PASADENA, Calif. — There were a record 599 adult scripted shows in 2022, up 7% from 2021, according to a closely watched annual tally conducted by cable network FX.
John Landgraf, chairman of FX Content and FX Productions, and the godfather of the so-called “Peak TV Theory,” said the number would likely go down in 2023, but he acknowledged he’d made that prediction before, only to see the number of scripted series climb.
“I think that 599 is the peak,” Landgraf said during FX’s Television Critics Association press tour session Thursday. “I don’t think you’ll see that number again. I think it’s going to start to come down.”
Landgraf has plenty of data this time to back up his prediction. For example, U.K. research company Ampere Analysis recently said that U.S. scripted series orders were down 24% in the back half of 2022, with major suppliers including Warner Bros. Discovery cutting way back on spending.
The FX session began with a trailer from upcoming drama Shogun.
Landgraf called 2022 “a very good year creatively” for the network. Among the FX research he shared was a chart showing Disney and its brands, including FX, with 533 votes for the TV critics’ best shows in 2022, ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery at 494 (that includes HBO), Apple TV Plus at 188 and Netflix at 187.
Among networks, HBO had 485 critics’ picks, FX 269, Apple TV had 188 and Netflix had 187.
“The competition is beginning to narrow,” Landgraf noted, speaking of the challenge not only of producing 599 original shows, but marketing them as well.
FX also broke it down by show. Apple TV Plus’s Severance tallied 81 critics’ votes for best show; FX/Hulu’s The Bear and Disney Plus’s Andor had 76, and AMC’s Better Call Saul had 65.
Besides The Bear, buzzy FX shows include Atlanta, Fleishman Is in Trouble and What We Do in the Shadows.
Landgraf spoke of Hulu as vital to FX’s distribution. He referred to the streamer as “an everything brand, a supermarket brand” and one far broader than FX. “Our brand is the human condition writ large,” he said, with shows differing in their aesthetics and tone. “I believe so strongly that individual titles have always been the bulwark of our business.”
Basic cable, he said, “is really struggling to compete,” with FX and AMC “really holding the fort.”
All content creators and distributors are challenged with getting viewers’ attention for a few hours each week. “How do you get people to pause and have a really special experience” amid social media, video games and other entertainment and attention options, Landgraf wondered. “That’s a challenge Hollywood is having right now.”
He said FX is focused on producing shows that “make them worth stopping to watch” and “having something different from what TikTok provides, what YouTube provides.”
Asked about upcoming projects, Landgraf said no topic has been finalized for the next installment of American Crime Story, and Noah Hawley’s Alien series has scripts and is in pre-production, with production beginning this year, when Hawley completes the new season of Fargo.
Asked about weekly distribution versus all-at-once, both of which apply to various FX-produced shows, Landgraf said he prefers the weekly approach, but bingeing works well for some series, such as The Bear.
“I’m trying to learn the possibilities of the new medium,” he said. “I’d like to hold onto appointment viewing and weekly viewing as much as we can.” ■
