[Lifestyle] The pandemic that transformed TV and film – perhaps forever

[FearLess]

From its start, television has offered itself as an entertaining distraction that viewers can depend on to escape the stresses and troubles of real-life, such as the rand-dollar exchange rate, a heart-wrenching breakup, global warming, the day Prince died, and now, Covid-19.

The alarming spread of the virus has led to sweeping changes across the board that demand an embrace (or at the least an abiding tolerance) of new social norms that have rapidly transformed our behaviour, and habits.

As millions of people across the globe are confined to their houses or encouraged to #stayathome, the abrupt, yet necessary shifts in how people consume media – especially TV and film – have already shown significant consequences.

THE END OF PEAK TV IS NIGH

In 2015, comedy actor Andy Samberg joked about the almost infinite number of TV shows in a sketch created for his opening monologue as the host of that year’s Emmy Awards.

It starts off with Andy at dinner with friends, where eyebrows are raised in pop culture judgement as it becomes clear he has not watched Mad Men. Or How to Get Away with Murder. Or the almost a hundred shows with Wives in the title. Feeling bummed out, he sequesters himself in a bunker (a clever play on the breakout show of the season, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) to watch TV. All of it. A year later he emerges, a shell of a man, but all caught up and happy to know the backstory of every single housewife. That is until Nathan Fillion asks if he watched his show, Castle. Nope. Back to the bunker.

In his own merry way, Samberg was saying: There’s just so much TV (maybe, definitely, too much TV) that the bubble will eventually pop. It’s a prediction John Landgraf, the CEO of FX Networks (home of shows like The Americans, Fargo, You’re the Worst, and American Horror Story) christened Peak TV. After this extraordinary cycle of swift and massive growth in the creation of original shows since 2013 (when streaming really took off with the hit House of Cards) a similarly fast decline will follow. The bubble, he said, would burst in 2018.

On the contrary.

Instead, in a race to win over viewers, empowered with increasing agency to pick and choose from the masses of content at their fingertips, networks produce even more shows.

The traditional TV medium, the TV as it were, is now also supplemented by online infrastructure, like one of the most successful networks, HBO, that started their online expansion years ago with HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max. A local version of this is DStv and DStv Now.

Then there’s the whopping $15 billion Netflix spent on show development and production last year alone. All in all, the number of original scripted series tallied a record of 532 shows in 2019. Worth noting: This number does not include anything unscripted like documentaries, reality TV, and news programs. What’s more: kids’ programming is also not added to the calculation.

Landgraf gamely admitted he was wrong, and in January of this year said he expects the total amount of shows to “increase substantially” in 2020.

He’s going to be wrong again.

In Europe, more than 1000 TV shows halted production when the threat of Covid-19 in an industry that demands that people work in very close proximity, became clear.

In the US, the impact includes delayed releases and new season premieres, cancelled productions of new pilots and shows slated to start airing in September (the start of the 2020/21 broadcast season) while other shows are being cut short with alternative endings. All this at a time when watching TV has become an activity basically equivalent to breathing.

To put this into perspective – global data measuring and analytics company Nielsen predicts “being home-bound could lead to almost a 60% increase in the amount of video content we watch globally.”