Number of scripted television series hits record high in 2021

If it feels as though there is more TV to watch than ever before, you would be correct.

As the Coronavirus pandemic kicked off in 2020, television production went into a slowdown for six months. This led to the first drop in the number of new scripted series for the first time since they were being tracked annual in 2008. Now it seems everything is back to normal.

FX Content Research released its annual report and found that there 559 scripted series in 2021, an increase of 13% over 2020, and an increase of 5% over the pre-pandemic time period of 2019. It should be noted that the 2021 number is potentially inflated somewhat by series delayed out of 2020.

Will 2022 set a new all-time high? With a seemingly never-ending list of more streaming services launching, the demand will only go up.  The questions become then where you find enough writers, directors, actors, and so on to maintain them all. What is the absolute limited of what can be produced?

We’ll just have to wait and see.