Why is there almost no new TV out there?
Why is my favorite show suddenly on a new streamer?
Why is everybody in TV struggling to find work right now?
If you've recently noticed fewer new TV shows, or wondered why your favorite show is suddenly migrating to a different streaming platform, what you're seeing are the repercussions of the streaming wars. And so many people in Hollywood are finding themselves in a period of uncertainty, grappling with changing market conditions and the insane changes forced on the industry by streamers. Nowhere are these changes seen more clearly than in the TV writers' room.
This is the current situation in the TV writing world, how we got here, and where things are headed...
How Did We Get Here?
To understand where we are today, we have to look back to when streaming firmly took hold of the market.
2018-2019: The Rise of Streaming and the Streaming Wars
The current streaming giants, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Apple—many of them backed by venture capital—pushed aggressively into the market, launching their own platforms and amassing gigantic libraries of original content. This proved to be a serious threat to the traditional network and cable models. I worked in network TV during this period, and every year, the amount of viewers watching got lower and lower. The Nielsen Rating markers for what was considered a success plummeted. Meanwhile, cable TV became nothing more than rerun depositories.
The “streaming wars” began, with each new platform vying for more and more subscribers. Netflix was the first one in, followed by Hulu, and then Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Apple TV+. There was an open faucet of spending that increased exponentially the number of TV shows available.
2022: The First Dip in Streaming Subscribers
Netflix sees its first ever loss in subscribers. For years, investors and venture capitalists had been happy to throw money at these streaming platforms, hoping for profitability with no real immediate game plan to actually achieve that. Other than Netflix, every streamer was hemorrhaging money, and this dip in Netflix's subscribers spooked Wall Street. The amount of capital pouring into these streaming TV shows starts to dry up. The open faucet of spending is shutting.
2023: A Crisis in Hollywood
Companies begin slashing budgets, reducing the amount of new content being produced. Meanwhile, the WGA and SAG called a strike, completely shutting down production in Hollywood. At the heart of this crisis was the TV writers' room. Fewer shows were greenlit, and many TV writers found themselves without work.
So, why haven't network and cable stepped in? Well, they had already been dealt a deathblow. Cable basically doesn't make scripted TV anymore, and network TV has a fraction of the scripted TV it used to.
For writers' rooms, the push for more content meant tons of TV shows and potential jobs. But streamers attempted to make TV writing more "efficient." So, TV writers' rooms were made to be smaller - there were fewer writers hired every year. In addition, there were less episodes being made, so, if you could get a job, employment in a TV writers' room lasted shorter than before, and there were fewer seasons, so you couldn't rely on coming back to the same show.
This was still a problem when there were hundreds of TV shows being made. But the proliferation of writing jobs at least softened the blow. Now, TV writers' room jobs were shorter, and there were very few of them.
2024: Where are we now?
Big Tech, as they often do, decided to disrupt, but failed to replace. Now, instead of spending money on new content, streamers are licensing shows from each other in a bid to appear as though they have "new shows." With budgets as narrow as they are, the actual new TV shows we're seeing are only coming from already established showrunner/creators and have huge movie star-level attachments.
The Impact on the TV Writers' Room
As production budgets have been slashed, the number of writers' rooms has decreased significantly. Where once a network might have had dozens of ongoing projects with multiple writers working on each, now there are fewer shows being greenlit, and each project has fewer writers attached.
As I mentioned, the established creators are the only ones getting TV shows made. And since the TV writers' rooms are smaller, they're full of other already established TV writers. This is making it incredibly difficult for younger writers to make their way in. The path has been made less viable and it's harder to sustain a career.
Where Do TV Writers' Rooms Go from Here?
This current state will not last forever. The post-streaming wars era will eventually look a lot like what we had before. Already we're getting ads on subscriber-based platforms. Next, we'll likely see bundles, packages, and a new form of "networks," except this time it will be streamers.
While many writers and creatives are struggling right now, I believe the future of TV writing is promising. We've been in the midst of a creative plateau for a while. Audiences are craving something fresh and original. Eventually there will be a breakthrough hit from an unlikely new writer, the show will likely be cheap to make, and suddenly, streamers and networks will bet on young talent and cheaper shows instead of the huge tentpoles and million dollar stars they're feeding us now.
That's when the creativity will shine and TV will return to its former glory. Right now, we're in the middle of a shake-up, but all it takes is one hit for the whole industry to sway in another direction. That one hit could save the TV writers' room and get people back to work.
Breaking into the TV writers' room
Right now, during this lull, is a great time to start reaching out to TV writers and working on your material. Getting into the writers' room is about increasing your network, and with so many writers out of work, they have more time than before to chat and give some advice.
Networking is one of the most important ways to treat TV writing like a career, which is exactly what I discuss in my book, Breaking into TV Writing. We are about to enter a new era of TV, and you want to be positioned to take ride the new wave when it breaks.
