Last week, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) released a new report titled “Audiovisual Fiction Production in Europe – 2021 Figures”, authored by Gilles Fontaine. Svod has more high-quality content?

This report focuses on the volume of TV/SVoD fictional films and series produced in Europe, as well as their European origin, including the main acting roles, commissioners, producers, and the screenwriters and directors involved in their creation.

The data of Svod

The data collected spans from 2015 to 2021 and was primarily sourced from the European Metadata Group, in addition to other sources like IMDb and the EAO’s LUMIERE database.

Europe has been producing over 1,100 titles, 22,000 episodes, and 14,000 hours of fiction on average each year from 2015 to 2021. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the growth of TV fiction production and release in 2020 and 2021, with the volume of hours produced still below the 2019 level.

Despite this, the number of 13-or-fewer-episode-per-season series continued to grow during the crisis, albeit with fewer and shorter episodes, possibly due to increased budgets. The production of TV films only picked up in 2022.

Nonetheless, the report emphasizes that COVID-19 did not affect some fundamental characteristics of TV production in Europe. Telenovelas and soaps still make up the majority (61%) of hours produced, and more than half of all titles produced are 13-or-fewer-episode-per-season series.

Fiction Tv in Europe

The report highlights regional variations in the production of TV fiction in Europe. It identifies Germany, Poland, and Greece as the top producers of telenovelas and soaps, while Hungary and Portugal are noted for their emphasis on series with more than 52 episodes per season.

Germany also emerges as the leader in terms of the number of different titles produced, with a notable focus on TV films. In contrast, the UK, outpacing Germany, France, Spain, and Sweden, has a preference for shorter seasons comprising 13 episodes or fewer.

The turnover

In 2021, independent productions made up 78% of all titles produced. Of these, 12% were from production groups affiliated with a broadcaster but working for a third-party broadcaster, and 66% were from production groups independent from any major broadcaster.

The figures also show that Banijay, the Mediawan-Leonine Alliance, and the RTL group were the three main producers of independent TV fiction.

Regarding the workforce, the production of TV fiction between 2015 and 2021 involved around 13,000 screenwriters.

Excluding more-than-52-episode-season series, each screenwriter (co)wrote an average of 1.9 episodes per year. In addition, there were about 7,000 directors who (co-)directed an average of two episodes per year each. 58% of them were also involved in directing fiction feature films.