As America's total output of scripted TV series yet again grows in 2018, video streaming services for the first time are collectively producing the most shows.

The past year has seen another surge in the ongoing increase of scripted TV series from America, with the television avalanche of programming growing to 495 original series in 2018 and with video streaming services for the first time collectively responsible for making the most shows.

America's FX channel once again released its annual report on the voluminous expansion of television in the so-called "Peak TV" era as TV channels and video streaming services are all engaging in a non-stop ramping up of new television content.

In FX's annual market research on the state of scripted television in the United States, 2018 saw yet another increase of scripted TV fare to 495 original series - yet another new record. That is up from 487 original series in 2017.

Interestingly, the global streaming services Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Apple now lead the pack with a combined 32% of all original series in production (an increase of 25% over 2017) - collectively doing more TV series than traditional pay-TV channels and the traditional American TV broadcasting networks.

Streaming series grew from 117 originals last year to 160 in 2018. Out of the 495 scripted originals in 2018, 146 were on broadcast networks, 144 on "basic cable" in America and 45 on pay-TV.

"We are entering a period of slower growth," says John Landgraf, FX Networks chief executive. "It's a kind of a Darwinian market where only the strong will, and can, survive. I don't think we have reached the peak in scripted programming made for the streaming services," he says.

Julie Piepenkotter led the FX research team.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 7 May 2018.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ Pay-TV woes deepening in the United States as "cord-cutting" continues and traditional pay-TV customers flee and move to things like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
The fundamental shift in consumer behaviour from traditional pay-TV to streaming services are making investors worried that pay-TV companies don't have the right assets and scale in order for them to compete against the new streaming services.

■ "Bush meat" scandal in Ghana as actress Moesha Boduong told CNN she did sex-for-rent with a married man as sexual harassment is as bad in the West African country as its economy.

■ Pay-TV cost to consumers have kept increasing astronomically the past 20 years which is why more and more people are "cutting the cord".
The monthly pay-TV bill increased much faster than salaries the past 2 decades - which means that pay-TV operators are demanding that customers pay nearly double now, than what they did 20 years ago.


■ MUST READ: Is peak-TV slowly killing TV critics?
There's too much TV now for anyone to keep up with, including the TV critics who are literally paid to do it.


■ Extremely depressing how TV ratings in America continue its nose-dive: Even Roseanne can't save America's tanking live TV viewership anymore.
A play-by-play for each American TV network and its increasing ratings problems.

■ Look! Camel rides and falcon shows (and how much actual reporting?) about MultiChoice's disappointing 5th Digital Dialogue Conference in Dubai.

■ Speaking of which, 4 reasons why digital media is causing the death of television.

■ An unlikely character in Netflix's new Lost in Space is an object of desire.


■ Fraudsters steal N200 million (R6.96 million) from MultiChoice Nigeria.
Three alleged fraudsters - Mor Diop (49), Ekeng Ewa Ekeng (44) and Anabel Adagbasa (26) - in court in Lagos along with Nigcom Network Solution Ltd. after allegedly hacking into DStv Nigeria's DStv and GOtv computer network data and stealing money.


■ American Horror Story and Joan Collins are perfect for each other.

■ Yet another bank in Zimbabwe has had enough and is dumping payments to DStv Zimbabwe.
CABS now also demands that customers bring cold, hard dollars as payment for the MultiChoice Zimbabwe subscription fees - plus a $5 commission fee.

■ Poor thing fired from Motherwell Diagnostics in Nigeria because she couldn't stop watching M-Net's Big Brother Naija at work on DStv and kept tuning the TV set to the show despite warnings not to.
Now she's been sacked from the medical laboratory "in order that you do not become a bad influence on the rest of the workers".

Glut of TV to watch continues as the number of Peak TV era original series keeps rising to a new record high in 2017.

The glut of TV available to watch continues to as the number of Peak TV era original series keeps rising, reaching a new record high in 2017.

John Landgraf, FX CEO, has given his annual update on Peak TV to America's TV critics during the twice yearly Television Critics Association (TCA) tour in Pasadena, California, revealing that the amount of original TV series currently in production once again rose to a new record high in 2017 - up another 7% to 487 series from 455 in 2016, with no sign of slowing down.

A large percentage of this content is funneled to international viewers - including in South Africa and across Africa - through international pay-TV channels carried on platforms like MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

Shows also travel as part of individual and Hollywood TV studio output deals with pay-TV broadcasters like M-Net buying large rafts of premium shows with which to programme and populate the schedules of its set of M-Net packaged channels that are carried on DStv.

Besides the American shows, South African viewers also have to contend with local broadcasters like the SABC, e.tv and community TV channels and their offering of shows, as well as international pay-TV channels ramping up the production of local shows filmed in South Africa and across Africa that are rapidly increasing year after year.

Then there's the sprinkling of European and Australian series, on top of the British series from BBC Worldwide for its channels set made available in South Africa and across parts of Africa.

The increase in original scripted American TV series during 2017 was largely fueled by the millions of dollars being poured into TV show creation by the massive global subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video - up from 90 to a whopping 117 series in 2017.

This continued growth in digital streaming programming is set to continue to drive the growth in the overall number of TV series from America in 2018.

DAILY TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 4 October 2017.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ South Africa's boxing community furious at the SABC over false promises, delays.
SABC slammed by boxers‚ trainers‚ promoters and Boxing SA (BSA) officials over its lack of communication. Even the press can't reach the SABC.

■ A Cosatu public protest could be coming to Newlands on Saturday over the lack of free-to-air coverage
of Springbok rugby test that's only being shown live on SuperSport on MultiChoice's DStv, depriving millions of South Africans from seeing it due to the SABC's failure.
"People who cannot afford DStv are treated like second hand citizens of South Africa," says Cosatu.

■ The duration of TV commercials in America keeps shrinking.

■ Jeffrey Katzenberg is looking for a massive amount of money for his new TV start-up plan.
Wants to create New TV - the mobile smartphone version of HBO with expensive TV shows costing $100 000 per episode, Game of Thrones type shows that's 10 minutes long.

■ More on Star Trek The Next Generation turning 30 years old.
- And Star Trek: Discovery becomes one of the most pirated shows in less than 24 hours.

■ Peak TV is pushing TV show budgets to the breaking point as costs skyrocket. TV channels are burning cash to meet the soaring per-episode costs of shows like Game of Thrones.
-  Something is wrong: TV simply can't support this big expansion this quickly. Is out-of-control per-episode costs going to kill Peak TV?

■ Hilariously lying TStv hyperbole as the new Nigerian satellite pay-TV operator says it will employ 5 000 people.
- And more falsehoods as TStv claims its available 24 hours per day - if only TStv actually responded to media enquiries from the press as well.
- "TStv can't compete with DStv" and the TStv offering looks more like "emotional marketing.

■ Namibia's public broadcaster Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) wants to force Namibians to pay their TV licence fees ... with enforcement help from the police.
Namibians are up in arms and like in South Africa with the SABC, Namibians say the NBC should first improve its actual bad content.

■ Uganda's broadcasting regulator does hard censorship.
The despotic Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) bans live TV and radio broadcasts from showing Uganda citizens what's happening in their own parliament.

■ The evolution of Tom Welling: From Smallville to Lucifer.
Tom Welling on why he is back on TV 6 years after Smallville ended.

■ Shocking social media censorship coming to Tanzania in draconian new law.
Even TV channels will have to "apply for registration".

■ Iran to launch its first TV channel packaged for Africa.

■ A TV trash Obama.
An uproar in Cameroon over the trash presenter Ernest Obama at Vision 4 who continues his hate speech on television.

The avalanche of new TV scripted TV series reaches new record in 2016; will continue to grow in 2017 as viewers struggle to keep up.

While South African TV viewers complain about repeats, the latest results from an annual study about "Peak TV" and the number of new shows being made reveals that television in American and on South African screens are awash with more new television that any one person can possibly hope to watch.

As viewers are already struggling to keep up, 2017 is set to bring even more new television.

The latest results from the annual "Peak TV" study released by the FX pay-TV channel reveals that 2016 brought viewers more original TV series than ever before - 455 compared to 421 in 2015 - with the number that will grow even more series in 2017.

This is just for American shows - the large majority of which is seen in South Africa. This excludes reality shows, documentaries and kids' television, as well as the additional local content shown by South Africa's broadcasters the SABC, e.tv and M-Net.

"Peak TV was once again far from peaky in 2016, with a record 455 scripted original series across broadcast, cable, and streaming sources," says Julie Piepenkotter, the executive vice president of research at FX Networks in a statement.

"This estimate represents an 8% percent increase over just the last year (421 in 2015) ― but an astonishing 71% increase over five years ago (266 in 2011) and 137% over a decade ago (192 in 2006)."

If the trend keeps up, it means that 2017 could deliver close to 500 original scripted shows, each consisting of multiple episodes viewers have to try and sample and then try and keep up with.

Interestingly the biggest growth is now coming from so-called "streaming" shows, original TV series - drams and sitcoms - produced by and for subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) players like Netflix and Amazon's Amazon Prime Video that launched last week in South Africa and 35 other African countries.

These online pay-TV services like Netflix and Amazon are now driving new TV show growth, producing almost twice as many series in 2016 compared to last year.

Some of the content from these SVOD players have been brought and are broadcast on some of the linear TV channels on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform - for instance Orange is the New Black from Netflix, Mozart in the Jungle from Amazon, The Art of More from Crackle and some others all shown on M-Net.

There's however an exploding number of new shows that are only accessible through subscriptions to these SVOD services, making subscriptions to these services the only way for South Africans to see this growing number of shows.

With DStv that no longer has everything exclusively, TV watchers who want to keep up with and watch everything, now need subscriptions for a growing number of additional pay-TV platforms.

If you want to watch Shadowhunters, Fuller House or the upcoming A Series of Unfortunate Events in January 2017 you'll need Netflix, and an Amazon Prime Video subscription for Jeremy Clarkson's new The Grand Tour is the only legitimate way to see that show.

Then there's the library series services of Naspers' ShowMax and PCCW Global's ONTAPtv.com with back catalogues of hundreds of shows, with MTN's VU and the LGBT streamer PrideTV also providing carousels of TV series.