Amid a constricted commissioning environment for scripted in the post-peak TV age, producers and distributors of the genre should be prioritizing efficiency over “high-budget spectacle,” lean into streamers’ new acquisition-first strategies, and exploit opportunities in the vertical video space, Olivia Deane, research manager at Ampere Analysis, said at Series Mania Forum today.
“I know there’s a lot of apprehension in the media space at the moment,” Deane said in opening her Series Mania Forum presentation. “I’m hoping that the next 30 minutes or so will leave you maybe not feeling 100% more positive, but hopefully feeling 75% more stable.”
Deane defined the peak TV era as 2019 to 2022, with the post period beginning in 2023. “A lot of the focus over the last few years has been about the slowdown that we saw after 2022, and it makes everything seem really awful,” Deane said. “But actually, if we look at 2023 to 2025 in terms of an era, it’s actually a time of stability. It’s slower than the period before, but it’s actually a lot more predictable. We’re not seeing these roller coaster increases and decreases that we saw during peak TV.”
Revenue growth has slowed with the saturation of the streaming sector, “but the content spending slowdown has actually been much less dramatic. Spending on original content across these two areas declined by only 3%. So why have commissions been so impacted?”
That has to do with evolving revenue models; AVOD and FAST revenues have surged in the post-peak era, but those operators are largely not interested in original commissions. “They’re not looking to commission high-end, high-profile, high-budget original titles to attract subscribers.” Instead, they’ve been prioritizing high-volume licensing. “Of the 43,000 television seasons available on FAST channels in 2025, none of those were originals. Similarly, if we look at AVOD, 32,000 TV seasons, just 372 were originals.”
SVOD revenue in Western Europe “still represents most of the growth in the media market,” driven by AVOD tiers, Deane added. “They’ve been able to diversify their revenue streams across both subscription and advertising. They have counterbalanced a high level of saturation in the Western markets by appealing to a new consumer group. We’re looking at people from lower-income demographics. However, saturation is still peaking in Western markets, and there are only so many people from lower-income households to target, so this ad-funded boost is likely to be short-lived. The importance of high-profile original content that attracts subscribers to platforms will become less important than ever, and we’re already seeing global streamers respond to this. Five out of the six global streamers are actually moving towards an acquisition-first model. Netflix, Amazon, Discovery+, Disney, and Paramount all reduced the volume of commissions announced in Western Europe between 2023 and 2025, while half of the companies listed here actually increased the volume of acquired content available on their platforms in the same region in the same period. The most notable outlier here is HBO—its commissioning and acquisition levels increased because it’s earlier in its business model. It’s still rolling out, and it needs those high-quality, localized, original titles to attract new consumers.”
This is an active acquisitions market, she noted, but there are supply challenges due to the over-reliance on streamer originals at the height of peak TV and to the rapid contraction in commissioning.
“During peak TV, every single commissioning type grew the volume of commissions in every single genre. Although streaming commissions in the region increased, titles from traditional commissioners still massively outweighed those from SVOD competitors. And this suggests that the recent slowdown can’t be entirely attributed to streamers pulling back in the region; traditional players are also facing challenges, including reduced public funding and a broader economic decline. However, if we look at the same figures in terms of spending, it’s a completely different picture. You can see here that SVOD spending on original content in Western Europe showed an annual average increase of 54% between 2020 and 2022. From 2023 to 2025, one issue is clear—this massive growth in spending has completely disappeared. Streamers’ annual spending in the region increased by around 8% over the following three years, and this is the story we hear most about. We hear about how the spending boom has stopped and how terrible that’s been for the television industry, but what we often don’t consider is the impact that the spending itself had on the market.”
That one-off massive injection by streamers cannot be re-created, she said, so “creators need to figure out how to deal with the infrastructure issues caused by over-expansion during peak TV to survive the current era.”
The structural issues include SVOD’s initial focus on original, high-budget scripted content to boost subscriptions. “They’re not like public broadcasters. They don’t have a government remit. They don’t need to appeal to a wide range of demographics. They only need to cater to one group of people: subscription decision-makers. And in the case of Western Europe, that means adult internet users with a reasonable level of disposable income.”
Content spend surged with big-budget titles like Prime’s The Rings of Power. “People have come to expect film-quality television, and everyone else in the space has had to compete to keep up. And it means that they’re not just spending more money on content, they’re also spending more time. Commissioning rates can’t keep up. This bottleneck is where the real problem in commissioning and production is actually coming from, and it’s why the current state of production can’t capitalize on what is actually a healthy acquisitions market.”
Commissioners are responding by moving away from genres that take longer to make.
Deane also pointed to opportunities for scripted content from elsewhere. “The bottleneck in TV production in Western markets, created by the boom in spending by streamers, and then also exacerbated by industrial action in North America, means that it’s had an impact on the volume of new scripted content available to be acquired in the global market. Put simply, Western players are making less, so there’s less available for people to buy. So between 2024 and 2025, titles from both North America and Western Europe showed a significant decline in the volume of new content. Conversely, the volume of premieres of acquired scripted TV seasons created in the Asia Pacific increased more than titles from any other region. Asia was the only region to show an increase in scripted commissions in the same period. They’re making more, and therefore there is more available to buy, and the increase in acquired scripted premieres from Asia Pacific has also had an impact on global genre trend.” Notably, K-dramas have driven interest in romance and sci-fi titles.
Vertical is the next frontier, with English-speaking markets presenting a “mid-level opportunity,” while the next “big boom” will come from Brazil and Turkey. Micro drama consumption is already very strong, and that’s to do with what micro dramas are about—they center around wealth, revenge, romance, and that helps to explain the popularity in these markets, because it’s where things like telenovelas and soaps are already very successful.”
Deane highlighted the rapid growth in content availability, with ReelShort and DramaBox providing access to 4,332 titles. “That seems like a lot. It looks like a massive exponential increase, but if we assume that these titles are two minutes long, if you didn’t sleep, it would actually only take you six days to consume all of the content on both of those platforms, and that’s assuming that they’re not replicated across the platforms, which they are. What’s more, our consumer data show that people who enjoy micro drama are actually super-viewers. So these people consume 37 minutes more video every day than the average viewer. They consume four hours a day. So obviously they don’t just watch micro-drama, but if they did just watch micro-drama for those four hours a day, they would have gone through both of these catalogs in just two months. The appetite there is absolutely huge, and the gaps in supply in the Western market offer a real opportunity for those who can get in early.”
Further, Deane continued, “Scripted romance titles and romcoms are making a comeback, and this has been driven by growth in commissioning in the Asia Pacific. Romance was actually the only genre to increase in commissions between 2024 and 2025. Romance acquisitions also showed more growth between 2024 and 2025 than any other genre.”
Crime and thriller still reigns supreme, though, as the most popular genre, and given the subgenre’s shorter production timelines, there are opportunities in that space.
