How Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other streaming services changed the way we watch TV
- A record 495 new original TV series were introduced in 2018 in the United States
- Streaming services put out more series than cable and broadcast TV networks
The flat screen on your living room wall, the cable box below it and the digital programme guide that help you find your way through an increasingly congested universe of shopping networks, reality show repeats and the eight channels you actually watch might as well have been inhabitants of a dying star in 2018.
Television, already bursting at the seams with peak programming and lots of filler, finally blew apart this year, fragmenting into a dizzying constellation of nearly 500 new original series and destinations we’ve yet to explore. These include the forthcoming launch of subscription streaming services from Apple, Warner Media, Disney and, yes, Costco and Walmart, plus a whole lot of space debris that includes Terrence Howard’s Fright Club, a Fox Nation cooking show and 98 per cent of the offerings on YouTube TV.
A record 495 original scripted series dropped this year, and for the first time, streaming platforms such as Hulu and Amazon Prime delivered more original series programming than broadcast and cable networks.
Forget arguments about when and how peak TV will peak. Judging from the past 12 months, it doesn’t appear we’re anywhere close to the summit. More interesting is what’s been happening below those lofty heights. After a decade or more of seismic shifts across the industry, 2018 became the year that television broke TV. The very structure of the medium morphed and changed so rapidly over the last year that we still haven’t wrapped our heads – or attention spans – around exactly what it is we’re watching.
Was the YouTube live stream of Beyonce’s performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival a TV event or something else? And what about the wonderfully bizarre formatting of Atlanta’s second season? It was shown on FX, but the series’ self-contained episodes resembled nothing else on TV.
Next year is already shaping up to be a battle between media giants for control of wherever it is that we’re heading.