Over 1.100 titles (which could be one TV film or one series season), 22.000 episodes and 14.000 hours of fiction are produced each year in Europe, but the 2020/2021 Covid-19 crisis halted growth, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s latest report. The “Audiovisual fiction production in Europe - 2021 figures” report analyses the volume of TV/SVOD fiction films and series produced in Europe, and of European origin according to main acting roles, the main commissioners and producers, and the crews of screenwriters and directors involved in their creation.
According to the study, daily telenovelas/soaps account for the bulk (61%) of hours produced. With large volumes of telenovelas/soaps produced each year, Germany, Poland and Greece are the leaders in volume of hours produced. Hungary and Portugal are two other examples of countries driven by more-than-52-episode-per-season series.
Meanwhile, the “Audiovisual fiction production in Europe - 2021 figures” report revealed that more than half of all titles produced in Europe are 13-or-fewer-episodes-per-season series. This modality kept on growing during the Covid crisis, but seasons have less and shorter episodes.
At the same time, the study notes that after a peak in 2018, there are now fewer international co-productions. In fact, international co-productions account for 8% of all fiction titles and are mostly limited to TV films and to 2-to-3-episode-season series. The majority of global co-productions used to be between two neighboring countries sharing the same language (e.g. France and Belgium, or Germany and Austria), but non-linguistic co-productions have gradually increased and now represent close to 60% of all co-productions.
Another key finding cited in the report is that public broadcasters commissioned 55% of titles, private broadcasters for 59% of hours. In 2021, the BBC, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery were the three main commissioners of 13-or-fewer-episode-per-season series.
Almost 1.400 production companies/groups produced at least one fiction title between 2015 and 2021, but only 6% of them produced at least one title in each of the last seven years. This significant turnover can be attributed to the intense renewal of TV series: on average, between 2015 and 2021, first seasons accounted for 51% of all seasons produced each year.
Lastly, the European Audiovisual Observatory highlighted that about 13.000 screenwriters and 7.000 directors were involved in the production of European original fiction between 2015 and 2021.
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