There Is Too Much Television...And That's Okay

If you spend more than five minutes talking to a TV critic, the topic of the increasing amount of new scripted television is going to come up in conversation. With more than 400 original scripted shows scheduled to air in 2015, keeping up with all of the good stuff is nearly impossible.

FX's CEO John Landgraf sparked another round of gnashing teeth from critics this week when he appeared at the Television Critics Association press tour and complained that there is entirely too much scripted television. He can't keep up with it, he has trouble even just tracking the increasing number of network programmers responsible for the boom. And he made headlines in the trades by predicting that the next couple of years would bring a decline in the number of scripted programs as the industry goes through a natural readjustment.

Landgraf is a very smart guy and I hesitate to disagree with him. It's not unlike writing a piece directed at Paul McCartney arguing that some of the Beatles tunes weren't all that great (although we could talk about "Drive My Car"). But respectfully, while I don't think he's entirely wrong, he and my fellow TV critics might be missing the point.

Certainly 400+ scripted TV shows a year is an amount so large that no one could possibly keep up with the flood of programming. And that's not even counting the even larger number of non-scripted shows and other programs that come and go throughout the year. Yes, no one could possibly keep track of everything worthwhile and have the time to both watch it and thoughtfully write about it.

But that's okay.

The uncomfortable truth is that while the number of scripted hours of television may ebb and flow, it's going to remain at an impressively daunting level. And TV critics (and industry executives) will have to figure out ways of doing triage to handle the workflow.

Since the earliest days of television criticism, most TV writers have been generalists. They've covered everything worthwhile and have served as both gatekeepers and tastemakers for the viewing public. The internet altered that equation slightly and some writers have specialized in reality programming or smaller segments of the viewing public. But for the most part, the job description for most TV writers and critics was that they needed to write about the shows they thought mattered--every single one of them.

That goal has meant that every major critic likely had to write about a range of shows from TRUE DETECTIVE and UnREAL to MASTERS OF SEX and SURVIVOR. Everyone seemed to be chasing the same audience and often many of television's most-watched shows received little regular coverage from critics. Even worse, networks all battled for attention with these same critics. So good shows got lost, because networks spent immense amounts of effort trying to get critics to pay attention to their shows and hey, there's just so much time in the day.

What needs to happen on both the press and the publicist side of the business is a rethinking of the most appropriate way to cover television. Specifically, rethinking how we cover smaller new TV shows that deserve some extra attention to thrive. Critics need to have the ability to say they're not going to cover TRUE DETECTIVE every week because it'll be covered just fine by 100 other critics. Instead, they'll be writing about a less-covered quality show that needs the attention. That will help spread the word about more programs and critics who have the ability to highlight a show ahead of the crowd will be able to drive traffic by engaging readers who are looking for something new.

Publicists also have to figure out a way to better triage their coverage plans. While getting a small blurb in Entertainment Weekly or Variety looks good in the coverage book, a longer feature in a smaller publication that is targeted towards the show's audience is likely to be a lot more effective. Networks need to have better ways of tracking audience engagement and attributing that engagement to specific publications.

This firehouse of new, worthwhile content is only going to get more daunting in the coming years. As you begin to factor in original web series and scripted shows popping up everywhere from Snapchat to Tumblr, covering everything worthwhile will only be possible with a team of writers separated into beats. In the same way that no one news writer could cover everything that happened in a big city each day, no one TV or media critic will be able to do it all. The end of the generalist is upon us and as an industry we're entering the Golden Age of the television industry beat reporter.

It's going to be a fun ride.