The Emmy Awards today are to celebrate the best of the hundreds of television shows flooding US airwaves, in what many critics have called the small screen’s “golden age.” However, critics wonder if audiences reached saturation point. Is there, in fact, too much good TV?
“We’re in this insane expansion — it’s getting a little crazy,” said Tom Nunan, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Theater, Film and Television. “I’m a freak addict of these shows but even I can’t keep up.”
Industry experts say about 400 television shows will be on offer this year in the US, up from 371 last year and roughly double the 213 from five years ago.
“This is simply too much television,” John Landgraf, head of the cable channel FX Networks, said recently, sparking gasps in the industry. “My sense is that 2015 and 2016 will represent a peak in US TV, and afterwards we’ll see a decline.”
The production of TV series shot up in the last 15 years as cable channels joined traditional networks in offering original programming. Streaming services such as Amazon, Netflix and Hulu have since arrived on the scene with their own offerings.
“There are 60 channels who buy or commission scripted content,” Nunan said. “It is a strange confluence of new platforms along with overwhelming buying capability.”
Sensing the winds of change, acclaimed film actors — from Kevin Spacey on Netflix’s House of Cards to Viola Davis on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder — have flocked to the small screen.
This in turn has not only boosted the quality of the shows on offer, but also increased the diversity of the projects that are developed for TV.
At this year’s Emmys, the shows nominated range from epic fantasy saga Game of Thrones to stylish 1960s drama Mad Men to ensemble comedy Modern Family and Amazon’s transgender “dramedy” Transparent.
Mad Men is seen as one of the best shows in a triumphant era in TV that has included mob classic The Sopranos, cop saga The Wire and crime drama Breaking Bad.
“This is the most exciting period I’ve ever seen in television, and it’s probably the most exciting place to be if you’re a storyteller,” actor Ron Perlman, star of Amazon’s new series Hand of God, said recently at a meeting of TV critics.
Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University, said he believes that Web providers like Netflix and Amazon will continue to grow thanks to their ability to take more risks artistically, compared to traditional TV channels that rely on advertising to survive.
And once viewers subscribe to these pay channels, he added, they usually stay.
However, he also notes that shows do not necessarily need to be ultra-sophisticated to be good.
“There are a lot of high-quality shows that are less artistically ambitious, but very well-executed like Empire, which was a very good show,” Thompson said of Fox’s hip-hop family drama.
For Nunan, the biggest issue is not the fear that the era of good TV shows will suddenly disappear, it is figuring out how to watch them all: “I just think it’s getting more and more difficult to find time to watch the shows.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese