FX will bring back Emmy-winning shows American Horror Story in September and Fargo in November as part of its fall original programming slate.

American Horror Story: Delicate, the 12th installment of the Ryan Murphy-created American Horror Story anthology series, will debut September 20. The season will be divided into two parts, FX said, with the four-part first season running through October and the second part debuting in 2024. 

The fifth season of anthology series Fargo will debut on November 21 and will be set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019. The series will star Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, Joe Keery, Sam Spruell and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Series creator Noah Hawley will serve as executive producer for Fargo along with Warren Littlefield, Steve Stark, Kim Todd and Joel and Ethan Coen. 

Also on FX’s fall docket is the October 26 return of American Horror Story spinoff series American Horror Stories, which will stream on Hulu. Also premiering on Hulu is  A Murder at the End of the World, which will debut its seven-episode season on November 14. The mystery series stars Emma Corrin, Brit Marling, Harris Dickinson, Alice Braga, Joan Chen and Clive Owen.

On the unscripted front, FX will debut The New York Times Presents: “How to Fix A Pageant” on September 29, according to the network. 

Cable networks and streaming services will ring in the Halloween season this October with a number of new original scripted series and movies that will look to thrill audiences throughout the month.

Networks like Epix and Showtime along with such streaming services as Prime Video and Netflix and will roll out horror-themed original programming shows that premiere alongside a multitude of Halloween-themed, network programming stunts that celebrate the spooky season, from Freeform’s “31 Nights of Halloween” to Peacock's “Halloween Horror” film collection.

Also slated to premiere this month are the final episodes of AMC’s zombie-themed The Walking Dead series (October 2), the second season premiere of Syfy’s Chucky (October 5) and 11th season premiere of FX’s Emmy-winning American Horror Story (October 19).

TV industry analyst Marc Berman says the television industry has embraced the Halloween season as more viewers tune into scary and horror programming as an escape from the struggles of everyday life. 

“If you go back in history, Halloween has always been celebrated on television, but that celebration keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Berman said. “Viewers just love Halloween, and considering the world that we live in and all the Hell we are going through with everything, it’s just a great escape, and television continues to celebrate it.”

Below is a partial list of original, Halloween-targeted scripted series and movies premiering during the month of October:

October 2 

Blumhouse’s Compendium of Horror (documentary series) – Epix 

Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire (series) – AMC

October 5

Reginald The Vampire (series) – Syfy

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (movie) – Netflix 

October 6 

Monster High: The Movie (movie) – Paramount Plus 

October 7

Hellraiser (movie) – Hulu 

The Midnight Club (series) – Netflix 

October 8 

Cursed Friends (movie) – Comedy Central

Bring It On: Cheer or Die (movie) –  Syfy  

October 9

Let The Right One In (series) – Showtime

October 10

Grimcutty (movie) – Hulu 

October 13

Dark Glasses (movie) – Shudder 

October 14

Halloween Ends (movie) – Peacock 

The Curse of Bridge Hollow (movie) – Netflix 

October 20

V/H/S/99 (movie) – Shudder 

October 21

Peripheral (series) – Prime Video 

October 25

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities(series) – Netflix■

The tenth installment of American Horror Story, called Double Feature, begins Aug. 25 on FX. The season shows a struggling writer, his pregnant wife and their daughter move to an isolated beach town at the far end of Cape Cod for the winter. Over time, they get to know the town’s residents, many of whom are a bit peculiar. 

Episodes turn up on Hulu the day after they premiere. The nine previous American Horror Story seasons are on FX on Hulu. 

Finn Wittrock, Lily Rabe, Ryan Kiera Armstrong and Frances Conroy are in the cast on the new season. Provincetown, Massachusetts is the setting. 

Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk debuted the anthology horror series in 2011. Past seasons have centered on a creepy asylum, a coven of witches, a traveling freak show, a haunted hotel and the apocalypse. 

American Horror Story is produced by 20th Television. The series is executive produced by Murphy, Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, John J. Gray and Manny Coto.

Spinoffs American Sports Story and American Love Story are coming to FX. American Horror Stories launched this summer, and the next installment of American Crime Story, about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, arrives in September. 

Murphy and Falchuk are behind all of the American Story series. 

FX has ordered a second season of anthology horror series American Horror Stories, which began on FX on Hulu in July. A spinoff of American Horror Story, it comes from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk and features a different horror story each episode. Season one ends Aug. 19, and season two premieres next year. 

Murphy and Falchuk executive produce the show with Alexis Martin Woodall, John J. Gray and Manny Coto. American Horror Stories is produced by 20th Television.

American Horror Story launched in 2011. American Horror Story: Double Feature, the franchise’s 10th installment, premieres Aug. 25th on FX, streaming the following day on FX on Hulu. FX has ordered seasons 11, 12 and 13 as well. 

Another spinoff, American Crime Story, debuted in 2016. FX announced that American Sports Story and American Love Story are in the works. 

FX and 20th Television have a deal for two American Story spinoffs from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. American Sports Story and American Love Story are the names of the new series. 

American Sports Story is a scripted anthology series focused on a prominent event involving a sports figure, and “re-examines it through the prism of today’s world, telling that story from multiple perspectives,” according to FX. The first installment of the limited series is based on the podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” An NFL star, Hernandez went to prison for murder and committed suicide. 

American Love Story is a scripted anthology series as well. The first installment depicts “the whirlwind courtship and marriage,” in FX’s words, of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. ”What started out as a beautiful union for the young couple, widely regarded as American royalty, began to fray under the stress of the relentless microscope and navel gaze of tabloid media.”

“When Ryan Murphy came to us with these two spinoffs and the stories for American Sports Story and American Love Story, we immediately jumped at the opportunity,” said John Landgraf, chairman of FX. “What began with American Horror Story has spawned some of the best and most indelible programs of our generation, most notably American Crime Story which created a beautiful partnership between Ryan, Brad, Nina and Brad.  Their alchemy and the way in which they construct these stories is done with such care, such clarity and such dimensionality that creates the magnificence that is The People v. O.J. Simpson, The Assassination of Gianni Versace and Impeachment.  We can’t wait to see what comes next.”

American Horror Story launched in 2011 and American Crime Story premiered in 2016. American Horror Stories launched this summer. 

“More than a decade ago, Ryan Murphy expressed interest in expanding the American Horror Story model to be able to tell different American stories, which have long captivated so many of us,” said Dana Walden, Walt Disney Television chairman of entertainment. “It was a brilliant idea. Adding these new installments to the franchise will enable Ryan, Brad, Nina and Brad and their talented teams to tackle riveting stories outside of the horror and crime genres. This group has done a truly amazing job of examining situations we think we know everything about and making us realize that there was so much more there than what we had been told. Many of us at 20th Television, FX and FXP have worked together on this franchise since the very beginning and it has been a privilege. It’s been an incredible partnership and collaboration and we’re looking forward to these new chapters.”

The third installment of American Crime Story, entitled Impeachment, premieres Sept. 7. It tells the story of Bill Clinton’s impeachment through the eyes of Monica Lewinsky, Linda Trip and Paula Jones. 

The next American Crime Story will look at Studio 54. It depicts Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who in 1977 turned their Manhattan nightclub into “an international mecca of nightlife for the rich and famous and commoners alike—renowned for its lavish parties, music, sex and drugs,” according to FX. 

 FX on Hulu will launch Ryan Murphy’s latest takeoff on the American Horror Story franchise, American Horror Stories, on July 15.

The weekly anthology series showcases a different horror story each episode, according to the streaming service. Season 10 of FX’s original Emmy Award-winning American Horror Story series debuts on the network on Aug. 25. The series has already been renewed for seasons 11, 12 and 13. 

American Horror Stories is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, John J. Gray and Manny Coto.

Read Also: Summer 2021 TV Premiere Dates 

Impeachment: American Crime Story premieres on FX Sept. 7. The third installment of the franchise “unravels the national crisis that swept up Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp as principal characters in the country’s first impeachment proceedings in over a century,” according to FX. 

The first American Crime Story was The People v. O.J. Simpson and the second was The Assassination of Gianni Versace. 

Impeachment: American Crime Story is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Sarah Burgess, Sarah Paulson, Brad Falchuk, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski and Michael Uppendahl. The series is produced by 20th Television and FX Productions.

FX shared other summer premieres, including American Horror Story: Double Feature. The tenth installment of the anthology series premieres Aug. 25 on FX and streams the next day on FX on Hulu.

Also Read: 'Breeders' Gets Season Three on FX

American Horror Story is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, John J. Gray and Manny Coto. It is produced by 20th Television.

American Horror Stories, a spinoff of American Horror Story, premieres July 15. The anthology series will feature a different horror story each week. 

American Horror Stories is executive produced by Murphy, Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, John J. Gray and Manny Coto. The series is produced by 20th Television.

Comedy Reservation Dogs, from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, premieres Aug. 9 on FX on Hulu. The series follows the exploits of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma who steal, rob and save in order to get to dreamy California. 

Reservation Dogs is executive produced by Harjo, Waititi and Garrett Basch and produced by FX Productions.

Season 12 of animated comedy Archer premieres Aug. 25 on FXX. 

Season three of What We Do in the Shadows premieres Sept. 2 on FX. The vampire series is based on the film by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi.  

New drama Y: The Last Man premieres Sept. 13 on FX on Hulu. Based on the DC Comics franchise, the show traverses a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event decimates every mammal with a Y chromosome except for one man and his pet monkey. 

FX is also premiering an anthology series from B.J. Novak that is untitled at this point. Premiering Sept. 16 on FX on Hulu, the show “is a daring and ambitious new half-hour anthology series about people figuring out timeless moral questions in unprecedented times. Choosing art instead of argument to engage with the most relevant issues of our times, it's sure to be a conversation starter,” said FX. 

Novak hosts.

The 2010’s ushered in a new era of original scripted television series created and distributed by an unprecedented number of distribution outlets, all looking to attract viewers anxious to watch content at their leisure across numerous platforms. Heading into 2019 nearly 500 scripted series could be accessed on broadcast, cable and digital streaming platforms.

Here’s a look at five shows on cable and streaming services that helped define the decade though a mix of excellence via ratings, industry awards and cultural influence.

Game of Thrones -- HBO (2011-2019)

HBO’s titanic fantasy series arguably drew more combined viewership, media coverage and social media activity --both positive and negative -- than any other show during the decade. What is not in dispute is the record 59 Emmy Awards the show won over its eight-season run.

Related: HBO, Amazon Prime Rule Emmy Awards Telecast 

Atlanta -- FX (2016 to present) 

Comedian/rapper/musician/producer in Donald Glover created a show that presents a sometimes complex but most times comedic slice of African-American life that had never existed on TV before. The result is a groundbreaking show that has earned critical acclaim and several Emmy Awards, including Glover’s Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series statuette -- the first awarded to an African-American.

Stranger Things -- Netflix (2016 to Present) 

While streaming service Netflix’s ambitious run at producing original scripted series began in earnest with such critically-acclaimed hits as House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, it was a 1980’s-based, sci-fi thriller full of monsters and young, teen protagonists that gave Netflix a pop culture hit perfectly suited for binge viewing. 

Power -- Starz (2014-2020) 

Starz’s provocative series from executive producers Courtney Kemp and 50 Cent about a drug dealer looking to escape the world of crime and go legit found a fervent and loyal audience early and helped to dismiss the myth that a show with a predominantly African-American cast couldn't draw solid ratings numbers on premium cable television.

American Horror Story -- FX (2011 to Present) 

The series became the poster child for the resurrection of the anthology series genre with its creative ability to scare up a new story each season. American Horror Story paved the way for the success of other anthology series including HBO’s True Detective, AMC’s The Terror, Nat Geo's Genius and FX’s own American Crime Story, Fargo and Feud.

Honorable Mention:

The Walking Dead -- AMC (2010 to Present) -- The most-watched show on cable during the first half of the decade, the zombie-themed series drew a basic cable record 17.3 million viewers for its season five premiere in 2014.

Veep -- HBO (2012-2019) -- Among the most celebrated TV comedies of the decade, the series won 11 Emmy awards, including a record six straight best comedy actress statuettes for series star Julia Louis-Dreyfus from 2012 to 2017.

The Handmaid’s Tale -- Hulu (2017 to Present) -- The dark drama series arguably put the nascent streaming services on equal footing with broadcast networks and cable services by winning the digital platform's first drama series Emmy in 2017. 

FX will remain a formidable player in the original scripted programming arena despite prolific show producer Ryan Murphy's new Netflix deal, according to FX Networks and FX Productions CEO John Landgraf.

Landgraf, in a statement reacting to Monday night’s (Feb. 12) bombshell news that Murphy – who produced several successful FX series including Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story -- has signed an exclusive, multi-year deal with Netflix, said that FX has more than 20 scripted original series on its schedule or coming up that will continue to keep the network among the cable industry's leaders.

RELATED: John Landgraf's Legion of Hits 

He added that the network looks forward to continuing to work with Murphy for the four FX shows currently on air or in development: anthology series American Horror Story (renewed through season nine), and American Crime Story (renewed for a third season), Feud (renewed for a second season) and the upcoming series Pose.

“For more than 15 years, we have enjoyed an outstanding partnership with Ryan Murphy and we look forward to continuing that relationship on our four shows under his creative leadership,” Landgraf said. “With more than 20 scripted original series on our schedule or upcoming, FX has a very successful track record of identifying and developing talented writers who have produced award-winning hit shows and it will continue to do so.  The network has an outstanding slate of development and FX Productions has the finest roster of producers in our history.  We will continue to provide creative freedom and support for artists of all backgrounds to tell diverse stories and do their best work.”

Prolific producer, director and writer Ryan Murphy is the latest big name talent to defect to Netflix from the television industry, signing an exclusive multi-year production deal with the streaming service.

The groundbreaking deal calls for Murphy, who has produced such Emmy Award-winning shows as FX's The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Feud and American Horror Story – as well as breakout new Fox broadcasting series 9-1-1 – to produce new series and films exclusively at Netflix beginning July 1, according to the service. 

Murphy’s move from traditional television and cable networks to the digital streaming service follows producer/creator Shonda Rhimes, who signed an exclusive deal with Netflix in August after producing such shows as Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder for broadcast network ABC.

Netflix is already slated to premiere two new Murphy-produced original series, Ratched and The Politician.

“Ryan Murphy’s series have influenced the global cultural zeitgeist, reinvented genres and changed the course of television history,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, in a statement. “His unfaltering dedication to excellence and to give voice to the underrepresented, to showcase a unique perspective or just to shock the hell out of us, permeates his genre-shattering work. From Nip/Tuck -- our first licensed series -- to American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson and American Horror Story, we’ve seen how his brand of storytelling captivates consumers and critics across the globe. His celebrated body of work and his contributions to our industry speak for themselves, and we look forward to supporting Ryan in bringing his broad and diverse stories to the world.”

READ MORE: Comcast, FX Team on Commercial-Free Subscription Option

The deal comes two months after 20th Century Fox agreed to sell key content assets to the Walt Disney Co., including its movie and television production studios and cable networks FX, FXX and National Geographic. While Murphy's current FX and Fox shows will repotedly remain on their respective channels, his depature is a major loss for the company. 

Murphy in a statement said: "The history of this moment is not lost on me. I am a gay kid from Indiana who moved to Hollywood in 1989 with $55 dollars in savings in my pocket, so the fact that my dreams have crystallized and come true in such a major way is emotional and overwhelming to me. I am awash in genuine appreciation for Ted Sarandos, Reed Hastings and Cindy Holland at Netflix for believing in me and the future of my company, which will continue to champion women, minorities and LGBTQ heroes and heroines, and I am honored and grateful to continue my partnership with my friends and peers at Fox on our existing shows."

BET’s telecast of its 2017 Hip-Hop Awards turned up a lot of social media noise last night, according to Nielsen.

The special generated 5.8 million social media interactions from 2.5 million unique Twitter and Facebook accounts, according to Nielsen’s Daily Top Five report.

NBC’s This Is Us finished a distant second with 288,000 interactions, followed by USA’s WWE SmackDown!, CW’s The Flash and FX’s American Horror Story:Cult, said Nielsen.

On the live sports front, BeIN Sports’ coverage of the Trinidad and Tobago-United States FIFA World Cup 2018 Qualifying soccer match drew 1.7 million social media interactions to top all events. The US team lost that game, officially eliminating them from 2018 World Cup competition.

Sometimes nice guys finish first.

FX Networks and FX Productions CEO John Landgraf is the son of a preacher with the persona of a professor, and he is a rarity in the TV industry: the closest thing to a regular amount of ego inside of a Hollywood TV executive. And humble at times though he is, these days he’s got reason to crow — loudly. Last year, his flagship channel, FX, swept the Emmy Awards with 18 wins — second only to HBO — won an industry-high four Golden Globe awards and notched the top three shows on television’s collective Best 2016 Series list — Atlanta, The People v. O.J Simpson: American Crime Story and The Americans.

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Landgraf, who took the reins at FX 14 years ago, has built a television empire in what’s arguably been the industry’s most challenging and content-rich period. FX has thrived on his watch, generating hit after hit, from veterans such as The Americans and The Strain — both set to soon end their runs — to recent breakouts such as Donald Glover’s Atlanta and the Marvel Comics-inspired Legion. The series surge continues this summer with the John Singleton-produced Snowfall, chronicling the early days of the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic.

The 55-year-old veteran proiducer also revitalized the once-dormant anthology/limited series genre with successful shows like the Emmy Award-winning American Horror Story, Fargo and American Crime Story. And he’s struck comedy gold with freshman Emmy winner Baskets, as well as venerable series such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Archer and You’re the Worst. Launched on FX, those shows now find their audience on comedy-centric sister channel FXX.

Related: HBO, FX Lead 2017 TCA Awards Nominations

All of Landgraf’s programming accolades have been achieved with a budget that’s a relative pittance compared with what deep-pocketed competitors like Netflix and Amazon spend on their scripted series.

With the Landgraf-coined “Peak TV” bubble of scripted series — now at more than 450 shows across broadcast, cable and digital streaming services — predicted to burst sometime over the next couple of years, Landgraf is playing the long game. His next move is repositioning linear channel FX into a multiplatform brand that can serve consumers’ changing viewing habits via digital video-on-demand service FX Now. Landgraf is also taking changing audience demographics into account — women and people of color comprise more than half of FX’s showrunners and producers.

In a conversation with Multichannel News editorial director Mark Robichaux and programming editor R.Thomas Umstead, Landgraf explained his Moneyball approach to production, the new dynamics of the TV business and how diversity drove FX to profit.

MCN: How would you rate the general health of the programming business today? Some people say this is just the downside of the cycle. Other people say it’s the edge of a cliff. You have famously called it a content bubble. What’s going on?
John Landgraf: The way I think about it is, there is a business model in television that has been successful for a long, long time, right? Sixty years, more. It’s called the channel. And it’s been an important organizing principle; it started with broadcast networks and then premium and basic cable networks, all built on the notion of a linear stream.

And these channels are still overwhelmingly how people who watch television consume their time. I think the reason that fact is often lost … I think if we dug into the data we’d find that still more than 80% of all time consuming television is on linear channels.

I think the amount of time spent watching linear television channels each year relative to the prior year and the percentage of the total consumption of television each year relative to the prior year is going down — very slowly going down.

And on the other side of the spectrum, there is an appreciating television asset, which we’d call, broadly speaking, nonlinear consumption, right? And I’m including in that VOD and TV Everywhere and FX Now and HBO Go and DVRs, as well as Hulu and Netflix and YouTube.

So it’s a vast bundle of nonlinear consumption. Mostly on-demand. Its main characteristic is it’s not that flowing linear stream.

Buzzfeed’s watermelon video thing was ludicrous because it’s not compelling to watch people put rubber bands around a watermelon relative to watching Silicon Valley or The Americans or the Super Bowl. It’s a tiny, tiny thing in terms of actual, concurrent streams or in hours of consumption relative to broadcast television.

Content on these powerful linear streams is still watched vastly, vastly more, in terms of current viewership, than anywhere else. … They are still far and away the best place to start advertising, better than a bunch of tiny little bits of consumption in a system rife with fraud and bots and all kinds of things. Not to say there’s no value there, but just saying the level of value is vastly different.

MCN: Do you think traditional programmers are adapting fast enough?
JL: It’s an evolutionary process. I think one of the reasons that we actually began counting the number of original programs, which led to identifying this phenomenon called “peak TV” is ultimately you’ve got to accept the background radiation of the competition, right? You can’t put your head in the sand and think that major-league pitching hasn’t improved in 30 years and think that you’re going to pitch the same way you did 30 years ago with the same result. You have to basically tool yourself to the batters you’re facing in the current market.

We just have to be better, because the only thing that will allow us to rise as opposed to fall in this environment is we’ve just got to get better.

MCN: How is FX adapting to the new environment?
JL: We have actually managed to be pretty flat in the last four years. We took the FX network, we layered on the FXX network and the FX movie network, FXM. We layered three networks’ worth of consumption on top of one, all under one brand, and then we also layered on a significant amount of nonlinear consumption.

Our COO [Chuck Saftler], who has been the dominant buyer of movies in basic-cable network for a decade now, bought a year of linear term for our channel. Now, for a major blockbuster, we got a significant number of months of nonlinear term. And so we accumulated a very large nonlinear bundle of movies.

We also did something first that no other channel had done. When a series airs, it immediately goes into the TV Everywhere space, into FX Now, and essentially you can consume it, you can binge it on-demand from the first episode to the end. So we have made really significant strides and we’re at the point now where we generate about 10% as many nonlinear streams as linear streams, even given the fact that we are programming 24 hours a day on three channels.

In the long run, I don’t think there is a fundamental way to counteract the fact that there is going to be modest decline. No matter how well you program a linear channel, you can’t execute your way out of structural change.

If you want your business and your brand to be stronger tomorrow than they are today, there is only one answer, which is you have to lean into the appreciating asset, where there is growth in the marketplace, and where that growth lies is in nonlinear consumption, period.

MCN: How would you judge your performance?
JL: Our point of view is that we’re proud of what we have done to date, but it’s not comprehensive enough, it’s not radical enough. But knowing that, just as we know that if we didn’t step up our programming game we were going to recede rather than grow, is a good thing. I think knowing the truth is the first key. Knowing the trends and accepting the truth of the future is the first key to being successful in anything strategic, certainly in business.

So what you’ll see from us, and I can’t speak to our competitors, is more radical and more aggressive moves in the future to transform our business into what I would call a multiplatform brand. I wrote a memo — it might have been five or six years ago — to a number of key colleagues here, basically suggesting that if FX is going to thrive as a business and a brand over time, it must transform itself from a linear channel into a multiplatform brand. [Part of that] was the formation of FX Productions in 2005, when we started owning our own shows.

It’s not as if I haven’t seen the writing on the wall here for a long time. We’re figuring it out.

MCN: Wall Street is already punishing programming stocks. What do you think the business fallout will be of this disruption and competition? Will this content bubble pop?
JL: There are two sources of capital, which rely on different capital standards, that are funding this. One is the capital that flows in through traditional media companies that are still mostly oriented around brands that develop from linear channels or their film studios, right? The metric that the market uses to buy and judge that stock is profit. It takes a multiple of profit.

Then there are these other companies; the leading ones in it are Amazon and Netflix. Netflix has said they are going to run at negative $1.8 billion dollars in free cash flow this year. So even though they will declare an EBITDA, that will be because they are pushing down the amortization of programming costs into subsequent years. Their actual revenue will be $1.8 billion lower than their expenses this year, based on their own statement.

So their metric is not profit, it’s customer acquisition, I suppose. And essentially investors are willing to extend them capital at a loss in essence on the assumption that their growth and subscribers will keep up with that trailing amortization and ultimately overtake it, and they will be able to sustain and grow profitability over time. Similarly, Amazon is a very different retail business with $130-plus billion dollars in top-line revenue, so its programming costs are kind of a rounding error. So these are really different businesses.

I think what we’re going to find when we roll up all the scripted programming made in America this year … it will be more original scripted adult series this year than last year, but then, in the aggregate, premium television channels, basic-cable channels … and broadcast-television channels will make slightly less content this year than they did last. I’m talking in the range of 5% or less from peak.

I think we are probably past the peak, in terms of the total volume created by linear television channels and their associated brands, at least at this point.

MCN: What is driving this arms race?
JL: It’s this massive amount of capital flooding into the market through Netflix and Amazon, and to some extent Hulu or YouTube Red or Apple and a few other buyers. And it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, in the sense that it’s nonprofit expenditure. It does not drive profit. It actually drives loss, right? It drives growth in top-line revenue, but it drives loss.

So we’ve got to punch above our weight, and we’ve got to fight heavyweight fighters who are a lot bigger and have a longer reach than we do just in terms of physical gifts. You’ve got to be crafty and smart and have endurance.

MCN: On that note, you’ve largely been outgunned in terms of budget by some of these new entrants, namely Netflix and Amazon. Yet you’ve been exceptionally successful at picking hits. How?
JL: So you’re a coach. What you’re trying to do is create a winning environment. And in the case of television, every single TV show is made by a single individual person, or a couple or three individual people, who then accumulate around them hundreds of other individuals. It’s a personal thing, it’s a bespoke thing — it’s not done well, I don’t think, in a factory context. It’s not as if you create the machine that builds the machine, which is the Tesla factory, and then it builds these devices of uniform size and shape. Every single thing is a piece of art and business created by an individual artist/businessperson/ craftsperson.

And there is just no such thing as a one-size-fits-all formula. … I think a good coach, for example, is good at coaching players who have different styles and different needs and different quirks and different abilities. You’ve got to get good at doing that. Then what’s hard, I think in this business, is to stay singularly focused on that single thing because there are so many other things that are distracting.

You know the political maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It’s like, “It’s the shows, stupid.”

The reason we built a studio is because we wanted to do all of it. We didn’t want to license it and do part of it — the marketing, the publicity — and leave the financial and business and production issues to someone else. We wanted to have a deep and abiding 360-degree creative/personal business relationship with the people that make television from top to bottom.

I built it as a former producer. I built an organization that said, “Well, if I were gonna make a decision about bringing a talented person, what would I want from the organization I brought that person to, to give that person the best chance at success and me the best chance at success?”

I think people do their best work here — it’s pretty simple. And then once they come here, they not only have the best experience of their career, they do the best work of their career, because they have a profound level of engagement and support from me and every person in this organization.

MCN:What’s your biggest fear for the business?
JL: I’m pretty bullish. I think this is a really exciting and dynamic moment in time and I think decisions are being made now that are gonna yield tremendous success and colossal failure because I think that it’s like doing what you did won’t get you where you wanna go, right?

But on the other hand, I think there is going to be a culling of the strongest businesses and the strongest brands. I think the strongest ones are going to emerge. It’s kind of like a forest fire, right? The strongest trees in the forest have more light and more room to grow in the aftermath of the forest fire. So you just have to be on the right side of surviving a transformation like this.

MCN: You’ve got the Emmy Awards coming up very soon. FX had a great, record-setting showing last year. What’s your expectation for this year? Can you repeat what you did last year?
JL: It’s crazy to me. I mean, I feel really proud of our entrants and I think it’s as strong a team as we have ever fielded.

I think a different metric would be that more than 80% of our shows that we programmed at FX made year-end top 10 or best lists. And I think for Netflix, that was in the 15% to 20% range. If you want to call that a batting average, it’s batting more than .800, relative to batting .150 to .200.

I think you’ve got to give a little bit of an advantage, maybe more than a little bit of an advantage, to the teams with the bigger payroll, because this is the Oakland A’s playing the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees in payroll terms, you know?

MCN: What is it that has helped you pick the right shows? Gut? Test audiences?
JL: One of the things I’ve realized as I’ve matured as a person is that a collective intelligence is always greater than an individual intelligence. So one of the things we do around here is that even though the final decision is mine, I really listen to this group of people that I’ve worked with for a long time and I really benefit from their individual intelligence. We can have a very agreeable disagreement and a very robust and honest debate, and I learn things through listening to those debates.

And I never forget I’m betting on a person. Television is made by people and their character, their talent, their intellect, their intent, how dedicated they are to that intent, how much stamina they have — how strong is their ego, not only in terms of willingness to be stubborn and intractable when they need to be, but strong enough to take criticism and tough criticism, strong enough to work through failure.

I get to know these people individually, I sit in a room and talk to them, I ask them questions, I get a feel for who they are as people — I know I’m betting on them. Yes, I’m betting on their idea and yes I’m betting on a pilot story, but I am, more than anything else, I am betting on a person, or people if it’s a partnership. And I never forget that.

You can’t fake love. You either have it or you don’t. And I love this. I love this and I love the people who do it with passion and do it well. And I really try to be someone who cares about, thinks about, the players.

I certainly am a wonky guy who does everything I can to develop technique in myself or others, and I will use any piece of data and I can get very buttoned up on the numbers. I mean, I am not someone who is not analytical and doesn’t believe in analysis.

But at the end of the day, I don’t think you can get to the highest level if you’re coming from an analytical point of view. I think you have to come in with your heart. I think you have to bring your whole heart to the enterprise because I think people feel that — they feel a level of dedication, passion and caring, if it’s there, that’s different than analysis.

MCN: Continuing on that thought, you have been very public in stating that you have provided more opportunities for people of color and women behind the scenes and on camera. How important is that to the overall success of FX?
JL: What I have been trying to do here is have a brand that isn’t manufactured from the top down … it grows from the grass roots up. And I don’t think that that brand then is about a particular demographic. I don’t think it’s about a particular gender or a particular ethnicity. I think it’s about fearless points of view and fearless innovation and fearless pursuit of quality.

So it’s been really important to me that [FX’s programming] wasn’t only a white, male thing, you know? Famously, and this is a testament to the fact that you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelet, we developed Breaking Bad and I passed on it. So call that a really colossal mistake on my part, the beneficiary of which was AMC because we let it go. We had it, we owned it and then they wanted to make it, and we didn’t want to make it, so we let it go elsewhere.

But I made that decision because I didn’t want to put a fourth male anti-hero show on the air when we had three already — Nip/Tuck, The Shield and Rescue Me. We put Damages on the air instead — pretty good show, also nominated for an Emmy with Mad Men. It broke that glass ceiling, although Mad Men won and Damages didn’t. But that was a statement about the pathway we wanted to move forward, which was we wanted the best talent, not the best talent that wanted to write about white male anti-heroes — the best talent period, full stop.

The other thing I’ve said — and I mean it — is that as I’ve reflected with great gratitude on this tremendous opportunity that this career has given me, and the opportunity to run this wonderful brand and lead this team, I’ve thought about the mentors that had made that possible. A common theme in that list is white males. White, heterosexual males. And I’m a white, heterosexual male.

So how do I not recognize it as an unearned advantage that essentially I had some things that were tremendously in common with them in terms of my own gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation?

So I just said, “You know what, OK, so pay it forward.” And paying it forward for me doesn’t mean don’t hire a white man, because I do, but it means … work hard to overcome the tendency for that to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and really, really put your back into it, have your organization put its back into creating an outsized number of opportunities for women and people of color and people with different gender identities and sexual orientations. Act locally.

So we have been very, very aggressive at doing that. The last time we counted, 57% of our episodic directors [were] non-white males. And by the way, when we got called out by Variety, that was 12%. So we have gone from 88% white males to 43%. We halved that. And concurrently, we have increased the ratio of people who are non-white males directing by almost five times.

MCN: Why are you pushing back Katrina ? What’s happened with that show?
JL: After thinking about it long and hard, the [American Crime Story] creative people involved decided they wanted to focus the story in a slightly different way, and that required some rethinking of how we were going to tell it. And we already had Versace in production, and it’s going great. So in essence, we were like, “OK, well, we’ve got a little bit more time here to get Katrina exactly right.” And I’m even more excited about where we’re coming out on Katrina.

MCN: So will both appear in 2018? Katrina later in 2018 and Versace earlier?
JK: I would say that is likely, yes.

MCN: Is there anything you want to get off your chest?
JK: I think that analysts and investors and some of the people that write about our industry are counting us out, because they are looking at it as if we are and always will be linear television brands and channels, and therefore our potential as businesses only lies in how successful linear channels and brands will be in the future. And I think that’s a mistake. I think we are actually incredibly well-positioned to be profoundly successful nonlinear, multiplatform brands.

What’s on Tap This Summer
Networks set seasonal slate of studio-produced fare

The summer television season is upon us, and cable networks along with video streaming services are gearing up to launch new scripted series in programming genres ranging from comedy to horror and drama. Here’s a partial list of new original scripted series premieres from cable and digital subscription video-on-demand services from June 19 through Aug. 31.

JUNE 19
Loch Ness
Drama (Acorn TV)

JUNE 22
The Mist
Horror/drama (Spike)

JUNE 23
GLOW
Comedy (Netflix)
Free Rein
Drama (Netflix)

JUNE 25
Hotel Transylvania:
The Series
Animated (Disney Channel)

JUNE 27
Tales
Drama (BET)

JUNE 30
Gypsy
Drama (Netflix)
Little Witch Academia
Animated series (Netflix)
Danger & Eggs
Animated series (Amazon)

JULY 5
Snowfall
Drama (FX)

JULY 7
Castlevania
Animated series (Netflix)

JULY 10
Will
Drama (TNT)

JULY 11
The Bold Type
Drama (Freeform)
The Hollywood Puppet Sh!t Show
Comedy (Fuse)
American Ripper
Drama (History)

JULY 12
I’m Sorry
Comedy (TruTV)

JULY 14
Friends from College
Comedy (Netflix)

JULY 17
Loaded
Drama (AMC)

JULY 21
Raven’s Home
Comedy (Disney Channel)
Ozark
Drama (Netflix)

JULY 28
Room 104
Drama (HBO)

AUG. 2
The Sinner
Drama (USA Network)

AUG. 3
What Would Diplo Do?
Comedy (Viceland)

AUG. 9
Mr. Mercedes
Drama (Audience Network)

AUG. 13
Get Shorty
Comedy (Epix)

AUG. 18
Marvel’s The Defenders
Drama (Netflix)

AUG. 24
There’s … Johnny!
Comedy (Seeso)

AUG. 25
Disjointed
Comedy (Netflix)
The Tick
Comedy (Amazon)

Get complete coverage of the 2017 Winter Press Tour.

FX will extend its anthology series American Horror Story for two additional seasons beyond its already scheduled seventh installment, the network announced during its Television Critics Association press tour presentation Thursday.

The network will add seasons eight and nine to the Ryan Murphy-produced American Horror Story franchise, which is slated to return for its  previously announced seventh campaign later this year, according to John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and FX Productions.

The series has won 15 Emmy Awards during its first six season and currently represents 12 of FX’s top 15 most watched telecasts ever, according to the network.

“American Horror Story launched the modern limited series revolution and – as evidenced by the most recent installment ‘Roanoke’ - it remains as vital today as when Murder House stunned audiences six years ago,” said John Landgraf. “Each new chapter is a cultural event, beloved for every new twist in imagery, style, cast and plot. We are thrilled that Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and the entire creative team will continue to deliver the groundbreaking, celebrated American Horror Story for years to come.”

FX also announced premiere dates for several of its new and returning series, including the debut of freshman drama series FEUD: Bette and Joan (March 5), the fifth season return of The Americans (March 7) and the premiere of animated series Archer on FXX (April 5).

Delayed viewing was an even bigger factor for TV's most time-shifted shows in 2016, according to Nielsen.

AMC's Better Call Saul saw a 278.7% increase in viewers from time shifting, ranking it first in percentage change. A year ago, Better Call Saul got a 215.2% increase from time shifting, ranking it third. The top show in 2015 was Fargo, which registered a 240.3% increase.

FX's American Horror Story was No. 2 with a 245.5% increase, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, also on FX, was third at 238.6%.

Nielsen said three reality shows made the top 10, up from just one a year ago.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

FX has greenlit a spinoff of its Ryan Murphy-created American Horror Story franchise that will look at true crime stories, the network said Tuesday.

The 10-episode series, American Crime Story, will be directed by Murphy and will focus on the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial that took place in the mid-1990s. The series will be based on the Jeffrey Toobin book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, said network officials.

Murphy will also serve as executive producer of the mini-series, alongside Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson (The Hunger Games, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story.)

“Time and time again, Ryan Murphy has transformed the medium of television by redefining genres and formats as he did with Nip/Tuck, Glee and the American Horror Story franchise, and we expect the same of American Crime Story,” said FX and FX Productions CEO John Landgraf.  "Scott and Larry have adapted Jeffrey Toobin’s book into a masterful 10-hour piece. I have no doubt that Ryan and his partners, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Brad Falchuk, and Dante Di Loreto are going to make something very memorable here – and that it will be a spectacular first entry in what is destined to become a series of great true crime-based miniseries."

A new season of American Horror Story, dubbed Freakshow, will launch on Wednesday night.