Discovery’s Unscripted Bonanza Gives Max A Huge WGA-Strike Boost
As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) enters its second month on strike, a simmering concern over the fall broadcast season is beginning to bubble throughout the entertainment industry. Strikes such as these primarily impact the development of scripted content — your sitcoms and procedurals, tentpole dramas and raunchy comedies, and your blockbuster intellectual property. There’s a reason why many series across this spectrum have already shutdown production and there’s a limited window of opportunity for the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to reach a deal soon that will avoid further schedule disruption.
Most streaming services have a stockpile of scripted content to help weather the storm yet the longer the strike goes, the more serious considerations for the future become. No amount of content hoarding can last forever, after all. Much like the 2007-2008 strike, all of Hollywood is expected to run into the warm embrace of unscripted fare to help bridge the gap. But some platforms are better positioned for this pivot than others.
Discovery+, now largely integrated into the newly formed Max, unsurprisingly boasts the best demand (95.2%) and supply (94.8%) shares for unscripted TV content, according to Parrot Analytics. In fact, all other streamers are producing a greater volume of scripted content than there is demand. Even so, Peacock is benefitting from its roster of NBC reality series — including The Voice, which is the most in-demand unscripted series in the US in 2023 — and the Bravo kingdom.
Paramount+ and Hulu are both drawing strong demand for unscripted content as well. This is particularly important for these two streamers as both rely heavily on the next-day air capability of their linear broadcast shows, which may not be as reliable given the ongoing strike.
Overall, these services have a bit more of a cushion thanks to the appealing libraries of unscripted fare at a time of great uncertainty for the industry.
