While it might seem like all the good television shows have come and gone (besides Better Call Saul…for now), we actually might not even have reached the full potential of “peak TV” yet.
While The Golden Era has had some ups and downs, the number of scripted series from this year is very high, leading FX’s John Landgraf to believe that TV hasn’t fully peaked yet. “My original prediction that we would see maximum in 2018 or 2019 was obviously way, way off,” Landgraf said this week during a virtual TCA press event. The exec attributes COVID delays as a reason for a lull in TV from 2020 to early 2022, but says that the drought is finally coming to an end.
“I’m going to foolishly make another prediction, which is that 2022 will be the high watermark [of scripted TV],” he boldly claimed via Variety. “In other words, it will mark the peak of the peak TV era. It will take a year and a half to find out if I’m right this time, or we’ll have to eat crow yet again.” Hear that, HBO? You only have 18 months to fill the Soprano-less void that has been sitting there since 2007.
Landgraf predicts that the influx of scripts from earlier this year will bring TV to its peak. “This year, we’ve seen a tidal wave of scripted programming thanks to the bottleneck of COVID delay production finally clearing up from January 1 through the end of June,” Landgraf continued. “The number of scripted series has set a record for the first half of the year.”
Between January and June of this year, there were 357 scripted originals across broadcast, cable, and streaming, which is up 16% from 2021. 2021’s final count of 559 scripted shows brought TV to an all-time high, and Landgraf thinks that things will only go up from here! He added, “I think it’s obvious that this year will bring a new record.”
Only time (and the subsequent Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones spinoffs) will tell.
