MUMBAI: The American television industry’s production decline accelerated in 2025, with the total number of original series falling for the third consecutive year, according to research agency Luminate’s year-end report released last week.

The data firm found that 1,122 shows premiered across networks and streaming services in 2025, an 11 per cent drop from the 1,266 premieres in 2024. Since hitting a peak of 1,695 shows in 2022, the television landscape—excluding live sports and news programming—has contracted by a third.

The declines cut across all platforms. Streaming shows, including both subscription video-on-demand services and free platforms, fell 11 per cent from 653 in 2024 to 584 last year. CableTV  slipped nearly eight per cent from 417 shows to 384. Broadcast networks experienced the steepest percentage drop at 21 per cent, from 196 shows in 2024 to 154 in 2025—though Luminate noted this figure matches 2023 levels.

The report attributed some of 2024’s inflated numbers to the dual labour strikes of 2023, which “pushed a number of shows that would have premiered in the autumn of that year into 2024,” Luminate said.

Among major subscription streamers, HBO Max suffered the most dramatic contraction, halving its original programming from 32 shows to 16. Only two platforms bucked the downward trend: Prime Video, which increased output from 42 to 59 shows, and Disney+, which grew from 10 to 14 programmes.

Apple TV+ held steady at 37 originals. Netflix, whilst remaining the industry leader, debuted 133 shows in 2025, down eight from the previous year. Hulu declined by three shows (from 48 to 45), Paramount+ by 10 (from 36 to 26), and Peacock by seven (from 38 to 31). Free streaming services premiered just 13 series in 2025 versus 18 in 2024.

International productions provided some relief but also retreated. Of nine countries—Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Spain, France, India, Britain and South Korea—that Luminate identified as supplying multiple shows to American streamers, only Argentina increased output year-on-year. South Korea led with over 40 shows for American subscription platforms, yet even this figure declined from 2024.

Overall television production remained depressed in 2024, falling seven  per cent from 2023, “as the entertainment industry continues to find its footing after a couple of rough years,” according to Luminate’s analysis, which measures television viewership in America.

The report validated “the contraction in production following the dual WGA and Sag-Aftra strikes, which has impacted every area of film and television,” whilst also examining which genres and platforms suffered most.

Broadcast television proved “surprisingly resilient,” Luminate noted, recovering from the work stoppages faster than streaming and cable with a 25 per cent year-on-year increase. This likely reflected networks’ efforts to return broadcast episodes to air by early 2024.

Cable television, by contrast, has “suffered the most”, Luminate said. Original series on cable TV plummeted 15 per cent from 2023 to reach a new low, which Luminate attributed to the “cratered” audience for cable series as streaming has displaced the format.

Streaming production in America “is still down significantly from pre-strike levels”, the report stated. Netflix alone produced 22 per cent fewer American-based series in 2024 than in 2022, though it “remains far ahead of its competitors in that arena”. Prime Video emerged as “the only streamer that hasn’t reduced U.S.-based production output in the last two years.”

The contraction extends beyond series counts to total programming volume. According to Luminate, “the drop in total episodes and total hours of programming between 2023 and 2024 has escalated from 17 per cent to 20 per cent”. For drama series alone, orders declined from nearly 3,400 episodes in 2019 to just 2,492 in 2024.

“Drama appears to be the least impacted genre, with comedy, animated and unscripted all suffering greatly in the last year”, Luminate found. Between 2022 and 2024, total unscripted episodes produced fell 33 per cent, whilst over five years the total number of comedy episodes produced declined 47 per cent.

“It’s not just less series being produced but also less episodes overall of TV that is contributing to this ongoing contraction, even as long-running series continue to prove most valuable”, according to the report.

Netflix claimed seven of 2024’s top 10 most-watched series, led by ,Fool Me Once which accumulated 12 billion minutes watched. Taylor Sheridan’s programmes also performed strongly, with Landman and Tulsa King both ranking in the top five.

Landman‘s performance proved particularly notable given its mid-November premiere. “In just about six weeks, it managed nearly 10 billion minutes viewed, illustrating just how popular that particular series was,” Luminate observed. Fallout rounded out the top 10 with nearly eight billion minutes viewed.

Luminate noted that “streaming franchises—including Marvel, Star Wars and Rings of Power—all underperformed last year”. The second season of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings series “was down 60 per cent in total minutes watched compared to Season 1.”

Disney+ “didn’t fare much better with offerings like Echo and Agatha All Along, which underperformed previous Marvel streaming series”, the report found.

Yet these intellectual properties remained Disney+’s best performers. Percy Jackson and the Olympians “was top dog on Disney+ last year with over  three billion  minutes viewed”, and The Acolyte “came in second place with 2.7 billion.”

Love Island “emerged as the first unscripted and non-Netflix streaming original to top the yearly rankings”, Luminate reported. “For the first time, the most-watched streaming original TV season of the year did not come from Netflix.”

Universal’s Wicked “dominated U.S. streaming as a major draw for Peacock and Prime Video throughout 2025, building on its success at the box office and on PVOD”, according to the report.

Whilst “licensed theatrical titles, rather than SVOD originals, typically rule the streaming film charts—as historical data from 2023-24 shows—Netflix original films showed a new strength in 2025,” Luminate noted. “The major standout, of course, was the surprise smash KPop Demon Hunters, which became the service’s most-watched film release ever.”

The film’s soundtrack “proved highly popular in both the domestic and global markets”, the report found. “Once the film took off, daily on-demand audio streams for the soundtrack album did not dip below 10 million in the U.S. until late November, and the record was racking up four times that internationally at its peak.”

“This type of multimedia success is what all studios aspire to nowadays, and it would not be surprising to see Demon Hunters spawn a wave of imitators and perhaps launch a renaissance for the tie-in movie soundtrack”, Luminate suggested.

Overall, “original streaming film releases have contracted considerably as the legacy studios reinvested in theatrical titles,” the report stated. Netflix also reduced its film slate by almost 20 per cent year-on-year in 2025. “The service’s long-discussed shift toward quality over quantity for film has begun to manifest, it seems, which paid off with Netflix’s best showing among the most-watched films in several years.”

Wide theatrical film releases “ticked upward in 2025 vs. 2024 and have rebounded from their Covid-depressed levels earlier in the decade,” Luminate observed, though “major studio output remains far depressed from its mid-2000s peak.”

“This has perpetuated a vicious circle in which a shortage of available movies in theaters is blamed for reduced theatrical attendance, and vice versa, as box office revenue has struggled to reach pre-pandemic heights”, the report noted.

Of 2025’s theatrical successes, Jurassic World Rebirth “saw the biggest opening week on streaming, with more than 1 billion minutes watched, an impressive feat given Peacock’s relatively slim U.S. subscriber base (41 million). Meanwhile, Warner Bros’ R-rated horror films Sinners and Weapons “saw some of the best debut weeks on streaming for 2025.”

Sinners “drew more engagement in its first week on HBO Max than the latest Captain America did on Disney+,” the report found, demonstrating that “the kind of word-of-mouth success observed in theaters can translate to streaming as well, making HBO Max a popular platform for adult audiences”.

About a quarter of American consumers identify as “casual” movie fans, “rating their interest in watching movies as one to three  on a scale of one to five,” Luminate reported. When asked what would entice them to cinemas, “more than any other genre, comedy could be the ticket”, though “it’s also possible that this audience is simply not as well served by current studio slates.”

“In a positive signal for theater chains, avid and die-hard movie fans skew slightly younger relative to casual fans,” the report found. Millennials account “for more than a fourth of avid and die-hard fans, versus just 18 per cent of casual fans,” whilst boomers “make up only 19 per cent of the die-hard contingent.” The data also showed “healthy representation from Gen Z in the avid and die-hard categories, a striking contrast to the conventional wisdom that the cohort doesn’t care about movies.”
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“The biggest determining factor in enticing a more casual movie fan to get out to theaters is simply having a good story, followed by the genre and positive word of mouth,” Luminate concluded. However, 21 per cent reported “none of the listed options would bring them to see a movie in theater.”

The report also examined consumer attitudes towards generative artificial intelligence in content creation. “The biggest segment (39 per cent) of consumers aware of generative AI say they’d be less interested in watching a movie or TV show if they knew it was written with gen AI,” Luminate found.

Yet “a majority are either more interested (25 per cent) or ambivalent (36 per cent)”. Notably, “as avid movie and TV fanship increases, fans are actually more likely to express interest in an AI-written movie or show and less likely to be ambivalent, perhaps driven by curiosity about the tech’s applicability.”

When asked about various AI applications in production, “consumers consistently tended toward discomfort over comfort, though there were significant pockets of indifference,” the report stated. “The most discomfort tended to register with scenarios that involved digital replication or replacement of actors.”