Why The Incredible Shrinking TV Season Is Hurting TV
As I’ve mentioned before, Hollywood is very much a copycat league. In that spirit, the streaming industry has followed the leads of Nielsen and Netflix and seemingly established hours of viewership as a key success metric. Why? A couple reasons.
Unlike linear television, streaming isn’t shackled by pre-set schedules in which audiences flock to a given network at a given time that is completely out of their control. Instead, as the “Direct to Consumer” descriptor would suggest, programmers are meeting viewers at their convenience. Thus, live real time viewership does not provide a complete picture of value. Streamers want to keep a user within a digital ecosystem for as long as possible (which is also highly attractive to advertisers) and not just during primetime hours.
Hours of viewership has also made it easier to classify and categorize various subscribers. In the US, customers considered at low risk of cancelling their subscription typically watch at least 20 hours per month on one streamer, whereas viewers considered at high risk of canceling their subscription tend to watch as little as two hours of content per month.
Understanding the type of programming that appeals to all segments is crucial to green light, cancelation and renewal decisions, especially as production budgets come under greater scrutiny.
However, the big problem with the way in which this value system is designed is that it is vulnerable to a changing content structure. According to Parrot Analytics, the average number of episodes per season for US scripted shows across network television and streaming has shrunk from 15.4 (network) and 11.1 (streaming) in 2018 to 10.2 (network) and 9.6(streaming) in 2023. These reflect drops of 34% and 14%, respectively. If the number of episodes per season is dropping at the same time that the overall volume of scripted English series is shrinking (which it is), then raw consumption (i.e.hours of viewership) will decline too.
Given the rapidly shrinking emphasis on scripted content among broadcast networks, which help provide a steady flow of highly in-demand series with massive libraries (see: Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural, Suits, NCIS, Friends, et al.), streaming platforms will need to get out ahead of the potential loss of such longer-running titles. That requires new original development strategies. Not only that, but the industry at large will need to rethink the way in which it articulates value and success amid a general contraction.
