Report: Scripted TV Commissions Fall Below Pandemic Levels; With the WGA Strike, Will Streamers Be Without New Shows?
TV watchers in the United States are plenty nervous, nowadays. A Writers Guild of America strike means that more than 11,000 television writers have walked off the job, and if the strike isn't settled soon it could start to effect the fall release schedule for cable and broadcast networks.
There are more factors at play than just a writers’ strike which could affect Hollywood’s content output, however. That’s according to a new report from the London-based Ampere Analysis, which has released new data that shows commissions for new, scripted TV series have fallen 24% year-on-year over the last three quarters. Overall, volumes of commissions for new shows are lower now than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That means that fewer new, original series are being made. The lag time between commissioning and the release of a title means that American audiences haven’t felt the crunch yet, but by the end of this year and early 2024, they will see a noticeably smaller slate of new titles on TV and streaming.
The analytics firm sees two possibilities from the way the data lies now. If commissioning rates for new shows recover soon, audiences will see between 5% and 7% fewer scripted releases each quarter between now and Q2 2024, when the effects will ease; strike impacts notwithstanding. If rates do not recover soon, as seems more likely with the current writers’ strike, audiences can expect 16% fewer releases in Q4 2023, and 20% fewer from Q2 2024 onwards.
This data should not come as a big surprise to anyone following trends in the streaming industry over the past year or so. Ever since Netflix posted subscriber losses for two straight quarters to start 2022, Wall Street has been far more interested in streamers showing profitability than in services showing gaudy new subscriber numbers. That has led to a correction in content spending, which will lead to fewer commissions as streamers try to identify which titles will be true profit-drivers before sending them to production.
There is at least one exception to this industry trend, however; Prime Video. As other streamers are slowing down their content spending, Amazon is taking advantage of the softer commissions marketplace to add more titles to its production lineup. Of the major streaming platforms, Prime Video was the only one to increase its percentage of new commissions between the third quarter of 2022 and Q3 of 2023. Amazon has multiple revenue streams, and its e-commerce segment is the primary driver of profits, so the company is less affected by market forces that are dictating a content slowdown for other streaming platforms.
That information might lead one to suspect that unscripted TV shows are getting commissioned more often to fill in the gaps, but Ampere’s data shows this is not the case. Commissions of unscripted series on subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services are down 33% over the past three quarters, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been the biggest culprit. Between July 2022 and March 23, 2023, there were 241 fewer unscripted TV commissions in the U.S.; WBD accounted for 172 of them, a 32% drop for the company’s unscripted commissions overall.
This data also makes sense when considering what WBD is planning to do with discovery+, its streaming platform that specializes in unscripted programming. Much of the discovery+ library will be integrated with HBO Max to create a new streaming service called Max, which will launch May 23. WBD will keep discovery+ as a standalone streamer, but users shouldn’t expect the same number of new, unscripted shows on the service in the future as they’ve seen in years past. What had formerly been discovery+ originals will now live on Max and shows from WBD’s cable networks Discovery, Investigation Discovery, Food Network, HGTV, and others are slowing down as well.
The smaller number of commissions across the TV landscape will mean that fewer titles are released in the coming months, regardless of how long the writers’ strike continues. Users should not see this as a huge shift in the market, but rather a reversion back to more normal operations. Streaming services released more than 1,700 original titles in 2022, a 60% increase over 2021, and with content spending on the way down, there was simply no way for the industry to maintain its recent breakneck pace.
“While the commissioning cutbacks in unscripted content at the dominant pay TV and SVOD platforms have been severe, there is a sense of balance being restored after a significant pandemic peak,” Ampere research manager Fred Black said. “COVID-19 saw unscripted commissions soar out of necessity due to production complications, and then continue at a high level due to a surprisingly enthusiastic audience. What we’re seeing now is a course correction.”
In the end, unless your favorite streamer is Prime Video, you’ll likely see fewer original titles debuting later this year and early next year. But this doesn’t mean that these services are in trouble, they are simply adjusting to the new normal that all streamers are trying to deal with.
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