Too Much Drama? Why Streaming’s Top Genre May Be Overloaded
Mark Twain once famously said: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” If Doc Brown ever shows up on my doorstep with the time-travelling DeLorean, I know where one of my first stops will be. But for now, let’s substitute whiskey with the TV drama genre and explore how true this sentiment may be.
Across the eight major streaming services, drama is the only genre to rank among the top three in percentage of new customers acquired and percentage of existing customers retained in the UCAN region across Q3 2024, according to Parrot Analytics’ Content Valuation system. Perhaps then, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the drama genre accounts for the highest share of six of the eight SVOD’s total TV libraries: Netflix (55.17%), Apple TV+ (49.08%), Amazon Prime Video(48.35%), Disney+ (46.20%), Hulu (45.90%) and Peacock (38.35%). The only two major streaming services that did not count drama as its most voluminous TV genre were Max (Reality) and Paramount+ (Comedy).
On one hand, this makes sense. Drama is proven to be a more consistent and significant contributor to subscriber activity than any other genre. Accounting for the majority of a TV library is logical as a result as streamers simply follow audience behavior trends. But this also means that drama is the most competitive genre field to compete in across all of TV entertainment. In fact, Drama is in low demand (1.49x average across all titles) and high supply in the US across the last three months, suggesting it’s reached an over-saturation point. It’s extremely hard for even quality, well reviewed dramas to break out with the general public. Hulu’s Say Nothing, which boasts elite critic scores, is a good recent example.
Does that mean Hollywood should stop making dramas altogether? No! The genre still clearly boasts the highest ceiling of all. But it does mean that whitespace opportunities may be more crucial moving forward. In that same three month span, the Adventure genre — which proved to be an important contributor to Max and Disney+ in Q3 — was in high demand but low supply here in the US. Despite that potential upside, adventure accounts for a comparatively smaller percentage of TV libraries: Disney+ (28.5%), Paramount+ (20.49%), Netflix (18.43%), Hulu (17.94%), Amazon (17.56%), Peacock (16.9%), Apple TV+ (14.72%) and Max (12.81%). This is just one example of where else streamers can funnel content resources to help build out a more complete catalog.
So, Twain’s whiskey-based statement may not apply 100% to television genres. But there is more than a kernel of truth to be found in there. Too much of any one single genre will create a lopsided and narrowly appealing library. Still, doubling down on what works (Drama) is advisable as long as streamers can remain flexible enough to adapt to changing viewer preferences along the way.