Television has had a pretty tumultuous 15 years. We’ve gone from the domination of broadcast networks and overly expansive cable packages to an overabundance of streaming services that all offer instant access to TV in the palm of your hand. “Peak TV” is not a term that came out of nowhere, and it doesn’t just refer to the quality of the TV that has been produced in the last decade and a half. The sheer amount of TV that the current Golden Age of Television has given us would be unfathomable to industry watchers 20 years ago, and the effects of mass TV consumption becoming commonplace has led to fast and widespread changes across the board. Some of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive for audiences everywhere, but the advent of the 2020s has presented us with so much television at once, and when you look at the big picture of the industry, it seems like it might be eating itself alive.
The rise of streaming has coincided with the rise of social media as a means of connection for people across the world, and while the two phenomena have given birth to the writhing monster that is TV Twitter, the social aspect of watching TV is just as key a part of Peak TV as the shows themselves. Media has always been a connecting force in humanity, and TV has seen the birth (and perpetual messy adolescence) of fandom that also hit a huge peak in the mid-2010s with the aid of Tumblr and easy access to Netflix. Instead of only talking to people at work or school or in a family unit about what we missed on Glee every week, we were able to connect with hundreds of other people about whatever was on TV. Streaming’s accessibility made it possible for someone to binge multiple seasons of a show at once, as well as granting those without the money for a fancy cable package access to shows that they would otherwise never be able to watch without buying DVD sets or resorting to torrenting. Good shows that might not have gotten a lot of attention without the power of the Internet exploded in popularity at levels that had never been seen before, and that success opened the door for streaming originals to overpower traditional linear series in popularity.
The important part of popularity, however, is that it is always waning. In order for it to be maintained, things have to be consistent if not constantly improving, and that is where TV as a medium has failed to thrive. It’s not that there is a sudden lack of good TV, but that the people in charge of making TV seem to think that they have found the TV marketing Holy Grail by throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it will stick. Sometimes, it does; Netflix successfully created prestige television on its first outing into the fray. Both House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black were critical and commercial darlings, and that was proof enough that a series never had to leave a laptop to make it out in the real world. For a short but incredible few years, everyone was watching everything that was good all at the same time, and it was so much fun. Swaths of hardcore fans would be locked in online no matter the timezone to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones or the latest season of Stranger Things, and there was a real feeling of community that so few shows have been able to replicate since.
The misstep that streaming services made was one of overconfidence. Television is an art, not a science, but it feels like that line of thinking has been pushed to the wayside as of late. The ever-growing list of Netflix originals that never made it past a single season now have peers from most other popular streaming services, and one has to wonder whether or not the people canceling these shows understand how they got to the point of being able to greenlight them in the first place. No series is successful without a fanbase organically forming. Executives cannot just decide that a show should be successful and then be shocked when it isn’t an instant hit, but that’s how things can feel as a viewer. The success of streaming has led to so many shows starting and ending before anyone even has the chance to watch them, and when there’s so much to watch, why give anything new a chance? The entire situation is ouroborosian in nature—TV is chowing down on its own tail before it has the chance to grow, but at some point, there will be nothing left to eat, and we’ll enter yet another era of TV that will shake things up, hopefully for the better.
Until that happens, watching TV is only going to get more and more tiring. There’s no doubt that there are plenty of incredible shows around now, and that there will be more in the coming years, but the rush of watching something with everyone else in the world is something we’re unlikely to feel ever again. There is a new kind of fatigue that comes along with trying to keep up with everything, and in the end, it winds back around to us and starts the spiral of less and less TV being watched as more and more comes out. No one wants to start a show that might get canceled without a proper ending, and no show is going to get a second season without anyone watching it. Succession is likely the last example we’ll have of a show organically acquiring a massive audience over time, and with the other two HBO Sunday giants—Euphoria and The Last of Us—not returning until 2025, combined with the WGA strike (which is, in part, battling against this churn) causing the industry to grind to an indefinite halt, there is no telling when the next new show that creates a genuine community will appear.
At the core of everything, the crush of shows that never get their chance to shine in the wake of so much incredible media is flat-out depressing. Even the darkest and most dramatic television is supposed to be fun to watch, but there can be no fun for us as viewers if we have no faith in a show getting its due. This isn’t to say that nothing should ever be canceled or that every pitch deserves a pilot, but there needs to be a renewal of faith. The communities we create to talk about TV are some of the best parts of consuming media, and when TV isn’t allowed to thrive, our passion for it can die along with it. Not only do we need our faith renewed in the people who push TV out to us, they need to renew their faith in us as the audience. We love TV and hope to never stop, but right now it is exhausting to keep up with. Maybe we’ll catch up—but we need more time.
Kathryn Porter is a freelance writer who will talk endlessly about anything entertainment given the chance. You can find her @kaechops on Twitter.
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