• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 30, 2024

Maybe it isn't having one or two hit shows that can rocket a streaming service or a legacy linear TV network to new levels of popularity.

Can it really be about the perception of just having a lot of stuff -- TV shows and movies -- even if that stuff has a short lifespan?

John Landgraf, chairman of Disney's FX Networks, who has analyzed so-called “Peak TV” -- how many and what premium TV shows succeed on TV networks and streamers -- now wonders how a company's “portfolio” factors into this equation.

Looking at Netflix specifically, he says, it looks to be more and more about the size of one's library, which is a big attraction -- for consumers, for investors, and maybe advertisers. The focus then is not on individual program/content performance.  

“The only way you’re even measuring the value of this thing is that you have a giant portfolio of content that a trillion-dollar company made,” says Landgraf, recently to Puck.  “And then you're measuring somewhere in the bowels of that company whether that portfolio created a return on investment.”

There is the need to make TV shows and movies even more quickly than in the past -- even as more areas are canceled quickly, something Netflix has gone through.

Landgraf says the sharply rising need to make good TV shows quickly is the problem -- especially for streaming.

“They are trying to hit this very rapid cadence,” he says. “It's just really hard to make a good television show. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy and courage and devotion.”

The incentive for many consumers might be to have more stuff that boosts a service's overall value. 

Looking specifically at what each show brings to the party might be a better way to go. “Take away that incentive and make everything a cost-plus [model], and there’s no pot of gold anywhere,” he says.

Perhaps Landgraf is looking at this in the rear-view mirror, with scores of long-gone really big TV shows in the past that could easily pull in 10 million to 15 million or more viewers a week. Last year the only show to make it into this range was CBS's “Tracker” at 10.8 million average viewers, followed by “NCIS” at 9.7 million.

Netflix has shifted this conversation somewhat to total “engagement,"  time viewed, the total number of hours and minutes for each show. 

In terms of the past, Landgraf looks at it this way: “I personally think that in terms of actual humans watching actual stories, how many people watched — not one minute of it, not five minutes of it, but watched [all of] -- it is the most intuitive metric.”

That ship seemed to have sailed -- which might put TV and movie producers in a difficult spot. Should they focus what kind of audience might consume their shows -- or something else? 

Real engagement with entertainment content is whether an advertiser (including a TV network or streamer) can get a consumer to dive intensely -- or maybe click away to something related.