![John Landgraf](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/John-Landgraf-Reservation-Dogs-Screening-GettyImages-1356903979-H-2023.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
FX head John Landgraf coined the term “Peak TV” in the summer of 2015; that year, according to the annual tally of scripted series FX puts out, 420 such shows aired in the United States.
Aside from the pandemic-affected 2020, the total has risen every year since then. According to FX research, 2022 brought 599 English-language scripted shows to viewers — 40 more than in 2021, for a year-to-year increase of 7 percent.
Landgraf presented the annual total Thursday at the Television Critics Association press tour. He noted that the second half of the year slowed down from the furious pace of the first six months of 2022, when more than 350 shows were released — a possible marker that the actual peak of Peak TV might be at hand.
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“In August, I said it would be the 2020s you would find the market peak of scripted TV series and that is still my bet, while noting with humility that I’ve been wrong on this prediction twice before,” Landgraf said.
FX has tracked the number of English-language scripted series across all platforms since 2009. Over those 14 years, the number of shows has almost tripled, going from 210 in 2009 to 599 last year. The only year that marked a decline was 2020, when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down or delayed production on a number of series.
FX’s annual count is a snapshot of the scripted landscape but represents just a fraction of all of TV. It doesn’t include hundreds of unscripted shows, sports or news programming, children’s television or the growing market of non-English-language series.
Here is the annual tally of scripted series from FX since 2009:
2009: 210
2010: 216
2011: 266
2012: 288
2013: 349
2014: 389
2015: 420
2016: 454
2017: 487
2018: 495
2019: 532
2020: 496
2021: 559
2022: 599
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