Production delays in the TV industry caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic has both reduced the total volume of new content available for distribution, and resulted in US commissioners pushing back premiere dates of their new TV seasons.
Show Tracker reveals that there were just four brand new scripted TV shows to premiere in the US last September, one on a Free TV channel (‘Filthy Rich’ on FOX), one on Pay TV (‘Power Book II: Ghost’ on Starz) and two on a streamer (‘Raised by Wolves’ on HBO Max and ‘Woke’ on Hulu). This number is much lower than the previous September where there were 17 new premieres - 13 of which were new shows debuting on one of the main Free TV broadcast networks.
Brand new TV shows in the US have traditionally either launched in September/October at the very beginning of the TV season, or at the mid-season point in January/February where they launch in newly vacated slots. Across the 2020/21 season there has been a much more even spread on the release of new titles over the months of the year, with the biggest release of new TV content happening in April.
Naturally the resulting shut down in production through the pandemic did not just affect the roll out of new content, but also had a similar impact on returning series. The number of TV shows coming back for a second season dropped from 14 in September 2019 to just three in 2020. The renewed production activity already looks to have reinvigorated this coming September’s line-up, with eight brand new scripted TV show having had their premiere dates revealed for the month, with a number of returning series also set to appear.
Perhaps in part affected by the staggered premiere dates of new content across the year, the distribution of US TV shows into Show Tracker markets is slow compared with previous seasons.
Just 38% of new US shows have found distribution across 13 international markets so far this season. In contrast, 53% of shows in the previous year had distribution and were aired within 12 months of its original US premiere date. The staggered approach to launching new content later in the year will obviously affect this number, but it remains a good marker of where distribution trends are at.
UK content is struggling more than US to find distribution - just 29% of new TV series have found a home. Fewer output deals than US distributors and a lack of parent owned D2C services for vertical integration is a likely cause. You can read more about the difficulties faced by UK distributors in a recent article.
Canada continues to be the most receptive market for US content (followed by Australia), where US Studios have a close alignment with local partners and exclusive distribution agreements. Most notable is the year-on-year drop in distribution activity into the UK market, which has fallen from the third most accessible to eighth this season. In the UK this drop is attributable to a decrease in activity from broadcaster Free and Pay TV channels, who have acquired just 12 new TV series so far this season, 35 fewer than last year.
It is worth considering how prevalent the offer of Boxsets is with first windows in the UK. Last year 43% of new US acquisitions by a Free or Pay TV channel were offered with all episodes made available in one go. It is therefore possible that the spreading of content across the year by US commissioning services is causing UK buyers to have to wait.
Despite this slowing of distribution activity there is still a wave of US content that is making its way to international markets. WarnerMedia’s ‘The Undoing’ is the first new TV series to find distribution in all 17 Show Tracker markets this year, finding a home on their own HBO branded Pay TV (Canada, LATAM, Pan-Regional Asia and Poland) and SVOD services (Nordics, Spain) and through the exclusive output deals they have with local partner such as OCS, Sky and Ziggo. ‘The Undoing’ is just the second US series from the current TV season to premiere in China, following ‘The Watch’ (commissioned by BBC America and distributed by BBC Studios).
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