The man who coined 'Peak TV' says streaming's peak era is over. Welcome to Trough TV.

[Vermillion]

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Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the seemingly unstoppable growth of Netflix’s subscriber base began to flag after the streamer canceled shows like One Day at a Time and GLOW, the latter in the middle of production for what would already have been its final season. But it felt not just as if a bubble had been popped but a spell had been broken, and the company that started out promising to change the way the TV industry did business was suddenly playing by its rules. A few years back, you could hardly tweet a mild criticism of Netflix without getting dogpiled by devoted users evangelizing its commitment to diverse and adventurous programming (not to mention, they had Friends). But do it now, post-cancellations—and particularly post-Chappelle—and you get silence. Stanning Netflix feels like being a fan of the gas company.

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This isn’t the future we were promised. The transition to streaming was supposed to usher in an age of bottomless variety and infinite availability. Anything you could dream of, and some things you wouldn’t even dare to, would be yours for one low monthly fee, and as long as you (or whomever you shared a password with) kept the dues up, the taps would never run dry. But 10 years after the streaming boom kicked off in earnest with Netflix’s House of Cards, its sense of unlimited potential has ebbed, and even its products are starting to evaporate. Back in 2013, it seemed like a minor miracle when Netflix revived the cult favorite sitcom Arrested Development—proof that the TV establishment was about to be disrupted by new players with open minds and money to burn. But a couple of weeks from now, all five seasons of Arrested Development will vanish from Netflix’s servers, and although the three produced for network TV will be available elsewhere on the internet, it’s not clear where, if anywhere, you’ll be able to stream the two originally made for Netflix.

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The age of Peak TV—the halcyon days when streamers would throw money at established creators and new talents alike, and no idea was too strange to try for a season or three—has been drawing to a close for a while: Succession and Ted Lasso both start their final seasons this month, and Better Call Saul and Atlanta wrapped up last year. But it’s only now becoming clear what is going to replace it: a steroidal hybrid of algorithmic insights and old-school showbiz wisdom about what sells, resulting in a flood of bad-idea IP extensions (Velma, That ’90s Show), true-crime schlock (Netflix’s entire Documentaries tab), and Yellowstone spinoffs. Call it Trough TV, when the networks that once aimed for the stars now see how low they can go.

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Don’t take it from me. Take it from the person who coined the term Peak TV in the first place. In January, FX chair John Landgraf predicted that the era he defined would soon be coming to an end. In fact, he suggested, it might already be over. When Landgraf first uttered the words Peak TV back in 2015, he wasn’t hailing a new golden age but warning of an imminent saturation point, after which there would simply be more scripted TV series than anyone—networks, studios, viewers—could possibly handle. That was when there were an estimated 370 scripted shows on the air. In 2022 there were 599.

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It was also the end of the brief period in which the last of Hollywood’s major conglomerates launched their own streaming services, overspent massively, and quickly realized that the average household would only sign up for so many subscriptions, no matter how much you offered them. The end of Peak TV was inevitable, even tautological—you can’t define a peak until the numbers start to drop. But it’s only from the peak that you can peer into the trough ahead. In January, Landgraf described the immediate future as a period of leveling off, as some of the entities that rushed into the streaming wars rush right back out and others prune their budgets and lower their sights. AMC, for example, is cutting spending on new programming by 20 percent, and the former home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad is now developing half a dozen spinoffs of The Walking Dead.

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Not only are networks cutting back on financing new shows, an inevitable and predictable reaction to a saturated marketplace and uncertain economy, they’re getting rid of shows they’ve already paid for—in some cases before anyone has even seen them. In the past few months, entire seasons of Snowpiercer, Minx, and 61^st Street were shelved despite being at or near completion, as was a limited-series adaptation of the novel Three Women. For a viewer, devoting yourself to a TV series has always been a fraught proposition, especially as serialized storytelling has come to dominate the form. There’s no guarantee the story you’ve invested in will get a satisfying ending, or even any ending at all. But for a while, the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that concluding a series, even in a different format, would make the whole more valuable: Better to spend on a wrap-up movie for Looking or Sense8 than lose future viewers unwilling to start a story they knew would never finish properly. Hell, HBO gave even Deadwood a feature-length conclusion, albeit 13 years late.

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Last year, in a flurry of tax-related cost-cutting under new head David Zaslav, HBO not only axed some series that had already been renewed (along with shelving a $90 million Batgirl movie) but also removed them from the HBO Max platform entirely. Some, like Raised by Wolves and Love Life, can still be purchased digitally or on DVD. But others, like the family comedy The Gordita Chronicles, are simply gone. As of January, according to creator Claudia Forestieri, the only place to watch the show was “on American Airlines and on JetBlue.” Bryan Cogman, a writer-producer for Game of Thrones and The Rings of Power, was recently looking to watch the 2019 HBO series Mrs. Fletcher, Tom Perrotta’s adaptation of his novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged divorcée. He couldn’t find it. It wasn’t on HBO Max, wasn’t available to purchase or rent, wasn’t even on DVD. It was, he concluded, as if the show had been “buried alive.” As industry reporter Matthew Belloni recently told Slate, “The madness of the past five years, where these companies were outbidding each other and it was a great time to be a creator—that’s over.”

 

[fridayteenage]

euphoria and last of us did that whew

[doonerr]

TV hasn't been good since 2013

 

So many shows and for what, people be streaming The Office, which wasn't even a ratings winner during its original run on NBC

Edited March 6, 2023 by doonerr

[fridayteenage]

6 minutes ago, doonerr said:

TV hasn't been good since 2013

 

So many shows and for what, people be streaming The Office, which wasn't even a ratings winner during its original run on NBC

 

this is a falsehood.

 

it was a hit for several seasons.

[futurenostalgic]

i only care for Apple shows these days... and hbo's back catalogue i guess

[Happylittlepunk]

Tbh I hate tv now there is nothing good and every time I find something I like it gets canceled or I have wait years for a new season. From now on I will only watch a show that friends and family recommend. These companies are a mess nothing last more than 2 or 3 seasons on streaming platforms. Even shows with critical acclaim is just not enough to keep them alive. 

[Frozen99]

i mean the point of netflix was to have all the great shows and movies in one place. now, everything is scattered or, in case of hbo, shredded. the 370 shows vs 599 shows is really interesting  the oversaturation of streaming services and content is unsustainable and it must come crushing down - some studios will fall.

[AMIT]

I read those quotes but I still don't get it. What is replacing it exactly?  Or is that in referrence to those dumb spin offs/extensions? if so 

[toy soldier.]

What an interesting read, thanks for sharing

 

Yeah, it's been clear for a while that this streaming model is not sustainable, I haven't caught up with Netflix latest hits (Dahmer, Wednesday) because they're only popular for a week and then they die out, it seems like weekly release was better after all.

 

I always look forward to Mondays now cause The Last of Us is out and before that The White Lotus and Euphoria. It gives you a sense of hype and builds anticipation  also it doesn't feel overwhelming to have to watch all of it in a weekend cause scared of spoilers 

[M!X]

I am so happy that I was actually invested into tv shows during that era back when Breaking Bad was everywhere, Game of Thrones (though I was never fan of it that much) was starting

 

American Horror Story's first couple of seasons were events,  and Netflix only had Orange Is The New Black and House of Cards with both shows had so much hype

 

There were a bunch of other shows as well, tv shows were both fun and also were serving quality, but fast forward to now this mass production honestly led to an oversaturation of this concept and I actually do not have the desire to watch tv shows anymore, there's just too much content and everything just feels like a rehash.

 

Euphoria s2 felt like the event but it was so bad, The White Lotus is a good fun, but objectively overrated and I was already fan of TLOU games so I would have watched this tv show regardless but I am happy non-gamers are enjoying it as well.

 

The last brand-new tv show I truly enjoyed was Severance which I actually discovered when someone here praised it.  It was such a fresh idea,  and it was both fun and served quality.

[doonerr]

On 3/6/2023 at 9:55 PM, fridayteenage said:

 

this is a falsehood.

 

it was a hit for several seasons.

I said ratings winner aka coming in at #1, which it never did airing head to head with CSI and Grey's Anatomy, darling dear

[its_britney_bitch]

10 hours ago, doonerr said:

I said ratings winner aka coming in at #1, which it never did airing head to head with CSI and Grey's Anatomy, darling dear

That’s true, I used to follow ratings and the beloved NBC comedies of the late 2000s/early 2010s were all lucky to last as long as they did, Parks and Rec especially I remember being on the bubble a lot. At the time they were a lot more niche critics favourites and not really big ratings draws. Just glancing at Wikipedia, The Office only made the year-end top 20 18-49 ranking in 2 seasons, and only made the top 50 (!) total viewers in 1  Parks and Rec on the other hand only scraped into the top 100 once at #96