A Record High of 455 Scripted TV Shows Aired in 2016 (vulture.com)

In case you wanted to ground your abstract TV FOMO in hard numbers, FX has data on the fact that, yes, there really is too much TV. An anonymous reader shares a report: The network, whose CEO John Landgraf coined the idea of "peak TV," has released its unofficial tally of the number of shows on TV, finding that 455 different scripted television series from broadcast, cable, and streaming sources aired in the last year. That's an 8 percent increase from last year, when 421 shows aired on TV; a 71 percent increase from 2011, when a mere 266 shows were on TV; and a 137 percent increase from 2006, when there were 192 shows on TV.

Comments

nothing

[qQ7eBMsfM5gs]

400+ TV channels, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. and still NOTHING GOOD IS ON

Turn it off

[kcdoodle]

It is really hard to stop watching TV. I have cut down to 3 shows a week.

I also stopped playing video games, especially on my phone.

These things are a big time-suck, a vacuous hole of waste.

Instead of video games, I have apps that are game-like, but educational. DuoLingo, MemRise, PianoSightReading, etc.

Instead of TV, I practice guitar, bass guitar, piano, and recently, violin. Also I workout and run everyday.

Basically, I am taking my previously wasted time and trying to better myself.

Try looking back. Did it really matter if Gilligan ever got off of that stupid island?
Did Hawkeye Pierce save more people because you tuned in?
Do you care if Al and Peg Bundy's kids ever moved out?

Twenty years from now, will you care if Sheldon every marries Amy?
Will you care if Mike Ross goes to jail or really becomes a lawyer?

Or, in twenty years, will you say, I should have been healthier, I should have read more, I should have learned a language.

Only 455?

[totallyarb]

FX are *way* under-counting. There are an awful lot more than 455 scripted television shows out there. Hell, there are more than that on YouTube alone.

Their mistake is to assume that something only "counts" as a TV show if it's in standard half-hour-with-ad-breaks format, and it's "broadcast" on something that they recognise as a TV channel. But a looser definition - say, "scripted video content released on a recurring basis" would include literally thousands more, and it's a bad sign for FX that they apparently haven't acknowledged this fact.

What FX are doing is the equivalent of an oil company not realising that they're in the *energy* business (and therefore subject to competition from solar power and the like), or a car company not realising they're in the *transportation* business (and therefore subject to competition from rail, motorcycles and so on). Or perhaps a better comparison is the phone company not realising they're in the *communications* industry, and therefore failing to expand into mobile and internet provision until it was too late.