Peak TV may be over, but even in a time of industrywide contraction, another era is forging ahead unabated: Welcome to Peak Franchise TV.
Spinoffs of successful series are almost as old as network TV itself — the first ones premiered in the late 1950s. The current state of the business, however, with its nearly boundless viewing options for both old and new programming, is uniquely set up to reward investment in building franchises. On the broadcast networks alone, the 2023-24 season will feature 21 scripted series that are part of a franchise, defined as a show that has spun off another series set in the same world or is itself a spinoff.
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They range from Law & Order: SVU — the longest-running primetime drama in U.S. TV history — to Young Sheldon, the Big Bang Theory prequel that’s set to air its final episodes in May (and which itself will spawn another spinoff focusing on different members of the Cooper family next season). That number doesn’t even include remakes and revivals, à la NBC’s Night Court or CBS’ The Equalizer, or unscripted series like ABC’s Bachelor franchise.
Outside the broadcast world, AMC’s Walking Dead universe — which numbers seven shows — is still going 18 months after the flagship series ended. House of the Dragon, the massively successful prequel to HBO’s biggest show ever, Game of Thrones, is on the verge of debuting its second season, and a third show set in that world recently cast its two leads. Prime Video has franchised The Boys with the college-set Gen V, and Netflix is prepping an Outer Banks spinoff (to say nothing of the dozens iterations of unscripted franchises a la Bravo’s Real Housewives).
A studio executive tells The Hollywood Reporter that as audiences have grown more savvy about what they choose, the concept of a franchise or brand can expand beyond the traditional definition to include shows from specific creators. Just as viewers know what they’ll be getting with an NCIS series, they also know certain things to expect from shows headed by Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy or Tina Fey.
There’s no mystery as to why networks and streamers keep leaning into franchises — they work. CBS’ FBI and NCIS brands account for five of the network’s top 11 scripted shows; on NBC, the Chicago and Law & Order blocks give the network its two highest-rated nights of the week. ABC imported 9-1-1 from Fox this season (spinoff 9-1-1: Lone Star remains at its original home) and saw it instantly become the network’s top drama.
A number of those shows also have robust second lives: Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS — each of which has more than 400 episodes — are constants in Nielsen’s streaming rankings. The NCIS-verse recently passed the 1,000-episode mark across all its series, while the various Law & Order shows have aired more than 1,300 episodes. All of those supply their respective networks’ in-house streaming services, Paramount+ for CBS and Peacock for NBC, with huge reserves of programming, which in turn helps keep engagement up.
And in at least one instance, a successful afterlife for a series has sparked a potential franchise. After Suits set records on Netflix in 2023, NBC fast-tracked development of a companion series that’s in contention for a spot on its 2024-25 lineup.
As for why audiences keep coming back to such shows, Universal Television president Erin Underhill — whose studio produces Wolf Entertainment’s FBI, Chicago and Law & Order brands — says their reliability plays a big role. “We’re talking about more than just a collection of shows. It’s really a brand that audiences rely on,” she says. “There’s a lot of decision fatigue out there. I feel like [viewers] want to be able to tune into something that they trust they’re going to have a great experience for that 30 or 60 minutes.”
A network executive with experience developing franchise series cautions, however, that there can be too much of a good thing. Franchise or not, a show has to justify its place in the lineup and make efforts to differentiate itself from its companion shows in order to succeed, the exec says.
As the marketplace for new series contracts, the appetite for proven commodities, whether that’s a spinoff or an extension of an existing show or a project based on well-known source material, will likely increase. An agent tells THR that prior to last year’s labor strikes, their clients sold 80 percent or more of the projects they took out. Now, that figure is closer to 50 percent or 60 percent.
The pitches that are being crowded out, the agent notes, are often projects that feature original approaches to well-established genres. But also, fewer and fewer outlets are willing to “take a flyer” on a wholly original idea unless there’s already a relationship between the creator and potential buyer. Matching a writer’s sensibilities and interests to a piece of IP, on the other hand, can open some doors (and even more if a prominent actor is attached).
The upside for workers in the industry — though it’s far easier said than done — is that landing a job on a franchise series tends to deliver more job security than the average gig. Original streaming shows tend to be built for short runs and only a few seasons, but franchises fuel the multiplatform machinery of TV’s current era like nothing else.
“As the number of options have just been skyrocketing and it’s harder and harder to get new programs sampled, the tried and true are holding in there,” said NBCUniversal program planning strategy chief Jeff Bader — in 2018, when four shows that were part of franchises had been on for a decade or more. By next season, that number will have doubled.
A version of this story first appeared in the May 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
