to make excuses for absolutely inexcusable behavior by the cops. I mean, okay, if the show is *about* inexcusable behavior, alright then. But when the "hero" is off the reservation and they play that up as a good thing, that's just destructive to every reasonable and sane point of view there is. Awful stuff. I''m not talking about antiheroes either. When a show about a cop is clearly holding cops up as "the good guys", and they can't be bothered with little things like people's actual rights, as if their correct role was legislator, judge and jury all rolled into one, I just turn the show off.
My only real problem with TV is finding anything worth watching. I get that stranger in a strange land feeling more often than not, and sadly, it doesn't come staffed with a libertarian, open-minded genius, super mental powers, and telepathic aliens. Just a vague urge to go do the hermit thing in a cave.
I don't know... I barely watch regular tv anymore, but I've never once said 'I can't commit to another show, and I don't have the time to emotionally commit to another show.'. What I usually say is 'There is to much crap I have no interest in on tv', which includes lots of shows with interesting premises that never go anywhere. When I do find a show I like I'm lucky to get 13 episodes before they go on hiatus and run the risk of never being seen again because the metrics say it's not 'popular enough'. As has already been mentioned Firefly falls on this list, but plenty of others do as well. Networks are inherently fickle and wouldn't recognize good tv if it was used to hit them over the head. Thank god they are becoming less and less needed to handle entertainment.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
There are shows that rolls on because they attract stupid people that are too lazy to skip the commercials and there are smart shows that gets cancelled because the ad providers considers the audience impossible to target.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Lessee, we have shows about insane hairdressers in LA. We have weird shows about making people run around in the woods without clothing - but in a twist, blur out the tittilating bits. We have shows about the contents of storage units and parking meter attendants, we have shows about idiots who live in teh Alaskan bush, yet seem to know as much about survival in the bush as someone from New York city. We have shows about how people are stupid, and every human advance is because of ancient aliens. We have shows about peole who think that a woman's vagina is a clown car. I gotta stop - but there are hundreds more examples.
The fact is, Television today is simply bottom of the barrel bad!
And the channels that were good at one time have been taken over. The learning channel was once about learning, The history channel once had history, not swamp logging midgets who run a pawn shop in Alaska's north slope.
So no - it isn't too much programming. It's that none of it is worth watchning
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The problem with TV is that the amount of advertising is increasing to the point where watching in real time is too frustrating.
Of course people are turning to other sources where they can watch without the constant interruption of yet more and more and more commercials. The channels are starting to run certain ads more than once during a single ad break: Why would anyone want to watch that?
Without a PVR, TV is simply unwatchable.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
No, it really doesn't. There aren't too many new shows. There are simply too few shows getting renewed. Every episode that has aired before is "new programming". There's certainly not too much of that. If anything, there's too little. If you watch whatever is on Netflix, you'll run out of new content before you watch TV every evening for two years. After that, you'll be sitting there looking for new content and not finding any that looks interesting to you. Yet the shows that you aren't interested in are probably interesting to other people, so those shows should still continue to exist.
The real problem, unfortunately, is what it has always been: ratings-driven executives who are not content to pay for shows unless they find their audience instantly and are broadly popular. This leads over time to progressively lower-quality programming that dumbs down everything to be "good enough" for the largest possible audience, while being seen as "good" by none of them.
What we need is what we have always needed: executives who have the courage to allow a show the time to find its audience, even if that takes three or four seasons, who are willing to guarantee more than a half season at a time, giving people a reason to think long-term about a show's future. Without that, most TV will continue to be what it has become: crap.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I think they are just used to the model where people ravenously jump on a new show and stay glued to it until it dies. It doesn't work like that anymore. I consume when I want to and when I have time. The show will be there forever...what is the rush? There is nothing wrong with all of this content...it will sit around and people will steadily consume it. I know people who will not watch a popular show (Walking Dead) util it is over! People like to binge watch without commercials on their favorite streaming service. How is this not completely obvious?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock